P7B Water of Leith

P7B had a great day out at the Water of Leith too and the pupils loved getting in the water to do a bit of pond dipping. We are now writing our own blogs in class and one pupil's blog will be chosen to be written up next week - so keep posted to find out more about the trip.

Water of Leith - Learning about rivers

Today we went to the Water of Leith visitor centre to do some field work for our river project.

The workshop was led by the lovely Ruth who told us about the source of the Water of Leith and played a water cycle labelling game with us before taking us for a walk along the river.

We learned about lots of things on the walk, including finding out about the smell of otter poo!

We then did some work creating a map of the depth of the river, measuring how fast the river was running and dipping for river invertebrates.  We found all sorts of creatures including mayflies (which indicate that the water is clean), pond skaters, small fish and a horse hair worm.  The horse hair worm is a parasite which lives in invertebrates such as crickets, when it is growing.  When it is big enough it begins eating them from the inside before exiting into water (I thought it looked really creepy).

Back at the centre we tried out some interactives including a flood plain model and a water wheel and watched an information video about the Water of Leith.

Click on this link to see an animated slide show with photographs from the trip.

Fast Fliers and High Jumpers workshop

Primary 7A had a great time today at the City Arts Centre, taking part in an art workshop.  At first the children were asked to have a look at the exhibition on the Human Race about the history of sports medicine.  They then had to think of different animals and their abilities and imagine that if there had been an animal Olympics which animals would take part in which events.  The class worked in groups and then decided which animal they would like to represent as a sculpture using willow.  The ideas then started flowing as ideas were discussed and choices negotiated.

The final choices were:

• the synchronised swimming turtle team 
• the diving penguins
• a sprinting leopard
• a swimming duck
• a swimming duck-billed platypus

The class  learnt about the shapes needed to make animal bodies and limbs and how to use willow for sculpture.  Have a look at some of our work below.

Many thanks to Stephanie for running the workshop and to Anna for being brilliant at helping groups to talk through their ideas.  Sam's mum also took time out of her very busy day to help us negotiate the crowded Edinburgh pavements and buses.

For more photos click here to see a slide show.

Interscholastics at Meadowbank

Elena wins Silver medal for 80m sprint

Girls' Relay Team reached finals

Boys' Relay Team reached semi-finals

Mrs Nowell

Cabinet Minister Michael Russell at Sciennes

Very well done to Ms French's class and to Amir and Mixie for their outstanding presentation to Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning Mr Michael Russell when he visited their classroom on Wednesday 16th May. All the adults, including Scottish Government officials, journalists, photographers, education visitors and the BBC were extremely impressed by the pupils and how well they are using iPads to help their learning.

Tam O Shanter animation by P6A

Last term our class had a lot of fun learning about animation.  We started off by learning some animation techniques, for example, how to make a door look like it is opening and shutting, or a bird look like it is flapping it's wings.  Then the class was divided into groups and were each given a scene from the poem Tam O' Shanter to work on.  The teams had to decide on a setting for their animation, create a background then decide which characters they needed and how they would animate the characters.  After that they had to decide what would happen in their section of the animation before filming it using a camera.  Finally, they took turns working on my computer, through lunch hours and breaks, to add title slides and sound.

We had a few issues with the software as it kept crashing and moving the sound about.  The lovely help people at I can animate explained to me that it was a glitch in certain computers to do with their usable memory and have tirelessly worked to create an update to the software that stops this happening.  I now have the update and it now works perfectly.

You may notice that the animation runs a little fast, this seems to be to do with the conversion to an mp4 clip.  Also the sound cut off at the end.  Apart from that we hope you enjoy part one of Tam O Shanter.  Part two will follow soon.

Primary 6A have a great time at Portrait Gallery

Yesterday we were lucky enough to have a fantastic trip to the portrait gallery.  As a final round off for the Jacobite project that we finished at the beginning of this term, we took part in a Jacobite drama workshop.  The workshop, let by Marjorie, was extremely enjoyable and myself, Ruth and Flora were entertained by  P6A's drama skills.  There would be a huge selection of talented actors and actresses from our class, if any casting directors were to pass by!

The workshop involved the children in lots of exercises such as, still pictures and role plays around what would make a good or bad King and reporting live from the royal wedding of James, the Old Pretender to the beautiful Polish princess, Maria Karolina Sobieska.

It was lovely to do have the stimulus of the wonderful paintings, which were brought alive by Marjorie's stories.  The building itself is really conducive to imagining royalty; with it's gorgeous arches and high, decorated ceilings.

Get a taste of the lovely time we had by clicking on the link below to see an Animoto slideshow of our trip.

http://animoto.com/play/pAA4iABIoSWMnqBq0i9l2g