Class 6: March 2014

Marine Litter Machine

Here are our ideas for getting litter out of the ocean.

Some fantastic designs!

Today we spent the morning outside practising making a shelter and learning about how to have a campfire. Mrs Milsom came back to help us and Mrs Wragg was with us too. We stayed in the school grounds for our practice but we might go up to Muddisdale next term and work in groups now that we know what the shelter should look like.
First we have to do a risk/benefit analysis and decide what we were going to do to make sure we were going to 'Leave No Trace'. Then we were ready to get outside.

Once we had a shelter ready it was time to try making a spark with a fire steel. These are better than matches for fire starting on an adventure because it doesn't matter if they get wet.

Ms Mackay started a fire then we used Mrs Wragg's embers to get the Kelly Kettle going for hot chocolate.

It was a bit windy and to start with there wwas a bit of smoke swirling around but that soon stopped as the fire got going. You can't see the fire inside a Kelly Kettle - it is all inside in the middle of the tube. Can you see how we avoided scorching the ground and killing the grass in this photo?

The rope is the perimeter to keep people away from the campfire.

You cannot run in this area and you must sit or kneel down.

Then it was time for a sing song! Our Easter song is 'Spring into Action'!

McLaren Workshop

Today we had 16 more ipads iin the classroom so we could get a bit more 'hands on' with the McLaren app all at the same time. Some of our films will be published on Vimeo soon and we will put the link here.

Blinkety Bird

We are looking forward to our animation workshop next week. We have been using the 'Blinkety Blank' app to make an animation at 12 frames per second.
It worked really well.

We hope you enjoy it!

We will be making our own individual animation during the workshop. Come back to the blog to follow links to the videos when they are published.

We have decided to make our own animation with cut paper characters after being inspired by the Aith Primary School video. We have submitted our proposals to Ms Mackay and the theme and chracters for our class animation will be chosen from these ideas.

RSVP

How cool is this...?

For one of our letter writing tasks this term we were allowed to write a letter to whoever we wanted to. Aidan chose to write to Aaron Ramsey, the Arsenal footballer, and today he got a reply!

The club sent him a letter with a poster featuring the greatest moments of the club, all of the current squad's photos and signatures, a 2013-14 club photo and a photo and information card about Aaron Ramsey. What a result!

We are now waiting with bated breath to see if anyone else replies...

World Book Day

As today is World Book Day, we read to the Primary 1 children. We tried to put as much expression in as we could and we asked them questions about the stories and illustrations.

We enjoyed reading to them and they really liked it too. Sharing books can be even more fun than reading by yourself.

Don't forget to spend your World Book Day tokens...

Get involved, get a book and get reading!

The Paper Bag Game

Did you know...

'A quarter of the world’s population live in severe poverty. Many work long hours in poor conditions just to earn enough to stay alive, often surviving on less than £1.30 per day. With this money they have to pay for everything – food, clothes, somewhere to live, school and medicines when they get sick.

Many workers have no employer or regular wage. Instead they work as street vendors: shining shoes, selling newspapers or recycling waste materials. In the Indian city of Kolkata, some people earn a living making paper bags out of recycled waste paper – such as old newspapers – and selling them to shopkeepers.

The object of the Paper Bag Game is to show how people work so hard, yet earn so little. Using real cost-of-living prices and wages, players can get an idea of how they would manage if they had to survive making and selling paper bags.'

Today we tried playing this game and found it quite challenging. We thought it would be about making paper bags but it turned out to be more about problem solving and finding solutions as a team to the unfair conditions we were working under.... Everyone had to make a contribution of some kind.

Some people were 'sick' or injured or had to go visit a relative leaving the family shorthanded. Some family members decided to go and help another family for free!!! Others worked out that they had resources to sell - paper or labour - and were lucky when they negotiated. Some people decided to create a production line to make the bags, but this backfired on them when the shopkeeper decided he wanted different shaped bags.

Everyone started out excited and then experienced feeling annoyed, or fed up, or frustrated or disappointed as the game went on. How did you feel?

Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

Mrs Bunning is going to Kolkata again next week so she came in to tell us about India and she is going to bring us back some Indian newspaper for us to make some bags with.

We look forward to getting a postcard!

McLaren 2014 - Practising with 'Le Merle'

Here are the first 20 seconds or so of the animation we have made with the McLaren app!

Let us know what you think.

Making paper

We have been making paper as part of our materials topic. We collected different coloured egg boxes. We had green, purple and orange and grey. We chose green and purple.

First we took off any stickers and tore the egg boxes into little pieces. We put water in a container and made the pieces soggy. Then we put the mixture in the blender and made pulp. We poured the pulp over the screen and removed the deckle when it had drained a bit. Then we sprinkled glitter on the surface and covered it with a cloth. After we had turned it over we blotted it with a towel and removed the frame. Then we covered it with another cloth and we rolled it with a rolling pin to squeeze out some water and make it flat.

Class 6