Debating season

Its debating time in P5M. We started off thinking about school uniform. Should we have a national kilt and tie school uniform in Scotland for all schools? What do you think? 

A lot of us think it looks smart!

The next topic is going to be - 'Should we introduce native animals species like wolf, lynx, boar and beaver? What do you think? What topics would you like to debate?

Volcanic Eruptions!

First we took the bag of mixture and put it in a bowl and mixed it with our hands. We put  a pipe on the tray and put the paper mache and covered up the pipe so you couldn't see it in a volcano shape. We made little trails down the side of the model for lava to flow down. After a week it was dry.

 

Then we got the powder and mixed it with vinegar and poured it in to the volcano model with a spoon. It made a small eruption. We weren't very happy with that so we poured the rest of the bag in and that worked for quite a long time. We just had to keep pouring the vinegar in. Next we put baking soda and fairy liquid in. We poured the vinegar in and it was much better.

The lava flowed really that time.

 

We learned that magma and lava are molten rock and act like liquid when they are really hot.

by Andrew.

Volcanic debates, legendary stories.

 

This week the science group who chose volcanoes to investigate got started on their model.

When it is dry they will be able to make a 'working' model.

 

We practised thinking critically about a couple of ideas and had a 'tug of war' with them on the whiteboard. Then it was time for our first 'debate'. We started with a fun topic just to learn how the process works. Debating is very structured -  its hard to wait for your turn when you are keen to make your point! We had some very good points which were explained very well, and quite persuasive! What do you think? - should all Scottish schools have the kilt for all of their pupils' school uniform?

This week we finished our pieces of extended writing - they have been published on our wiki and the link is on the sidebar menu. We have written stories in three parts about a main character who meets a mysterious Scottish creature...

Reading, playing, dancing.

On Thursday our readers went back down to the nursery to visit and evaluate how they think their reading sessions went. We think they were very successful and we hope we can do some more reading with the pre-schoolers sometime.

 

 At golden time the energy and forces group improved on last week's marble run and got the marble to get all the way down the corridor and caught it in a cup! They are getting more successful every time they build their run. The construction group used K'nex to make some interesting models and machines.

 

 

Our week ended with some Scottish traditional dancing at PE. This fits in well with our Scotland topic as we find out about the history of Scottish culture and traditions, and its good fun.

 

P5M Burns Supper

Today we celebrated Robert Burns's birthday by having a Burns Supper. Everyone recited some poetry and we had haggis, neeps and tatties prepared by the 'food' group. We toasted Rabbie with a dram of Irn Bru (or water) and finished off with a bit of shortbread. We enjoyed the tune 'My love is like a Red, Red Rose' on the fiddle as a special treat at the end. Many thanks to the fiddler!