Strathblane Raising Wider Achievement

Today WOW! What a day! It was a very busy morning.  P3 did loads of maths and were very busy in the museum shop.  They spent loads of money.  P4 were forming their opinions in preperation for a debate about whether or not it is right that children should have to work. What do you think?  P4 also had a fantastic lesson from Miss MacGregor about weights and measurement. 

After lunch it was back to Egypt for the continuation of our poster build challenge.  The paper is massive but still we are having trouble fitting three children on to it.  What can we do? There was mess everywhere which is a sign of an active and happy classroom!   Please see the excellent work done by today’s bloggers on the evaluations and advice page.  They are desperate for your help as each team have posted some problems and questions that they need adult assistance for.  The Hieroglphics team earned a gold leaf for their encouraging, inquistive and supportive role within the other groups.  Well done Hieroglyphics.  We also have a list of our funny comments and workings out conversations on the writing page.  Please see this and again your comments would be welcomed. 

The poster challenge is to create a giant poster (2 1/2 by 1 1/2 metres) which explains the life of an Ancient Egyptian child, a Modern Egyptian child and a Scottish Child.  It should compare these three children.  The groups are looking for your help in researching these areas and also in the presentation of the posters.  If parents are able to come in at any point next week (apart from Wednesday) we are looking for help.  Helpers would support children in their groups.  We are looking for people with an interest in design and arts.  If you have an interest in history and social aspects again this would be useful for the research.  If you just want to come and help and have a free trip to Egypt for the day we would also really value your support.  The posters will form the basis for a piece of work that would see one character from each poster animated.  For this we will need voiceovers.  Do you like drama?  If so we are looking for some actors!

Finally, we are looking forward to our trip tomorrow to the Science Centre and Kelvingrove.  We have challenges for the groups to complete at each of our destinations!   

The blog has undergone a makeover!  The main reason that this has happened is to allow us to receive comments on the other pages as well as the Egyptian Times. This has several advantages, mainly that it will allow parents and other readers of our blog to be able to comment directly on the other pages.  We have also increased our storage space to 5GB so can now hold a lot more pictures, evaluations and pieces of writing compared to the 20mb we had before! In the next few days I will be uploading as much as I can to give you more of an idea of the things that we have been doing.  This has also allowed us to update the images page and more images will follow.

We really value the comments we have had from so many people far and near.  It has been an exciting project to watch as the children come in each morning, turn on the computers and excitedly read the comments that are waiting on them. 

The role of the blogger is also going to change over the next few weeks.  The blogging team will be responsible for talking to other teams and gathering information about any problems that they are facing and challenges within their discovery group.  This will then be posted on the blog and we will be looking to our readers for advice.  This is where parents can support us by offering helpful advice and solutions. The primary 7 class will also be involved in this project and helping to support the younger pupils, through the blog.

This Big task has been an exciting initiative for Miss Carter and I to be involved in and we have both really enjoyed every part of it.  There have been major changes to the way we teach and our expectations of the children.  We have both learned a great deal from the children and their individual research projects.  When evaluating at the end of each Big Task day we are continually blown away by the amount the children have learned and achieved in a day.  You may have heard your children talking about Primary 34 – a class of 47 children is a lot of fun to teach!

Finally, I found a widget which allows you to subscribe to our blog.  This means that you can enter your email address and everytime something new is added you will get an email alerting you.  Thank you for your continued support and involvement in this project. The response from parents offering to come in and help has been very encouraging.  It has been great to work in partnership with you and we look forward to more opportunities to do this in the future. 

Miss Allen

Today was a weird fun day.  It was cool.  First thing in the morning we made a massive circle of chairs and had a meeting.  First we talked about what we have done so far.  We all realised that we had learned a lot more than we thought.  Then we went to the four questions.  What beliefs do the Egyptians hold and how do they compare to ours?  They believe in the afterlife and gods.  They wrap the mummies so that the spirit goes into the afterlife.  The more money they have in life then the more jewels they get which means they are of a higher status and important people.  How is their architecture different and how does it live on today?  They have pyramids which have a square base and traiangular sides.  In modern Egypt they build skyscrapers in modern cities like Cairo.  They have used the ziguret pattern from the pyramids to design the tops to their skyscrapers.  The modern buildings need to be made stronger because of earthquakes.  Who were the Egyptians and what have we learned from them?  Hieroglyphics, animal gods, amulets, importance of the River Nile, significance of Scarab beetles etc. What was life like for children in Ancient Egypt and what is life like for children in Egypt today? We are going to learn about that in the next two weeks.

Next we played a game.  If you were in the centre you had to say your name and something you like or don’t like.  Then everyone who thinks the same as you has to change places.  The last person in the circle has to say the next thing.  We learned that Miss Carter doesn’t like horses but does like grapes.  Jack does like Horseriding but he didn’t hear the question!  Lots of people like Nintendos and Playstations.  Nearly everyone likes cheese.  Everyone LOVES Strathblane Primary School – which must mean we have a lot to be proud of! This helped us to know about children in Scotland.

After the game we got our 8th big task.  We got a massive paper and we had to make a poster about a Scottish child in 2009, an Ancient Egyptian child and a modern Egyptian child.  Then we started tracing Cailan.  Then people borrowed people to trace them.  Our Scottish person was Miss Carter even though she is not a child.  She has pencils in her hair!

We had an appointment.  The first one was seeing how rotten the apples were.  Ours went quite badly because all of them were rotten.  The salt ones were sort of better.  I don’t think the salt protected it from rotting.  They kind of swelled up.  Other groups did find the salt preserved the apples. 

We had a crazy talk appointment.  That was well fun – we could make Miss Carter speak.  We made this animated guy to speak and say silly things.  What do we do about golden time this Friday because we are away on a trip and we will miss out.  (Editors note – we are going on a trip for the day and is that not a golden day? So therefore, should you not miss out golden time next week too?!? Love Miss Carter and Miss Allen) 

The third appointment was to check the blog.  We had time to catch up with comments and write some replies. 

After playtime we did a carousel.  One person from each group had to go to each paper.  Then we had to think of all the ideas we could of what a Scottish Child, a Modern Egyptian child and an Ancient Egyptian Child were like.  Once the three minutes were up you moved on to another type of child.  We were amazed how much we knew! The posters are on the wall and we can write on them whenever we want if we learn new information. Do you know any information that you want to add?

Busy day! In the afternoon P3 were reading and looking at Egyptian books and looking at some excellent homework.  Both classes now have a new homework challenge.  Check the writing page for these homework challenges. 

P4 were making Egyptian fans in art.  They are beautiful.

By Pharaohs 2 – Rebekah, Rachael, Calum, Katy, Jack and Blair who was off today

Well we had so much fun today because we were working so hard on our presentations.  We had to make sure that it was more than 5 slides – we actually did 9.  Our presentations were about the difference between modern Egypt and Ancient Egypt buildings.  That is us done now with the three buildings weeks. 

It was a really good fun day.  The rule was that you had to have fun if you got caught not smiling you would be in detention.  Everyone’s presentations were really good.  We all used lots of graphics and text.  They were really loads of animations.  Mrs Cassidy who is an expert in computers from Stirling council and Mrs Urquhart who is an expert civil engineer came and they were assessing us.  We had a big sheet of success criteria.  They were really impressed with our powerpoint presentations.  Mrs Randall thought it was university level work.  We all have some things to work on like to write less on our slides and to talk louder to our audience.

Today was also even more exciting because we made our bottle pyramid even more better.  It is massive now. We had to make the base of it 1 1/2 metres big.  We ran out of bottles so then we had to take it down and rebuild it again.  You can see the pictures of the building days on the images page.  The link takes a while to load so be patient.  Here is a picture of our new pyramid which is even better. Mrs Owens and Mrs Retson helped us to build it.   By The 6 gods of Egypt – Rory, Jenny, Halle, Jamie, Iona and get well soon Craig!

As we are now about half way through the blog project, it is now time to evaluate what has gone on so far.  We would be interested to hear how parents and children feel about the blog.  Do you feel it is useful, interesting, furthering the children’s learning etc? Please add your comments and this will be very helpful for us. We would like to thank you for your continued support with our big task and the number of comments and hits we have been receiving has far exceeded our expectations. 

We look forward to another assessment stop this Friday afternoon where we have some parent volunteers coming to help evaluate the children’s learning over the last 3 weeks.  If you are interested in helping with this please let either Miss Carter or Miss Allen know. Thanks again.

Miss Carter and Miss Allen

We called it magical bottle day today because we have used a lot of bottles to build a big pyramid and some pyramids are magic.  The day started off very good.  We went outside and flew to Egypt.  We made our plane out of people.  The children had to make it and the three adults got to sit down.  Then when we landed in Egypt we got into our discovery groups.  (You type fast and dont even have to look at the letters…did you do typing lessons.)  We started off making a pyramid in our discovery groups….out of milk bottles and coke bottles and we discovered that we had to put water in them to make them be strong. (You type fast have you had typing lessons).  Oliver by accident put a little one on top and a bit at the bottom fell off.  We had a discussion time where we had to tell the other groups our strategy on how we done our pyramid and what made it strong.  Only one person could go in the middle to tell them our strategy…are you ticklish?  While this was happening some people were at violin.  Why did you write are you ticklish? (She is writing everything we are saying).  Dont say anything you dont want on there. 

After playtime we made the big massive pyramid only out of milk bottles.  People brought in some stuff that their aunties and uncles brought back from Egypt.  We had to fill the bottles with water and clean them out.  It smelled disgusting…like rotten cheese….on a hot day…a mouses tea…the stench of rotten milk…cos it was milk…and rotten hair.  There is a lot of three dots in that sentence…!

We have worked on our powerpoint presentations and finished them.  They are for our next assessment stop.  Its only in 4 days. And a week on Friday we are going to the science centre.  I  had a burger for lunch…I think I had own pack but Im not sure. 

This afternoon we made flags.  I did my fact file.  I’m confused.  I done a mystery about Mr Sandy.  I haven’t had a chance to do a flag because I have been so busy on my fact file.  Do you get a silver leaf if you are third.  She is really fast at typing.  Oh yeah in the hall we made skyscrapers by cutting off the bottom of coke bottles and Miss Carter showed us how you can hurt yourself with scissors so we had to pinch it and then cut it then its ok.  Then you put it on top of the bottle that is not cut.  Ooh yeah they look good its about 9 bottles tall. 

Our day was excellent and Miss Allen wrote everything we said.  We have got 29 countries on our blog and 15 more minutes til home time.  1711 people have been on our blog but it will change.  Im going to look at the mr sandy letter when I get home if I dont go to bed early.

By The Ancient Egyptians – Stella, Oliver, Ziad, Maia, Emily and Rhudi

The bad news first – I’m afraid that our free trial with the flag counter has expired and we sadly lost all of our flags.  However, the good news is I did write down the 19 countries that we had and have installed a new flag counter (that doesn’t expire). I’m sure we can quickly get back up to where we were again! The flags that we had collected were: UK, USA, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Italy, Poland, Tanzania, Brazil, South Africa, EGYPT, Faroe Islands, France, Gambia, India, Japan, Norway, Sweden and Singapore.  So well done to everyone that managed to get someone in another country to have a look and let’s start again!!

Some of you have already see the new Mr Sandy letter but I thought I would post it here in case people hadn’t seen the comments section. As for the final mystery. Here is a hint…the attacker can fly!

Hello P3 and P4,

I hope you are all enjoying your half term holidays. Well done to all those who have been checking the blog and for your comments. We had a delivery of another letter this morning but we can’t read it. Do you think you can help us? Please send your answers as a comment and we will let you know whether or not you are correct but will not post your answers until later on in the week to give everyone a chance to solve Mr Sandy’s puzzles. Thanks.
Carter and Allen

PS You may want to print out Mr Sandy’s letter or copy and paste it into Word to make it easier for you to read!

Sdik yeh

uoy era woh? tpygE ni tniop tsehgih eht fo thgieh eht em llet uoy nac? if you cAn do that then you are a reaL Superstar! obviously, I cant Wait to get to StrAthblaNe To meeT yOu all. Remember the first letter that I sent you? Well that problem is all sorted out now. ThanK you so much for your help with that. nOW you are all Talented detectives always looking out for mysteries…wHerever thEy may be hidden. peOPle all over the world may be interested to read your blog becaUse Like Leo sAid you are famous, Therefore, you must keep up thIs high standard of wOrk. DoN’t let me dOwn. friends, take care. Hope to see you in eGYPT soon.

Oh and before I go one last mystery for you to solve – This morning I was attacked by something. They were all over me. I am not sure what they were but the doctor said “The Nile River passes through nine countries. If you take the first letters of four of these countries and shuffle them around you will be able to make the name of your attacker!” Good luck, its a tough one!
From Mr Sandy

Why do you call us blobbies,  we are blobbers (no I didnt mean you to write that.  She writes down everything we say.

It’s been a good day but difficult because of the writing test, but thats nothing to do with Egypt.

Today’s challenge is hard to actually do it because there is a lot of work and also em em and em em and there is a lot of pictures to find.  Em well the challenge is to…here is a short summary of it.  it will be a presentation to prove that you know the difference between modern and ancient Egypt.

Well in fact I think it was great.  I’m making the best things. Is wacky khaki modern or ancient?  By the sounds of it I think its both since we had modern and ancient things.  

We had to work together to form ideas and make a powerpoint presentation.  We are making it for these engineer people and some architects.  Georgina’s parents are architects – are you going to ask them?  My dad’s brother is an architect in Tanzania.  My dad has a wee brother and a wee sister (oh you’d better not write that on the website.  Can somebody else say something embarrasing too please?)  Anyway back to the point there has to be a minimum of 5 slides.  There needs to be a leader, quality control, time keeper, pictures editor and two text editors in your team.  It feels scary knowing that there are professionals coming to assess our work.  Where are we having golden time today? I hope its outside.  

I think we have done the best job in the world and its great we have to do the blogged.  Miss Allen and Miss Carter make work fun but they are also quite embarrasing because they write down everything that we say. 

We had access to the library and the internet - no not the library across the road because that would be weird.  Tutankhamen was a pharaoh.

Joke of the day - “Miss Carter, do you know you have a chair on your head?”  

“Yes, I do.”

“Oh I see, are you being a chair-o! 

Its the 10th Feb – oh its 14 more days until my birthday.  Today in P4 we started a story or book about how to prepare a mummy.  In P3 we did how to wrap a mummy.  

In P4 our pyramid stories are coming along nicely.  Pretty much everyone in P4 has cut out traingles to make 3D pyramids which we will write our stories on.  In P3 we are done planning our Scarab Beetle story.  We made a character out of plastecine.  It was a scarab beetle and we named them Racarmen, Ancient, Excellent….no! Whats it called? I cant remember..its called Lano isnt it.

After playtime P3 decided to build a gift shop in the modern city of Cairo.  This will help us  to practise more with money.  In P4 we were learning about fractions today and it was really fun!  We had to divide a piece of coloured paper into fractions and write about numerators and denominators. 

In music we looked at Egyptian songs but now we are making a plane to bring parents to Egypt and its really hard.  We’ve all got lollipop sticks with parts of the plane that we have to be.  Im the flight attendent, I’m earphones (I’m going to have to sit on someone’s head), I’m a lifejacket, I’m a flight attendent too.   I dont want to tell anybody what I am.  I’m a tail fin!

Primary 3 and 4 all got together and finally made a plane.  We had to guess what each person was being and where they would be.  We had a fire exit and a window on the tip of the wing by mistake – we will have to practise some more but you will be happy to know we do have a black box on board (just in case)!

By Pharaohs 2 – Calum, Jack, Katy, Rebekah, Rachael, Blair

First thing in the morning we went outside and played with snow.   We were making snow pyramids.  It was nice and lovely.  The pyramid had to be strong.  It had to have a point at the top, a square base and triangular sides.  I was very cold because of the snow.  Some of us had to go inside and snuggle up and do work because we were moaning.  I was moaning! (Harry!)  We had hats, scarfs, gloves and stuff to keep us snuggled up warm.  Poor Marco was off because he was snowed into his house.  It was very fun because at the end we got to play because it was playtime.  Then we decided whether each pyramid had been successful.  Miss Allen and Miss Carter thought that their pyramid was the best.  We all tried hard but we still think that the teacher’s was the best (Dirty look from one member of the team – Anya responded “What it was nice to be nice to the teachers!”)  I liked it because we all got to show our pyramids to each other.  At the end we all built one big pyramid with snowballs it was 7 snowballs by 7 snowballs big at the bottom.

After playtime we came in and built wee pyramids out of 20 lollipops sticks.  Most of them stood some weight but only 1 group remembered to make it solid.  They were great.  Our team was struggling with it. We also had to build a tower out of newspaper.  It had to stand by itself.  We explored ways of making newspaper solid and stronger.

This morning we were testing the leaders to make sure that they could keep everyone involved and make sure they were happy.  After playtime we were testing the leaders for good encouragement.

In the afternoon P4 had to do story writing.  Its good.  P3 are also doing story writing. 

Thank you everyone that has commented.  It was a lovely day today and we hope you enjoyed the Egyptian topic.

The end. By the Hieroglyphics – Isla, Harry, Cailan, Anya and Hamish (Marco off today)