Two weeks ago we investigated things associated with the beginning of the month of March including having a celebratory look at St David’s Day (1st March). This week sees another globally celebrated patron saint being acknowledged too - Wednesday is St Patrick’s Day. St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland. However, his special day is celebrated as far away as Australia and New York City. Why is this? We will be using this event to have a look at the historical reasons why there are so many Irish people (and Scots people) across the globe…

We will also be finding out a little about the national flower of Ireland - the shamrock - just as we investigated the Welsh national flower, the daffodil.

Sport Relief

We are delighted to report that our mile long conga in aid of Sport Relief was a huge success and that we all had a fantastic time. It was such good fun, we got lots of exercise and the sun shone for us. Thanks to all of the staff and pupils who took part and contributed to it being such a spectacle. Thanks also to everyone who has donated something towards the cause - it makes our efforts so worthwhile. We will be spending the rest of this week sweeping up the remainder of the pledges and sponsorship money and hope to bank it ourselves next Monday (22nd March). We would therefore really appreciate any monies due being forwarded to us by this Friday March 19th 2010. Thank you!

Elsewhere on the ELP programme this week…

ELP English

We will be continuing with our own individual reading and writing plans with Mrs Thomson. Last week we were looking at words that had an ” u sound” and having fun trying to think of as many of them as possible. We have also been reading some of Aesop’s Fables. We think Mr Wilson is a bit like the hare in one of the stories though…

ELP Science

In ELP Junior Science this week we will continue to construct our own weather station from recycled materials - this time the focus is our wind vane. ELP Senior Scientists are finishing off the Health and Technology Unit and at least one of our pupils will be preparing to undertake an Access 3 NAB before the end of the term.

ELP Yoga

We missed our weekly yoga last week due to our trip to Dobbies Garden Centre but normal service resumes this Thursday as we get back to stretching like cats and standing tall like mountains again!

ELP ICT

This week in ICT we will be using some of our time to collect sponsorship monies from our Sport Relief event and the rest of the time writing up our blog article about the same. We will be downloading some photos taken of us before we set off, trying to remember how we felt and what happened - and then write all of this up in MS Word before transferring it to our BLOG.

ELP Gardening

We will be using our trip to Dobbies as a starting place for inspiration in planning our Italian Garden…

This week we are going to be VERY busy indeed!

On Thursday we will be going on a class trip to Dobbies Garden Centre as part of our Gardening curriculum - and using this valuable experience to find out a number of things about garden tools, ornaments and plants. We are currently working towards creating an Italian Garden in the Learning Zone as part of our Whole School Project 2010 and this excursion to Dobbies will provide us with essential research material. It is also a fantastic opportunity to practise particular Maths related life skills such as finding the price of certain goods, buying a drink or something to eat and using money.

As if this was not enough excitement for one week we will also be taking part in a special event for Sport Relief on Friday morning. We have already used our Maths skills and taken the opportunity to get out for some fresh air and exercise by measuring out a mile long route round the perimeter of the school. Using a trundle wheel, we clicked our way around the school grounds for a metric mile (1500m) and planned the route for our special ELP Sport Relief Mile Long Conga!

The ELP pupils and staff will be taking part in this extravaganza on Friday morning during Period 2 as part of our Health and Wellbeing elaborated curriculum. Keep an eye out for us and lend your support as we try to conga our way around the community in aid of this great cause.

Elsewhere this week we will also be working our little red socks off (do you see what we did there?) in various subjects across the curriculum…

ELP Science

This week in ELP Science our Junior ELPs will be making a rain gauge! We are in the process of setting up our own homemade Preston Lodge weather station and this week our main target is to construct a valid rain gauge from recycled drinks bottles…and it might look something like this

In ELP Senior Science we will be looking more closely at reaction times - what can our reaction time tell us about our health? More importantly, why is a quick reaction time essential in many everyday situations?

We will be using a wide range of ways to measure our reaction time - some hi-tech and some a little more basic. Above is a snap shot of Sheep Dash - an interactive software programme that measures how quickly you react to a sheep leaving its flock. We will be using this as a hi-tech means of making measurements and comparing it to using the good old fashioned “ruler drop” method shown below…

ELP PSE

This week in ELP PSE we will be considering how it feels to be jealous by introducing our latest character “Green Jean”. Why is it nice to share? Or feel happy for other people doing well? Why do we feel jealous? How can we avoid or control some of these feelings? Is it normal to feel envious sometimes?

ELP Art

We are continuing our work this week towards the Whole School Project by undertaking a number of arts and crafty activities. We are working on a Leaning Tower of Pisa (or as one person keeps saying “The Leaning Tower of Pizza”) using some unique and relevant materials. We are also continuing work on our Venezian masks…

The Leaning Tower of Pizza?

ELP Gardening

This week we are off to Dobbies on a research mission! (Does this mean we can research the different kinds of cake the coffee shop sell too? Hmmm…)

ELP ICT

In ELP ICT this week we will be using our time to make sponsor sheets for Friday’s Sport Relief Conga. We will practise using Microsoft Word to make them. We will also be making a start on writing an ELP Blog item on our trip to Dobbies and our Sport Relief efforts. We are going to be busy!

The March Hare was certainly mad but not as excited as we get when it comes to the 1st of the month and our chance to go round school keeping our favourite teachers right with their class calendars.

The ELP Calendar Police tour of duty today took in no fewer than 7 members of staff - all of whom needed the expert guiding hand of Amy and Steven to ensure that they were operating in an up to date manner. We can’t have PL staff being behind the times.

This monthly ritual is proving to be an important reinforcement of the concepts learned in maths for our ELP pupils. Understanding the importance of the calendar and its daily use is all well and good but meaningless if nobody presents the opportunity to our pupils to get hands on experience of working them - and remembering when to change them.  We are always grateful to mainstream staff who offer up their time voluntarily to support this kind of lifeskills work around the school, whether it be giving the pupils a simple shopping list and some money, letting them change your calendars or having them help deliver your veggie bag. Thank you!

Dr Voge, we have to report, has in his usual inimitable style taken things to extremes. 7 calendars later (one for each ELP pupil) his classroom is now in March 2010 officially. We should point out that only 3 of them had choo choos(sorry locomotive engines)  on them.

There is a saying about March:

“In like a lion, out like a lamb”.

This old saying suggests that if March 1st is a windy day, March 31st will be calm…

This March 1st, however, has been a glorious day - so we’re a bit worried the lion is yet to come!

This week we will be beginning our spring weather project in ELP Junior Science and the week beginning March 1st seemed as good a time as any to make inroads into this exciting new piece of work. We will be concentrating on the different kinds of weather in our introductory lessons - building a wall bank of words to describe the changing conditions. We might even find a few more old weather sayings to go along with it. Most people will also have heard of the expression “red sky at night, shepherd’s delight”…

There has been an awful lot of weather this winter! Most of it has been of the cold kind and we will be finding out just how unusual that has been…or has it? We will be looking at some extreme weathers with the weekend storms in France and Portugal providing us with a timely reminder that the elements can be a very dangerous aspect of everyday life.

We will also be looking to build our own weather station from recycled materials and then site it in the school garden to use it to monitor Preston Lodge weather between now and the end of the summer term. We will also be able to combine what we do in Science with our work on our Gardening course.

Bringing you our very own “local weather forecast” podcast will be great fun indeed! Michael Fish, eat yer heart out…

This week on the ELP programme we will be using today’s date to remind ourselves about aspects of our curricular work from the areas of maths, social studies, gardening and languages.

Today is March 1st - also known as St David’s Day. We have our very own Saint David on the ELP programme but the one that is celebrated every year on this day is the Patron Saint of Wales. The national flower of Wales is the beautiful spring daffodil and we spent some time today looking for inspiration from them as a basis for lovely Mother’s Day cards we are making for next week. We will also be finding out a bit more about the daffodil later on in the week. Do they grow from seeds or bulbs? When do they bloom? Do they only grow in Wales? Is the daffodil the symbol of any other organisation or country?

Today is also calendar changing day - a job we take seriously! A number of teachers rely on us to change their calendars on the 1st of the month and we had a great time keeping the likes of Dr Voge and Mrs B right…February is over folks!

Elsewhere this week we will be busy bunnies - or should that be March Hares?

ELP Maths

We will continue to work on our differentiated individual maths programmes but will make special time this week to remind ourselves of the workings of the calendar by assisting staff with moving from February into March…

ELP Gardening

With a view to planning an outdoor Italian garden as part of our whole school project we will be exploring the world of herbs. Whether it be the ubiquitous oregano or something more exotic, we will be finding out how to grow our own Italian herbs in our own Italian garden…

ELP ICT

In ELP ICT this week we will be finding out a bit more about Sport Relief and how we might make some small contribution to this event next week. We will use the Sport Relief website as a starting point for our investigations then plan our own small activity to mark the event using the website as inspiration. We will also be trying to find out just what that Red Sock is all about…

ELP Science

In ELP Junior Science this week we will be progressing on to our spring topic “Our Local Weather” under the umbrella of our overall theme of East Lothian - our environment. We will be finding out about all the different types of weather that we might experience and even some we hope not to. The long term goal of this project is to construct, site and monitor our own PL weather station. A  number of challenges lie in wait! This week we will be looking to build up a bank of weather words…

ELP SENIOR SCIENCE

In ELP Senior Science we will be continuing our work looking at health and fitness - concentrating mainly on measuring BMI. We discovered last week that the young man in our class who was the heaviest was also the person with least fat - how could that be? This week we will be exploring the world of muscle density and comparing it to its less popular counterpart, fat.

ELP Art

In ELP Art we have been working on a display piece showing a range of emotions - this is to tie into the work being undertaken in ELP PSE.

ELP PSE

This week in ELP PSE we will be considering what it feels like to feel loved. With our newly introduced character, Lovey Dovey, we will be exploring the world of hearts and flowers…

In the last week we have been practising aspects of our everyday maths by taking a trip to the Post Office.

Our task was to establish how much a First Class stamp would cost in addition to posting a parcel to another town.

Finding out the cost of the stamp was easy. We simply asked the lady behind the counter for the price and she told us it was “39p”  for a normal size card or letter.

Finding out the cost of posting a parcel took a lot more initiative. We needed to help the lady work out the cost by placing our parcel on a set of scales and having it weighed. She told us it weighed 1kg and that 1kg of parcel costs a lot more than a First Class stamp! It is £4.41 to send a 1kg box somewhere in the UK by First Class ordinary mail.

Now we had to work out how much money we would need to give the lady. This wasn’t so easy. So we broke the sum down with a bit of help from our teacher.

A stamp is 39p. If you forget the £4 bit of the £4.41 then the parcel could be 41p.

    39 + 41 was a sum Dale  could do quite quickly and he told us it would be 80p. We then added the £4 back on to the 80p and came up with the answer £4.80.

We had come to the shop with £5 in our bag. Did we have enough? We soon realised that £5 is more than £4  something…so yes we did!

We are still working hard on change and this was a very difficult thing to work out. But we do know that the 20p given back to us by the lady in the Post Office was the correct amount. We will need to spend some time in school practising working change out so some day soon we might be sure of that for ourselves too…

In the meantime our teacher still thinks we are

In ELP Junior Science the Building Bridges lesson leads on from the work we have previously undertaken on transport and the River Forth (see the Getting Around lesson on this site).

In these lessons we concentrate on bridges, looking specifically at the bridges on the River Forth. We encourage the pupils to think about why there is a rail bridge and a road bridge. We look deeper at this by thinking about the materials they made be made from. This generates strands of discussion including :

• why is the road bridge made of concrete?
• why is the rail bridge made of metal?
• why is the rail bridge painted?
• how long have they been there?
• how long will they be there?
• why are they a good way to travel?
• why might they not be a good way to travel?

We use whiteboard resources to mind map our many ideas.

The practical task involved in this lesson leads on from our brain storming session - we need to use what we know or think to design our own bridge! We also spend a fair bit of time reinforcing mathematical/simple physics concepts as both bridges are supported by and structurally strong because of the number of triangles in them. Triangles are very strong shapes!

However, our own bridge is not going to cross the River Forth. It’s job is to hold the weight of an apple.

The pupils are challenged to build a bridge made of straws and plasticine. It should be strong enough to hold the weight of an apple. It will involve them using team work and initiative. It is also an excellent example of encouraging the pupils’ enterprise skills.

As we are once again using simple kitchen resources the children can transfer what they have learned to their own homes - there is nothing better than being able to show Mum or Dad what we did this week and how well we did it!

This week in ICT we thought we could combine some important computing skills we have acquired recently with an interest in all of the news about Oscars and Baftas…

Last weekend saw a number of performers, films and production staff win awards for their work over the last year. The BAFTAS (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) were presented to such popular films as Up, Avatar and The Hurt Locker. As part of our weekly chat about things going on in the outside world, the pupils began discussing who they thought should have won a BAFTA - and why.

Amy thought Hannah Montana the Movie should win Best Film as “it was a good story with lots of great songs”.

Steven thought that Up should win best animation because “it was really funny and it made me laugh!”

Dale hadn’t seen the film he thought might win something (Invictus) but said he thought it would because it was a film with lots of action and he “liked action films and it has God (Morgan Freeman) and Bourne (Matt Damon) in it”. Dale suggested his favourite film that he had seen in 2009 had been X Men - Origins

We wondered what kind of films other people in Preston Lodge might like? In the last few weeks we have been practising collecting data, interacting with people and using information from surveys to analyse other information at life in Preston Lodge. We have conducted an Emotions Survey and thought we could perhaps do something similar to ascertain what film might win a  PLACE? <Preston Lodge Award for Creativity and  Entertainment>

We decided to short list 7 films for consideration. They did not all have to be 2009/10 films but they did have to come from a variety of  “genres” (style of movie).

These would include action, comedy, animation, romance, drama and musical.

We used YouTube to help us find appropriate trailers (always remembering that the film chosen had to be no more than a “12″ rating) to watch and analyse ourselves before coming up with our final shortlist. We made sure we included our own nominations as well.

The final selection was as follows:

• “Up” - a BAFTA winning and Oscar nominated animation comedy nominated by Steven because it is his favourite
• “Hannah Montana the Movie” - a Disney Channel award winning musical teen film just because
• “X men - origins” - an action movie nominated by Dale because it is his favourite
• “Invictus” - a BAFTA winning and Oscar nominated drama nominated by Dale and Mrs B
• “Titanic” - an Oscar winning romance nominated by Amy because she thought the ladies in the office would like it
• “Slumdog Millionaire” - an Oscar and BAFTA winning drama nominated by Dale because he thought a lot of people liked it
• “Avatar” - a BAFTA winning and Oscar nominated animation nominated by Steven because he wants to see it and lots of people have been to see it.

Randomly selected staff were accosted in corridors, classrooms, offices and car parks  and (as long as they were not busy with something too important to be interrupted) asked the vital question:

“Which one of these movies is the most attractive to you?”

Here are some of the completely unidentifiable responses we got from staff when they gave us their in-confidence responses…

• An anonymous  random male member of staff who teaches music insisted that “it had to be Hannah Montana!”
• An unnamed female member of staff who makes coffee in the staff room declared “it has to be Leonardo and Kate!”
• A random HE teacher living next door to Mr Cruickshanks room exclaimed “I haven’t seen it but that doesn’t matter does it? Jai ho”.
• An anonymous PT CDT living near Miss Angus said “I don’t think much of that Jai ho thing. Can I choose one I haven’t seen too?” and went for Invictus.
• An unnamed male SfL auxiliary who wears a beanie hat said “Go girlfriend! It has to be Miley!”
• An anonymous male PE teacher who definitely isn’t Mr Sellwood said “OH MY GOODNESS!! DID MR BISHOP AND STUART REALLY GO FOR HANNAH MONTANA? DEAR ME!”

Once our survey had been completed we brought the results back to the classroom and put the numbers into an Excel spreadsheet. We had headings for each film and then totalled up the number of votes for each one.

With 40% of the overall vote the winner of the PLACE 2010 for Best Film was SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE.

In second place equal with 20% each of the overall vote came “AVATAR” and “HANNAH MONTANA”.

In fourth place equal with 5% each of the overall vote came “X MEN ORIGINS”, “INVICTUS”,  “TITANIC” and “UP”.

We plotted these results as a chart to display on our Blog Wall and to use as a visual aid in the coming weeks when we give a short talk about what we did in our survey and how we got the final results.

This week on the ELP programme we will be looking at what it is like to feel afraid. We will be gently led through this emotion by our loveable character Scary Mary.

We will introduce the character with a poem about her scary day and encourage the pupils to take turn in constructing the scariest day possible for Scary Mary, drawing on their own experiences by making things happen to her that might also make them scared.

We will then think about all the different ways you might manage or avoid being scared in the future - whilst reassuring everyone at the same time that it is actually quite normal to feel scared from time to time.

In ELP Gardening for the next few weeks, the Junior ELP pupils will be constructing their own model garden centres. This is part of our preparation for a trip to a local garden centre next month (when the weather will hopefully be a bit better than it is at the moment!)

We will be doing a lot of research and combining it with our already extensive prior knowledge so that we can come up with something befitting of our efforts. We will be constructing as much of our models from recycled materials to ensure that our model gardens are indeed model environmentally friendly green gardens!

With Mrs Hughson’s expert guidance we will also be finding out what kind of things might be found in an Italian garden - with a view to reworking one of the school’s gardens Italian-style in time for the Whole School Project Open Day in May!

Bella! Bella! (as Gregory once said in a movie about East Kilbride)