Author: Newmore Primary

This week P4-7 created mixed media Viking Boats.

Aren’t they fantastic?

This week,  Fionnadh Carroll, STEM Engagement Officer for the Dingwall ‘Newton Room’ delivered a taster session to P7 pupils from Ardross and Newmore at Ardross Hall.

They are currently in the process of refurbishing the space in Dingwall Town Hall to become a local ‘Newton Room’. Whilst it awaits completion of this work, they are offering taster sessions for Primary 7 pupils.

The children explored different ways to estimate, calculate and measure distances then use LEGO MINDSTORM robots to assess their accuracy. They calculated the circumference of their robot’s wheels and plot a course around the perimeter of shapes.

This was a super session for the children and they loved using the robots to aid their learning.

Background:

The Science Skills Academy (SSA) delivers hands-on practical STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) activities to P6-S2 students in the Highlands and Islands. Our aim is for the sessions to excite and inspire students, and encourage them to study STEM subjects at school and beyond. We also introduce students to the wide variety of STEM career pathways, both in general and in the Highlands and Islands region. The SSA is a programme led by Highlands and Islands Enterprise and run in partnership with the Highland Council, NHS Highland, Skills Development Scotland, and the University of the Highlands and Islands.

On Friday Night we held a Family Games Night to raise money towards the P7 Residential trip.

A fantastic amount of £241 was raised.

We all had great fun, special thanks to Mr G, our Games Master and to all who baked for the interval.

THANK YOU for your support, it was a great turnout 🙂

Today, South Lodge kindly gave us the use of their hall for P4-7 to take part in a Netball session delivered by P.E Teacher Mandy Gill who also attends Fyrish Flyers Netball Team.

The children thoroughly enjoyed this experience, they had never played Netball before.

In Science, P4-7 are beginning a topic on Senses. To link with this, in Art the pupils used mirrors to make an observational drawing of their own eye using pastels.

The children have been covering a number of Curricular areas in their latest project, Science, Technology and Creativity are to name but a few.

The children had to design a luxury apartment with at least two rooms with two pieces of furniture . One room had to include a series circuit with two lights and the other room had to include a parallel circuit. They also had to consider how to keep the wires from showing in the rooms.

We used an energy ball to test whether humans are conductors. When you touch the two metal strips on the ball your hand becomes part of an electric circuit. We made a whole class circuit by holding hands. It made the ball light up. When someone broke the circle, the light went off.

Today saw the debut of our new ‘School Values Award.’

We had 5 successful winners today who have demonstrated our school values. Well Done to all of our winners! Awards can be given to pupils showing examples of the following…

‘Never give up

Empathy

Working Hard

Motivated

Opportunities

Ready to Learn

Encouraging’

Yesterday, our P7s did Bag Packing in Morrisons with support from the Tain Rotary Club.

The fundraising was to cover the transport cost for their P7s ASG Transition Trip where P7 pupils from Park, Milton, Newmore and South Lodge will go to Loch Eil together in April.

Thanks to the efforts yesterday, £747 was raised and alongside a  super donation from the Port of £750 the costs are now covered.

We received this email from Mark from the Rotary club…

“Evening everyone,

Firstly on behalf of the Rotary club I would like to thank you all for the amazing amount of work you did in getting everyone there today.

Secondly, I have now counted all the money twice and as far as I can see we raised the amazing sum of £747.00 exactly.

It was a fantastic day, all your pupils were excellent and did a great job. Please extend my thanks to all of them and their parents too.”

As part of our School Improvement Plan this year, we have been working hard to improve numeracy in our school. This is being targeted in a number of ways.

The main improvement so far is that we have created a new working space in our spare classroom. This is used daily where our PSAs take the whole school out at some point, in groups to develop and consolidate maths strategies which will contribute to their understanding. This is to enable the children to range of strategies to employ when tackling numeracy and mathematical problems of various types.

The children are really enjoying the small group work and are disappointed when it is not their groups turn to go out.

The teachers have also been adapting how they teach maths in class, there is a picture here of one group using concrete materials to aid their understanding of fractions.

We are all very excited about the changes which is inspiring to observe.