Hinduism - Diwali festival

This term we have been learning about the Hindu religion. We did some research to begin with to develop our knowledge of the origin of the religion. We learned about some artefacts, Hindu beliefs and rituals as well as learning about the Hindu God's and symbols.
Today we were learning about the festival of Diwali. We all shared our knowledge of the festival and we even remembered performing the story of Rama and Sita a few years ago! We watched a clip about Hinduism and learned about the diyas (symbolic lights).
Here are some pictures of us making our own diyas. Next week we are planning to decorate them too...

Fantastic fractions!

We have been learning about fractions recently. We are developing our understanding of fractions and equivalent fractions. This week some of us have learned how to simplify fractions and correctly order fractions.

 Some us made equivalent fraction loop cards.

We then swapped loop cards and solved them.

 This week, some of us have been the teacher and taught our peers about simplifying. 

 We all enjoyed being the teacher...

we even received positive feedback from our peers about our teaching!

Our tidal device plan is progressing...

We had two visitors in class the other week to give us some feedback about the drawings and sketches we had created for our tidal device. They were from Orkney Renewable Energy Forum and Scot Renewables in Stromness. In our groups we explained to them both how our devices worked. They then gave us feedback in our groups... they were impressed with our designs!
There are more photos on the Orcadian Archive page here: http://www.theorcadianphotos.co.uk/p803577004/h1cc207e1#h2d0d800f

 We then started making adaptions to our designs...

 We have also been creating a name for the tidal device.

We have been thinking about materials that we could use to make the device. In our groups, we have also been discussing environmental concerns and using maps to decide where to situate our device. 

Class novel

This term we are reading "The Accidental Time Traveller' by Janis Mackay. We are all really enjoying this book so far, we have been discussing the setting and characters in the book. We have started to create character posters and are adding to these to develop an image of what the characters may look like.

Renewable energy

This term we have been learning about renewable energy. First of all, we learned about energy and different non - renewable energy sources.
We have recently been learning about wind energy too. We are undertaking an experiment at school to decide where the windiest place at school is. We are going to distinguish where the most suitable place would be for a wind turbine - photos to follow soon!
This week we have been learning about wave and tidal energy. We are going to enter a national competition where we plan and create a wave device. Here are some photos of planning today, we used some websites to research wave devices being tested in Orkney water. 

 Some ideas being drawn...

 We used the European Marine Energy Centre website to see what wave devices are being tested.

 More ideas being drawn..

We will keep you updated with our planning process. Within the next week, we are looking forward to some visitors from the Orkney Renewable Energy Forum to help. If you have any ideas from home or are willing to help please feel free to contact us! :)

Grammar presentations

In grammar recently, we have been learning about punctuation and grammatical features. To share what we have learned, we all presented an aspect of grammar in a group.

We did some planning in our groups and we had success criteria to meet. We had to explain what it was and show examples of it being used, our presentation had to be eye - catching too and well presented.
Some of us were focusing on apostrophes, whilst others were focusing on homophones as well as hyphens and ellipsis.

We then presented them to the class..

...we all presented clearly and loudly.