Writing Reports

Today, P.C. Ward visited our school to tell us what is involved when writing a police report. He read us some notebook entries. A community policeman always carries a spare notebook because they write down lots of details.


The notebook entries are very important because they are used to write up the formal reports that are presented in court. We had lots of questions to ask P.C. Ward and we made a video. We'll put in on our blog soon. He gave us lots of advice about report writing.

'How is Our School Doing?' Questionnaires

We are going to be writing Reports during this block. To help us write a report on how our school is doing, we interviewed some adults around the school today to hear their views. You can listen to our podcasts to hear the 'live' interviews which will help us write our final reports.

Mrs Nathaniel is a Parent and also a school employee. Thomas and Jamie interviewed her. You can hear the podcast by clicking this. link

Mrs Nairn, our school secretary, was interviewed by James and Jamie L. Click here to hear her views.

Mrs Sheerin, a primary 7 teacher, spoke to Lisa and Danni. The podcast can be found here.

Miss Buick is a student who is working with the primary 7's this term. Here are her thoughts on the school so far. She spoke to Chloe C and Kaylegh.

Mrs Webster, one of our school helpers, and Mrs Duff, our Support for Learning teacher gave their views as well. You can click on their podcast by following this link

We are going to gather together all the different views and write a class report on how our school is doing. The report will be available in our new Functional Writing spaces soon!!

We always enjoy reading the comments that are left on our Blog.
Please comment on this post by clicking on this link

Very Exciting Comments!

Thank you for all the comments recently! Our visitor from the Sunday Times left this super comment on our old wikispace writing area - we've just found it. Thank you ... we'll keep in touch! link

There have also been comments from our friends in Dingwall Primary - they make great videos and we hope to learn from them!!

Thank you also to all at 5/6P AllStars in Australia - maybe we'll start debating too. They've given us plenty of advice to start us off!!


Kirklandneuk Primary have given us ideas for French lessons ... we gave the web address to our French teachers in school

................ to mention just a few!!!

Poem Interviews - Rescued after Deletion!!

Friendship Poems - And Other News!

We all wrote Friendship Cinquains in class this week. We took photos of our own poems and we are going to import them into our new 'Poem Pages'

We also have new Imaginative Writing Pages and we've copied and pasted our 'Magic Box' stories to there.

We are going to do the same with our Autobiographies by placing them in our new Personal Writing Pages

Soon we're going to be doing some Report Writing, based on our new 'Disasters' Environmental Studies Topic. You'll be able to read these in our new Functional Writing Pages !

Meanwhile, over in our Math Class Blog we've been experimenting again with our new digital video camera ...... Mrs V accidentally deleted our Poem videos from Google Video so they can no longer be viewed on this Blog - but they're still in the camera, so they'll be uploaded again soon!!

New Comment from Africa - update

How exciting!!

Gregory posted this comment on our Blog all the way from Namibia (we saw the town on our 'geovisitors' link earlier today ..... welcome, Gregory!!)!

At 23 November, 2006, Anonymous said...
Hallo

My name is Gregory, I live in Namibia in the south west of Africa.The town is Khorixas.Around here we live in very hot temperatures ranging from 32 up 40 degrees.I saw your blog on the internet and I loved the project, as this is an excellent method in helping the younger ones to start reading and using computers.Through writing and the internet I have also recently made a contact with a top I.T professional in England called Neil.If you read more and more you get more and more brains P.S: keep this in mind,.......

GREGORY

I've been talking to Neil in Manchester. He lives with Steph and her mum has recently gone out to work in Namibia. She put Gregory in touch with Neil (my eldest son ..... the top I.T. professional!? :-) ) and we think that she gave Gregory our Blog address ..... what a small world.

Please leave a comment by clicking here

Book Fayre

We had a great time looking at books at our recent 'Book Fayre'.

We looked at all the very many different types of books available ..... maybe some will help us in our writing?

We're going to try to write some poems tomorrow - we'll try to publish them on our 'Wikispaces' on Friday!!

Please comment here

Magic Box Stories

We've moved on now from our 'Magic Box Stories'. We learned so much by working independently and with our writing partners, and by peer and self assessing our completed work. We each completed our own self-made '2 stars and a wish' comment sheets and the stories and comments were shared with the parents during our recent 'Parent Nights' on Wednesday and Thursday of this week.


'Magic Box' Comments
Here are the comments we received about our 'Magic Box' stories. We think Harry posted all the way from Australia! Neil is Mrs V's (class teach) son, who logged onto our blog from Manchester. What a great comment about the 'Movie Trailer' interviews ........ and Happy Birthday today, Neil!!!

At 08 November, 2006, Harry said...
Magic Box... It sounds very interesting, but I was wondering what the story "Magic Box" is about?

At 08 November, 2006, p7 teach said...
Hello Harry,It's about whatever the pupils in my class want it to be about! Check out our writing spaces link if you like - the stories are all very different!

At 16 November, 2006, Neil said...
Hi! I'm really impressed with this creative writing idea. It's great how many different stories can come from the same title. I also like the interview - it's like a movie trailer to get you interested in the story.

You can also check out the comments made by our friends in Australia recently P5/6 Allstars !!

Please comment here

New Technology!! Video Deleted in Error!! But rescued later!!

This week in class we've been experimenting with our new digital video camera. We decided to video some volunteers interviewing each other about our poetry lesson this week. We're hoping to write some poems of our own soon, so we began by looking at a variety of poems by different authors. We then chose a favourite poem from the collection and filled in an evaluation sheet. In the video clip on the link below, Nathan is interviewing Lisa (Adam, seen in the video on the previous post, is off playing football with the school team - he probably feels more comfortable on the football field, rather than in front of the camera!).

We're deciding whether it's best to post the videos directly on to our blog, or whether to create a link to our wikispace ........ please comment!!

Video Link

Discussing Poetry! Video Attempt!! Now deleted .. OOPS!!

Parents' Night

It's Parents' night tomorrow and we're going to invite some parents to help us make a podcast. We want them to give us their opinion of our Blog. Hopefully the quality of the sound will be good ...... we'll be using our 'matsui' mp3 players (the tesco ones don't have the same quality). Watch this space!!

'Magic Box' Evaluations

In the 'P.I.T.', we've been busy peer and self assessing our Magic Box stories. Danni's
review of her own story is just great - she is so pleased with her effort (and so am I!). She wrote most of her story on paper first and then typed it up on her wikispace page. The only trouble is that her story is about 8 pages long, so she didn't have time to transfer it all .... but she'd love some comments on what she's made public so far!

I love the way that Lisa explains in her self-evaluation that, as she re-read her story, she tried to put herself in a 'geovisitor's' shoes ........ :) What a great idea!

Josh is really pleased with his effort. He says that he worked really hard with his writing partners to fix the spelling and punctuation to make it eaier for the reader to follow. He loves to play computer games, and has made some of his favourite characters 'come alive' in his story.



A Wikispace Experiment!

The History Button

Earlier today Jamie's story read like this. I made some minor 'secretarial' changes. It now looks like this. The changes are very small, but if Jamie was to click on his history tab on the top of his wikispace page, he'd be able to see some small changes (the odd capital letter replacing lower case, a missing comma added, etc.) to his great story.

Even More Math Class Action!

Over in our Math Class Blog we've been very busy working away 'behind the scenes'. ...... and there's lots more planned. Why not take a look?

Meanwhile on this blog, we're ready to self assess our 'Magic Box' stories - check in again soon to have a read!

For P 7V - Update of 2 stars and 1 wish (comments included)!

Here is one example of the children's self-made worksheets. They use these to assess their own, and each others' writing. They know to add 2 'star' comments (things that have been done well) and they then add a 'wish' for the future......how could the writing be even better?

07 November, 2006


Kim said .... Your writing assessment worksheet looks really interesting. What sort of "star" comments do you use? Do you think that this sort of assessment sheet helps you to focus on the areas you need to work on in your writing? How helpful/useful is it? I'm interested because my class need some help in "polishing" their writing, before they publish.Thanks

Reply

Hello Kim,

Thank you so much for visiting our blog .... and thank you for taking the time to write a comment. It's quite new for us to comment on each others' writing but we're trying to learn to appreciate the good things - the 'star qualities'.
We're also learning to comment on what can be improved, but are trying to not hurt others' feelings - the 'wish for the future'.
We want to encourage each other to write so we always have 2 stars and only 1 wish ... does this help answer your question?
We're not sure yet how much of a difference it will make ........

More Math Class Action ... and other exciting news!

Over on the Math Class Blog we're off to a flying start! The group names have been chosen, the rules have been set, the problems are being solved and the podcasts are being made.

An exciting day for Carronshore Primary today ..... we received our very first visitor comment - and it was from Australia!! Maybe we could be Blog Pals! Read it below (I only received it after the p7v had left .... we've spent the afternoon tracking them on our 'geovisitors' link).


Hello Primary 7V,
Your writing assessment worksheet looks really interesting. What sort of "star" comments do you use? Do you think that this sort of assessment sheet helps you to focus on the areas you need to work on in your writing? How helpful/useful is it? I'm interested because my class need some help in "polishing" their writing, before they publish.Thanks

You'll need to scroll down to the photo of our '2 Stars and a Wish' worksheet to read the original.

We'll definately reply tomorrow!!

End of an Exciting Week!

It's been a quiet week on the Blog - but there's plenty been happening behind the scenes! Over on the Math class blog the pupils are being given new group wikispaces so that they can use our new MP3 players (10 of them .... thank you, Mrs Livingstone!).

We've also been in touch briefly with some fabulous bloggers! Over at Priestsic Primary School, we learned how track our visitors. Check out our new More About Us Blog and click on the 'geovisitors' icon down in the right hand margin.

Over at Sandaig Otters Blog, they've given us a mention. We wish them luck with their new Media Room - it looks great.

Both these Blogs are FANTASTIC ..... we'll keep visiting them to catch up on their news.