Monday the 27th of october was a special day for everybody as we had an opening for our new project including all of the dunbar cluster called ‘ together we count.’  The whole school had an afternoon of maths and we used natural objects to help develop our maths skills, there were lots of different activities to take part in.There are seven badges to collect and each badge represesnts a different skill in maths.We are all working hard on our red coloured badge which represents ordering numbers and are aiming to collect all seven badges to go on our together we count lanyards.

We have started our new whole school topic based around electricity and energy.As part of our learning we visited our near by nuclear power station Torness.We learned about how electricity is made and how dangerous it can be.To start off our tour we visited the wokshop area were they would fix all of the broken equipment. Next on our tour we went to the reactors, we went up very high in an elevator, so high that you could stack 11 double decker buses on top of each other to reach our height. The electricity was made from water, then boiled in the boiler until it was made into steam, the uranium helped to power the turbine.There was a magnet inside the turbine  andwhat happened was the steam was made to spin using the blades and then the spinning steam was so strong that  it turned the magnet  inside the turbine and created the electricity.They were creating enough electricity to power 2 million houses. Then we visited the control room-this is where Homer Simpson works! There was a red carpet and if you were not trained or highly qualifed you were not allowed on the red carpet.

In addition to our Torness visit we had wind farm specialists come to talk to us about renewable,natural and wind energy, they told us about un-renewable energy and how it was not good for the enviornment. They very generously gave us goodie bags relevent to wind farms and renewable energy. These 2 visits gave us a balanced view on each type of electricity.

P6-7 have been having an amazing time at forest schools in Stenton woods. Because it was Halloween, we made skeletons out of sticks and leaves,we also made potions out of  natural elements in  the forest.We also had a great time building  a warm and refreshing fire,toasting marshmellows and telling goast strories because it linked in to halloween.Meanwhile the p5’s were working so hard on their VCOP which stands for Vocabulary,Connectives,Openings and punctuation.Their main focus this week was speech punctuation.They developed their skills and are ready for the next stage in their writing.

The whole school took part in the Bethany Trust Shoebox Appeal. These boxes are filled with essentials which go to people who are less fortunate than us.

We have had a very busy week of learning !

By Lollyand Harrison p7  

This is Bethany Trust speaking to us about the shoebox appeal!

This is our forest schools group on halloween making the skeletons.