This animation was produced by pupils in P4M in St John’s Primary School in Ayr and looks at scorpions. They worked together to produce the script and developed the animation in a group of 4 in a one-day workshop with Radio Lingua Schools.

This animation was produced by pupils in P4M in St John’s Primary School in Ayr and looks at dragonflies. They worked together to produce the script and developed the animation in a group of 4 in a one-day workshop with Radio Lingua Schools.

This animation was produced by pupils in P4M in St John’s Primary School in Ayr and looks at spiders and wasps. They worked together to produce the script and developed the animation in a group of 4 in a one-day workshop with Radio Lingua Schools.

This animation was produced by pupils in P4N in St John’s Primary School in Ayr and looks at beetles. The pupils learned about how beetles were used in the past to cure some skin conditions. They worked together to produce the script and developed the animation in a group of 4 in a one-day workshop with Radio Lingua Schools.

This animation was produced by pupils in P4N in St John’s Primary School in Ayr and looks at the octopus: its habitat, eating habitats and ability to camouflage itself. The children worked together to produce the script and developed the animation in a group of 4 in a one-day workshop with Radio Lingua Schools.

This animation was produced by pupils in P4N in St John’s Primary School in Ayr and looks specifically at arachnids. The children worked together to produce the script and developed the animation in a group of 4 in a one-day workshop with Radio Lingua Schools.

This animation was produced by pupils in P4N in St John’s Primary School in Ayr and looks specifically at worms. The children researched the topic and worked together to produce the script. They then developed the animation in a group of five in a one-day workshop with Radio Lingua Schools.

Over the next few weeks the children of P4 and P5 in St John’s Primary in Ayr will be taking part in a number of animation activities, leading to the development of the St John’s Animated Encyclopaedia, supported by Radio Lingua Schools. Currently P4 are working on animal habitats, and P5 are learning about parts of the body. Three animation days will lead to the development of individual ‘entries’ in this animated encyclopaedia and it is hoped that over time the children in the school will develop learning resources for their peers covering a range of subjects and topics.

In the first of three animation sessions, Mark worked with P4N to support the development of four entries in the encyclopaedia. The children had developed scripts about animal habitats, and during the workshop they created animations on these topics. To view the animations, click on the links below:

• Worms
• Arachnids
• Beetles
• Octopuses

In the second workshop, P4M created four new entries in the encyclopaedia:

• Ladybirds
• Scorpions
• Dragonflies
• Spiders and wasps

Over the past few weeks, a pilot group of primary 6 pupils from St John’s have been developing their journalism skills, reporting on what has been happening in the school in the past month. This is part of a larger project in the school which will see all of the primary 6 pupils involved in reporting the school news in a number of ways during the course of the year.

The team of Newshounds began their journalism lessons by looking at a number of publications including local and national newspapers and a variety of magazines. They learned about fonts and graphic design with a view to putting their knowledge into practice in the development of their own newspaper for the school. Over a number of weeks they collected news from each class, and collated the stories, deciding what to include in the newspaper, and what to leave out.

Working on Pages, part of the Apple iWork suite, the pupils began to put together the newspaper in a half-day workshop last week. The pupils decided they wanted to include sections on “What we’re learning” and “What we’re doing”, providing information on the work and activities of each class in the school.

The final stage in the publication process was carried out yesterday as the pupils proofed the newspaper. Their publication will go to print this morning and will be distributed to all pupils in the school later today.

The pupils wanted to make sure that in addition to print copies, there would be an electronic version available to download. You can download the November issue of St John’s Primary Newshounds here (right-click or control-click to download to your computer). It’s 25mb so it may take some time to download. To view the newsletter you require Adobe Reader (PC/Mac) or Preview (Mac).

December Update

For December’s edition of Newshounds, the production team increased in size as each of the pupils involved took on an “apprentice”. The pupils worked in pairs to research and write each article and to bring together the images and content required for this month’s edition. Download December’s edition of St John’s Newshounds here.

The group working on In the jungle chose had been learning numbers, so they decided to build their animation around the numbers yī èr sān sì wǔ (一二三四五) or “one, two, three, four, five”. The pupils involved in creating this animation wrote their scripts based on the phrases they had learned while following the Radio Lingua One Minute Mandarin course over four weeks.

The pupils designed their characters and set and completed the animation in a two-day Radio Lingua Schools workshop. They used I Can Animate stop frame animation software and iMovie to create their movies and then recorded soundtracks using Garageband.