Month: March 2021

P4/5 – March 2021

It has been wonderful to welcome our P4/5 children back to school.  The children have been very excited to be back at school.  We have had a lot of class discussions on the good and bad points of lockdown and returning to school and the clear winner was being back at school!

Maths:  This week we have returned to addition and subtraction in maths to ensure the children have a sound understanding.  We will continue with addition and subtraction until the end of this term.

Literacy:  We continue to read the class novel, “The Elsewhere Emporium”.  We will be writing some creative stories based on this novel next week.

We have also had a look at debates around topical issues.  This week the children voted to discuss racism and wrote an essay to explain what they understood racism to be.

Science:  We continue with our Friday science afternoon and today the children were looking at the effect of gravity on an egg.  The children designed a protective cocoon for the egg and they were dropped from a height of around 6 feet onto the playground.  Two out of 6 egg survived, well done to all the groups, there were lots of great ideas!

 

Egg being dropped from a height of around 6 feet.

This egg survived!

As ever, if you wish to discuss your child, please don’t hesitate to contact me at yvonne.baddeley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk

 

P1/2 Numeracy and Mathematics

P1/2 have been learning about Data Handling.

P1 has been organising , displaying and interpreting data to make a simple graph, for example counting the different numbers of coloured spots on a t shirt and showing it as a bar graph.

P2 have been working on organising their data in a table before using the table headings to label a bar graph and transfer the information. Then they have answered questions about the graph .

P3/4 – March 2021

In Literacy, we have been focusing on writing a diary entry for a Young Writers competition the children are excited to enter. We have explored lots of different ideas and have been working very hard to plan and write an amazing diary entry. The children’s imaginations have run wild and they have been very creative! We have worked hard to up-level our sentences to include adjectives to make our writing interesting to the reader.

We continue to learn a new spelling rule each week and practise this through our spelling homework and active spelling activities in class.

The children’s fluency in reading has continued to improve. We have been working on our comprehension skills to dig deeper on our understanding of what we have read. You can continue to use the comprehension cards at home to support this.

 

Over the last 2 weeks in Maths, we finished our topic on Multiplication and moved onto Division. So far, we have learned about dividing by 2, 3, 5 and 10. We have used cubes and Numicon to support our learning. With Miss Davie, the children have been learning about Information Handling, looking at different charts and graphs.

In Health and Wellbeing, we are focussing on Safety. We have discussed safety around medicines and made posters to show what we learned about safe medicine use. We have considered different scenarios, and how safe or unsafe they would make us feel. We continue to engage in daily mindfulness activities.

The children are loving our Habitats topic! We have explored Woodland, Ocean and Rainforest habitats to far. We went for a walk in the local woods to spot some plants and animals we learned about in the classroom. We used the iPads to research different Ocean Animals. We used the ‘Jigsaw Learning’ method to learn about Rainforests – each group were given a different aspect of the Rainforest to research and create a poster on. The children then became the teacher and taught their peers about what they learned. Each group gave feedback to one another – this was a big hit!

 

P6-7 Back to School

Hello everyone! We have had a fantastic first week back in Primary 6-7. The children are all keen to get stuck into their learning and are happy to be in the classroom and back to some sort of routine and a sense of normality (me too!).

 

Literacy –
P6-7 have watched the 3rd episode of David Attenborough’s ‘A Perfect Planet’ which was all about the weather across the globe and how animals have come to rely on the weather patterns. They are learning to write a documentary review and are using their own notes they took while watching the programme to do this! We discovered keeping up with writing notes and watching something for information can be a bit tricky – but we managed!
We are still working our way through our class novel, ‘Wonder’ and now we are back together, we are going back through the pages we have read to deepen our understanding of the novel and its themes.

 

Numeracy –
The children have been working on Measure this week. We are converting between different units of measure and using these to estimate and measure different objects. We will be moving on to measuring mass and capacity in the coming weeks of this term.

Other curricular areas –
PE – We have started a block of hockey lessons where so far; the children have been learning to hold a hockey stick properly (to keep each other safe!) demonstrate a push pass and stopping the ball with the stick. We will be learning to move with the ball, get past other players, tackle, shoot and then playing small games of hockey.

Health and Wellbeing – This week, we are learning about what the word Ethos means to us and what kind of Ethos we want for our classroom. The children were telling me what they would like to hear, feel and see within our classroom.

If you haven’t done so already, please remember to bring back to school your novel and your jotters.

As always, if you need anything from me please do not hesitate to email me on jodi.riley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk or you can still contact me via Google Classroom.

P4/5 Update

Maths – We have moved on in maths from addition and subtraction to multiplication and division.  We continue with our daily times table practice to ensure fluency and accuracy.  A good knowledge and understanding of times tables will really help support the children with the multiplication and division lessons.

Arrays:  We have been looking at different ways to represent times tables including arrays which show how to group numbers together is a very visual way.

Below is an array depicting the sum 4 x 6 = 24 and 6 x 4 = 24.  Making these visual connections helps to understand that it doesn’t matter which way round the sum is, you still get the same answer.

Literacy

We have recently finished our exciting class novel, ‘The Nowhere Emporium’.  The children have completed a lot of their creative writing based around the novel and have produced some amazing stories.  We have also started the sequel to ‘The Nowhere Emporium’, called ‘The Elsewhere Emporium’.  Our main characters are on a new adventure and I am excited to find out where it leads us!  The children recently wrote a story based around the novel where they found themselves in a carnival and had to describe what kind of magical event would take place when they entered one of the tents.

Here is an example of one of the stories, well done to the writer who followed our class criteria for writing which is linked to the curriculum for excellence expectations and outcomes.

Example of our ‘Elsewhere Emporium’ stories.

Return to school.

I am very much looking forward to returning to school on the 15th of March and I hope that your child(ren) is too. If you have any concerns about your child and their return to school please do send me an email and I will be glad to help.

Best Regards

Mrs. Baddeley

 

P6-7 Remote Learning Update

Hello everyone! I am sure you are just as glad as me, that all going well the children will be back in the classroom on the 15th.

 

 

Literacy
P6-7 have been watching David Attenborough’s ‘A Perfect Planet’ and practicing taking notes. Their end goal is writing a review on the programme by following a specific framework and acting on feedback. Hopefully, the final programme and review will be done face to face!!
We are still working our way through our class novel, ‘Wonder’ and the children have enjoyed our Teams meetings where we can discuss it in further detail. The themes of kindness and resilience that run through the novel have provided us with lots to talk about and work on! This also allowed the children to do some of their own research into ‘John Merrick’ who is more commonly known as the Elephant Man.

Numeracy 
The children have been working on Money calculations this week and last week. They have been working out profit and loss, APR and working out the best deals for buying things! They are looking at credit and debit cards and bank accounts too, to help them apply their knowledge to real life contexts.

Other curricular areas
Once again, we have our grid full of other curricular areas for the children to choose from. There is a mixture of activities such as food technology, health and wellbeing, PE, Art and Science.

We are still working on our topic for this term which is Light and Sound. The children have carried out their own research at home and hopefully we will be able to do some more practical experiments once we are back at school.

 

I am so looking forward to seeing you all again! Please remember to bring back to school your novel and your jotters.

As always, if I can do anything more to help or you need anything from me, please do not hesitate to email me on jodi.riley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk or contact me via Google Classroom.

Stay safe, Miss Riley.

P1/2 – School Return

After our return we did some assessments and dived into learning!

 

P1 have started learning reading and writing 2 letter sounds and continued to revise number bonds to 10. P2 have been ordering numbers to 100 and 1000 and counting in steps of 10.

 

 

In H&W we have learnt about the importance of a good night’s sleep. We talked about good routines and how they affect our learning.

In topic we found out about carbohydrates, protein and dairy, and how they help us grow. We enjoyed sorting food and thinking about what is healthy. We are putting it into practice in our Healthy Café corner.

P3 – Return to school

P3 have returned to school and I am so impressed with the way the children have settled back into the school routine! We have been catching up with one another and working hard over the last week.

In Literacy, we have been focusing on instructional writing. The children have explored examples of different sets of instructions and have identified the important key features: title, equipment needed, method, bossy verbs etc. We then created our own set of instructions for growing sunflower seeds – which have now begun to grow!

Now we are back to school, we will continue to focus on a new sound each week. Our spelling words for homework will be uploaded to Google Classroom weekly, as well as a new spelling activity grid to be used for the remainder of the term.

Children will continue to read in class and will receive a book home each week. We will focus on different reading targets each week.

In Maths, we continued our topic we started during remote learning – Time. Some children are working on consolidating their understanding of o’clock and half past, whilst others have been learning about quarter past and quarter to on digital and analogue clocks.

We are revisiting our Multiplication topic we begun learning at home too. We have revised the 2, 5 and 10 times table, and we are starting to learn the 3 and 4 times table. The children are using different materials, such as Numicon and cubes, to aid their learning.

During the first week back in Health and Wellbeing, we focused on Mental Health and how we can keep our minds healthy. The children had lots of great discussions! We have been doing some daily mindfulness too, which is a big hit! Next in Health and Wellbeing, we will be focusing on Safety.

Habitats is our new topic this term! The children were very enthusiastic in sharing their ideas of what they would like to learn through our topic. So far, we have discussed what a habitat is and have looked at some simple food chains. We will learn about different habitats, such as: woodland, desert, artic and ocean!