I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and Happy New Year!

Our focus in literacy since returning to school after Christmas has been on Scots Language. We listened to The Gruffalo in Scots before unpicking some of the Scots words used. We created individual Scots word banks to keep track of all the new words we are learning! This week we explored the first chapter of ‘Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stane’. We then tried to re-write a passage written in Scots to English. I know lots of children in the class have been enjoying practising their Burns Poems at home!

In grammar we have been learning about more figurative language – we have now explored similes and metaphors, alliteration, onomatopoeia and personification. We have discussed how using these literary devices in our writing can really improve the experience for the reader as they will have a clearer picture in their head of what is being described.

In maths our focus has been on Fractions. We have learned how to find equivalent fractions, as well as how to simplify fractions to their simplest form. This week we have learned how to calculate the fraction of a number. Some children have moved onto ordering and adding and subtracting fractions.

Next in maths we will be moving onto information handling where we will explore charts and graphs.

In Health and Wellbeing at the moment we are discussing the dangers of smoking. P6/7 were very shocked to learn about the substances found in a cigarette! We learned about the effects smoking can have on all our major organs.

         

We have been using the worry box more in class, taking lots of time to talk through anonymous worries and offer advice – it is lovely to hear the children supporting one another.

In the coming weeks we will be looking at self-esteem and body image.

We have now finished our Water and Chemical Reactions topic. We carried out a science experiment using Vitamin C tablets – we put the tablets in a bottle with water and put a balloon on top. The children loved watching the balloons inflate with carbon dioxide.

Our next topic is Energy and Sustainability, which we started this week. So far we have learned about what being sustainable means. The children would like to learn more about climate change, greenhouse gases and how we can help to make our planet by being more sustainable.