Category: (3) Middle Stages

Primary 4-5 Update – April 2022

Maths

Primary 4-5 are still learning to read analogue and digital time with Miss Davie and calculate time durations. They will move on to reading and using timetables. With Miss Riley we are reading and drawing graphs, charts, and tables. We will be collecting data, interpreting it, and answering questions. The children still work on their mental maths skills at the start of the day or at the beginning of a maths lesson each day.

 

Literacy

The class are still working on their reading comprehension skills with Miss Riley and using these to answer questions on their reading books. We have been looking at Blooms Taxonomy and using each level to pick apart our books and create higher order thinking questions.

We wrote newspaper articles in the third person for our Easter holiday news and the children found this quite challenging! Lots of the children managed to include direct quotes and write in formal language which was excellent.

Music

The children are doing music with Miss Davie this term and are learning to read music and play accompanying music on the glockenspiel.

 

Modern Languages

Spanish – the class are learning foods, and to order food in a restaurant setting.

French – We have been learning to start a conversation and parts of the body. We then used our knowledge to create French monsters!!

 

 

P4-5 Blog Update – March

Maths

The class are finishing up with decimals and percentages and have moved on from money to time with Miss Davie.
We were learning to round decimals to the nearest tenth and some to the nearest hundredth. We are learning to calculate percentages of amounts of money. Underpinning all of this was place value skills so we have been working on these for our Soft Start in the morning and during maths lessons.

Literacy

The children have been learning to use figurative language in their writing with Miss Davie. They have been watching ‘Planet Unknown’ and writing a Captain’s Log using these skills such as alliteration, personification, and onomatopoeia. We are still reading our class novel, ‘Cosmic’.

With Miss Riley, the class are learning comprehension skills. We are learning how to infer or read between the lines. We watched a short silent Pixar clip called ‘The Birds’ and used this to make some educated guesses about what kind of dialogue would be used in the clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYTrIcn4rjg

 

Health & Wellbeing

We have been learning about what skills and abilities we have, are proud of and would need to do jobs when we are older. We have been talking about internal and external motivators, how to motivate ourselves to reach our goals and why taking little steps is important. In PE, we have been learning lots of different gymnastics skills. We have been working on our jumps and leaps, handstands, cartwheels, round-offs, vaulting and rolling. We are currently choreographing our own routines of at least 5 movements linked smoothly together. We listening to music while we did our routines last week and all the children said they experienced their mood lifted, increased focus and said they felt motivated by it!

 

Topic

We did a ‘planet fact’ hunt around the school in which we found out facts about the planets and compared them in properties such as atmosphere, size, number of moons etc. We are using this information to create a papier mache solar system in class. Once these are strong enough, we will paint them and hang them in the classroom!

 

French

The children are learning how to say and write what their favourite school subjects are. Next week, we will try to add opinion to these sentences and say why we like / dislike something.

 

P2/3 – March 2022

In literacy we have been choosing picture stimulus’ to write about and have been self-assessing our work to ensure we have met our success criteria.  We are also learning to read over what we have written to check it makes sense.  For our comprehension we have started to work collaboratively and each have a role to play so we are all accountable when working with our task maps; the reader, the recorder and the manager.  We have focused on our class novel for this and the children are thinking deeper about the characters.  We have also been creating stories using our story stones, focusing on a beginning, middle and end of our story and we are retelling them to our peers.

In beyond number we have been learning about the time.  In primary 2 we are learning the o’clock and half past and in primary 3 we are learning quarter past the hour and quarter to the hour.  We are also learning to read digital time.

In expressive arts we have been focusing on the Bfg and have made our own dream catchers.  We took care to thread them and use colours which make us feel happy so that they bring us happy dreams.

 

And in p.e. we have been doing gymnastics, focusing on balance, travel and shape holds.  We have been working together to form sequences and have been peer assessing our sequences, giving each other constructive feedback on how we can improve our sequences.

P4/5 – Blog Update February

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a lovely mid-term break.

Topic

I hope all the children are managing to fill in their moon chart for the month! We have been learning about properties of the sun and moon, why we have night and day, and we are now learning about the properties of each planet in our solar system. We are going to use this information to create presentations in groups to feedback to the rest of the class.
We watched a BBC documentary called ‘Universe’ with Brian Cox which was very interesting!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p09ybpb8/universe-series-1-1-the-sun-god-star

PE

Primary 4-5 are starting a block of gymnastics. We are working on skills such as jumps, leaps, and rolls with the goal of creating a sequence using elements of all the skills we have learned.

 

Maths

The children finished fractions with learning how to express them in their simplest form and we are now moving on to learning about decimals and percentages. As before, if primary 4/5 are finding this tricky they are not confident with their times tables. If you would like some extra practice at home, you can visit https://www.timestables.co.uk/.

 

Expressive Arts

We were lucky enough to have Mrs Armstrong come in and visit us last week and the children created some amazing shaving foam marbling and used the patterns to make planets on a splatter background. The children then used coloured sand to make textured planets which we hung from the washing line in the classroom. Both projects turned out amazing and we were very grateful for her visit!                                                                                                                                    

French

The children were learning to say and write classroom objects in French. They were telling me what was in their pencil case, and what colour the items were!

P2/3 January Update

To incorporate Burns Day within expressive arts we have been learning some Scottish country dances such as the Canadian Barn Dance and the Happy Gordons and in art we have been learning about the Scottish artist Steven Brown.  The children have discussed the artistic features of Steven Brown’s art work and have created their own McCoo’s.  The children have also created their own tartan, focusing on the repetition of their pattern.

In literacy, the children have chosen their new class novel and they have chosen The Bfg.  They have carried out a listening activity and illustrated the Bfg, focusing on the detail that they were given within the story.  Within writing the children have been learning about poetry and have created their own acrostic poems and are now learning how to write rhyming poems.

In numeracy, we have moved on to addition within 10, 20, 100 and 1000.  We have been revising our number facts and have been using lots of concrete materials to support us.

Our focus in topic this term is Fettercairn countryside.  We have discussed all the amenities in and around Fettercairn and have mapped out where our house is in relation to the Fettercairn Square.  The children have expressed they want to find out more about the Royal Arch and therefore we will be focusing on this as part of our learning.

P4-5 Blog Update – January

Hello everyone, Happy New Year! P4-5 have settled well back into school life after a very excitable and busy Christmas term.

We have re-established our class charter based on the school’s visions, values and aims. We also looked at the UNCRC children’s rights and used some of these to form the basis of our charter too. The two pupil council reps, Helena and Aiden (who were voted in last term) have been looking at ways to feed forward ideas from the class in their meetings.

                         

Literacy

The children have been studying different types of poetry with Miss Davie and they have been learning to use figurative language such as alliteration, personification, and onomatopoeia in their poems!

We will be studying ‘Cosmic’ by Frank Cottrell Boyce, in line with our new topic this term which is space. The children are continuing to practice their reading and spelling throughout the week in class.

Maths

In maths, the children have started learning about fractions with Miss Riley. We are finding out fractions of amounts of things and working out what to do when the numerator is more than one. Primary 4/5 are finding this tricky if they are not confident with their times tables. If you would like some extra practice at home, you can visit https://www.timestables.co.uk/

The children are also continuing with weight and volume with Miss Davie, who is really enjoying hearing about the class baking and cooking at home to reinforce these skills!

Health and Wellbeing

This term, we are working on finding out what our internal and external motivators are and using these to ensure we can reach our goals! We are trying to set long term goals for our lives, and short-term goals for a hobby, interest, or school subject.

PE – In PE, we are learning a range of Scottish Country Dances! The children can not believe how tiring it is!

Other Curricular Areas

Music – We are learning to sing and play some reggae music. The children were interested to find out more about the history of reggae and how it became a well-known music genre in the 1970s.

RME – The children are studying humanism.

Languages – Primary 4-5 are learning how to say their birthday, and to ask someone’s birthday in Spanish. We are revising saying and writing our numbers in French.

 

P2/3 – December 2021

In numeracy, we are learning to round numbers to the nearest 10 or nearest 100.  We have been playing Rounding Rockets on Top Marks and have been working in pairs using playing cards to round to the nearest given number.  We are also continuing to practice our times tables.

In expressive arts we have had primary 6/7 lead a Christmas craft activity which links to our song that we are singing in our Christmas concert.   We all had to listen carefully to follow each step at a time.

 

We are beginning to become familiar with learning using Chrome books and we are gaining experience with logging in and navigating our way around the chrome books.  We have played some numeracy games and have even managed to type a letter during literacy.

In p.e we have been learning hockey skills.  We have been focusing on how to use the hockey stick safely and how to control the ball while moving around cones.  We have also practiced obtaining the ball from another person while moving and we have hit a target with the ball.

P4-5 Update December

Literacy

Primary 4-5 have been learning about the features of a newspaper article and have written these using information from our class novel ‘Saving Finnegan’. The children named their newspapers, worked on the layout and included two articles.
Next term, the children will be working on writing for information/explanation writing.

Numeracy

The class have been working on their understanding of the four operations this term (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) and we are currently finishing off multiplication. The children have been consolidating their times table facts to help them with this and this should help them with division later this week. Some children have been using concrete materials such as cotton wool balls or cubes to split or group to visualise this.
We have been playing times table games on Top Marks – if the children would like to practice at home, they can visit https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/7-11-years/times-tables.

Expressive Arts

This term, the class as you know were working hard to make Christmas decorations to sell at the school fayre. Primary 4-5 supported each class from Nursery to P7 to decorate their own which was around 200 decorations in total!
We have been doing a variety of Christmas craft activities in class including making props for the Carol Concert with the help of P6-7.

Topic

Many thanks for helping your children to complete their inheritance homework this week. We have been learning about the difference between traits that are inherited and things that can be influenced by environmental factors. We also spoke about dominant and recessive genes.

Just a few little reminders for the remainder of this term –

Dress as you please with a touch of Christmas every Friday
Carol concert Tuesday 14th at 2.30pm
P4-7 Christmas party Thursday 16th in the afternoon

Have a lovely Christmas and New Year when it comes, Miss Riley.

P2/3 Update – November 2021

In literacy last term we were extending our writing skills and were focusing on linking sentences using ‘and’ and ‘because’.  The children used their skills to write about their families, hobbies and our favourite toys.  This term we have been looking at formal and informal letters and the children have identified key features of a letter structure to help them construct their success criteria.  They have written a letter to their friend/family and a thank you letter to our dinner ladies thanking them for the lovely lunches they prepare for us every day.  We have also begun our Scottish Reading Challenge to increase our reading for enjoyment.

In numeracy some of the children have been learning to count in twos and identify odd and even numbers; some children have been learning about place value and have been adding hundreds, tens and ones; whilst others have been learning to write number names and ordinal numbers.  We have been building on our mental agility through beating our class scores on ‘hit the button’.  This can be played at home also, here is the link: Hit the Button – Quick fire maths practise for 6-11 year olds (topmarks.co.uk).

In expressive arts we have been learning about pointillism and have created different pictures using the pointillism technique.  We have also begun learning music through Charanga which is an online music resource.

Our Topic this term is keeping healthy.  We have thought of all the ways we can keep healthy and we have designed posters to share with other classes to remind them of the importance of hand washing to keep germs away.

P4-5 Blog Update November

Literacy

Primary 4-5 have finished their final persuasive pieces of writing and we worked on a ‘final draft’ for these. They wrote a first draft which they checked against our steps to success and then edited it until they were happy that it was their best version!

The class are now learning about the features of a newspaper article and familiarising themselves by reading these before creating their own.

 

Modern Languages

P4-5 have been busy with both Spanish with Miss Davie and French with Miss Riley. In French, we are learning to give our opinion on different foods by saying ‘I like/dislike…because…’

 

In Spanish, the class have been creating amazing comic strips while learning about Spanish greetings and asking ‘how are you?’

 

Numeracy

The class have been working on Addition/Subtraction and have now moved on to multiplication and this will be followed closely by division. P4-5 practice their times tables every week for our ‘morning challenge’ (forwards, backwards and jumbled up) and this has had such a positive impact on their solving of multiplication problems as we got off to a flying start!

We are trying to find rules for our tables to make remembering them and using them easier for us.

 

Topic

The children really enjoyed our Scottish Geography and Landscape topic and finished off by making PowerPoint presentations after doing research about flooding in Scotland.

This term, our topic is inheritance so the children may come home asking questions about why they have blonde hair or are left-handed!

 

 

Health and Wellbeing

The class participated in a BBC live lesson for anti-bullying week and we identified the 6 roles that can be adopted in a bullying situation and what we can do to help – or ensure we don’t take on one of these roles without even realising we have!

In PE this term, the class are doing a block of fitness and we have been doing circuits. The children are working for one minute with a 45 second rest and trying to perfect their form or increase their reps each time. We are tracking our progress each lesson and the children love seeing their improvements each week!

 

Thanks so much to everyone who came to meet me last term for parents’ meetings. As always, if you need me, I’m always just an email away and you can get me on jodi.riley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk