Category: (3) Middle Stages

P4-5 Blog Update September

IDL

Primary 4-5 have been learning about Scottish Geography and Landscape in our topic. We were learning about U-Shaped valleys left behind by glaciers in the ice age and had a look online at one in Glen Coe. We went for a walk around the village with Mr Gould, who is a geologist. He kindly volunteered his time to show us evidence of glaciers left behind in our landscape right here in Fettercairn! We learned about the red sandstone that is used in some of the buildings in the square that was brought down from the mountains thousands of years ago by glaciers.

(Some of this sandstone was used to build Mrs Hay’s house!)

 

Expressive Arts

Primary 4-5 used the knowledge they gained about glaciers to create some glacier landscape paintings in art. We spoke about the cool tones of the paint and used these to create a background of sea and sky, and then glaciers which we glued on top.

 

ALEC Virtual Session

On Monday this week, we enjoyed an online session delivered by Aberdeenshire Life Education Centre and the children recognised Harold the giraffe from previous in-school visits! Harold spoke to the children about keeping their brains and bodies healthy.

As always, if ever you need anything please feel free to contact me on jodi.riley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk

P2/3 September Blog Post

In P.E we have been working on our ball skills, focusing on chest passes.  We have been working in teams, competing to see how many chest passes we can do before we drop the ball, whilst also focusing on our technique.  We have also been working with a partner challenging ourselves by moving into a space and passing the ball for our partner to catch it.

In Topic we have been learning about our sense of taste and touch.  We were discussing whether our sense of smell affected our sense of taste and whether we needed our sense of sight to be able to identify what objects were in our mystery feely boxes. We were also discussing what is safe and unsafe to touch.

In health and wellbeing we have been learning that it is ok to make mistakes and discussing how we can succeed at something.  The children came up with lots of different feelings that we can feel when we are learning something new.  We discussed how our learning journey looks and we made a learning line for our classroom.  We each made a brick for our line, which we created through pattern.

In literacy we have been focusing on imaginative writing.  We read Lucy’s Blue Day and wrote about a time we have felt an emotion and what colour our hair would be with that emotion.

P4/5 September 2021

IDL

Primary 4-5 have been learning about Scottish Geography and Landscape in our topic. We were learning about U-Shaped valleys left behind by glaciers in the ice age and had a look online at one in Glen Coe. We went for a walk around the village with Mr Gould, who is a geologist. He kindly volunteered his time to show us evidence of glaciers left behind in our landscape right here in Fettercairn! We learned about the red sandstone that is used in some of the buildings in the square that was brought down from the mountains thousands of years ago by glaciers.

(Some of this sandstone was used to build Mrs Hay’s house!)

Expressive Arts

Primary 4-5 used the knowledge they gained about glaciers to create some glacier landscape paintings in art. We spoke about the cool tones of the paint and used these to create a background of sea and sky, and then glaciers which we glued on top.

 

ALEC Virtual Session

On Monday this week, we enjoyed an online session delivered by Aberdeenshire Life Education Centre and the children recognised Harold the giraffe from previous in-school visits! Harold spoke to the children about keeping their brains and bodies healthy.

As always, if ever you need anything please feel free to contact me on jodi.riley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk

P4/5 Blog Post

Hello Everyone! We are settling in well to our new class, new classroom and becoming familiar with life in P4-5.

Literacy

Primary 4-5 have started a class novel, ‘Saving Finnegan’ with Miss Davie. We are working on our active spelling methods during our soft start in the morning.

This week, the children have been gluing their words in their jotters using newspaper, using scrabble tiles and playing KABOOM, a game with lolly sticks.

We are working on our recount writing and are going to be working on second drafts of our recount writing. We are checking them against our steps to success and making improvements!

Modern Languages

Primary 4-5 have been learning about fruits in French! We have practiced saying ‘I like…’ and writing names of fruits too. We have been singing a song called J’aime Les Fruits – have a look and feel free to practice at home!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ03KjwiIVM

The class have also been playing number games in Spanish with Miss Davie.

Expressive Arts

We are building up knowledge of musical genre, theory and history. The children have listened to some famous compositions by Beethoven and shared their opinions and thoughts. We have been enjoying rocking out to “Nothing Else Matters”.

 

Health and Wellbeing

Primary 4-5 have been doing lots of team building activities now that they are back together as a whole class and are enjoying learning to work well with their peers.

This week, we built Hula Huts in the playground in teams of 3. Each hut had to have a base, walls and a roof. It was tricky, but we managed in the end!

P3/4 – June 2021

In Literacy last week we learned to write Haiku poems. We learned that the poems have 3 lines and follow a pattern based on the number of syllables in each line. The children worked hard to be creative!

We have been focusing on comprehension skills and have been answering questions about our reading books and non-fiction texts.

This week we linked our writing to our Vikings topic. The children became Estate Agents for the morning and wrote a great descriptive piece to try to sell a Viking Longhouse!

 

In maths, we learned about 12- and 24-hour time. We applied our learning to real-life contexts by converting time on TV schedules and train timetables.

This week we are revisiting Information Handling and are currently revising Bar Charts and Venn Diagrams.

We have been working to improve our speed on mental recall of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts. The children are enjoying challenging themselves in their learning by trying to beat their previous scores.

 

This week we introduced a Worry Box in class. The children can write down anything they feel worried about – we discussed how talking about our worries can help up feel better. The notes are anonymous, and the children can indicate whether they want to discuss the issue as a class or have a private conversation with the teacher.

This week we started our Living and Growing topic in Health and Wellbeing. So far, we have discussed growing up. The children had great discussion about the way our bodies grow, as well as our skills and capabilities as we get older.

Over the last 2 weeks we started our new Vikings topic. So far, we have learned about Viking longhouses and longships. The children are working hard to create a Viking longship model with a partner using recycled materials.

P4/5 – Blog 11-6-21

In our last few weeks of term, we have been learning about different styles and types of poetry.  The children have particularly enjoyed listening to Michael Rosen and have written a Haiku with Miss Riley.  In maths we will be completing data handling this week and will be moving on to revising all topic areas for the second last week of term.

The last week of term is going to be children’s choice week!  I have asked all the children what they would like to learn about and I will create lessons based on these choices. The children have come up with some brilliant ideas about what they would like to learn and their ideas range from gaming to oceanography and space to the periodic table.

We will be making some more perspective drawings this week to add to our classroom display as seen below.

 

 

Our sports day event went very well and the children really enjoyed planning and designing the obstacle course.

P4/5 Update

The weather has finally started to improve and we have been able to get outside to practice for our sports day event.  The children have been working very hard and voted as a class to have the theme of ‘historical characters’ for their sports day event.  We have also been making crowns and helmets in class to represent some of these times.

This is our final week of fractions, decimals and percentages in maths.  We have been looking at equivalents between fractions, decimals and percentages and playing equivalent bingo to consolidate the learning!

 

 

 

In literacy, we have been finishing our work on note taking and we will be moving on to poetry writing next week.

Last week we introduced a worry box in the class.  The children are able to put in either an anonymous note and we talk about it as a class or a private note and I will talk to that child individually.  The children like to discuss their worry’s and have been supportive of each other.

P3-4 Update

In Literacy, we have been working hard to write our persuasive letters on plastic pollution. We will type our letters for display. The children have been learning about past and present tense in Grammar, as well as revisiting using Speech Marks appropriately.

Next week in Literacy, we will be learning about different types of poetry.

In Maths, we have completed our topic on Fractions. The children enjoyed learning about halves, quarters, thirds, and tenths. We are now going to revisit our Time topic in maths for consolidation. We will learn about 12/24-hour time. We will be doing lots of practical activities to embed our learning.

We have been focusing on hygiene in Health and Wellbeing over the last 2 weeks. The children created posters showing how to wash our hands correctly. We also talked about dental hygiene, and we had lots of great discussion about how to keep our teeth and mouths healthy. In PE, the children have been working very hard with Miss Davie to create an obstacle course to showcase to you all on the day of our Sports Challenge.

For our topic, we did a science experiment to explore sinking and floating. The children enjoyed finding objects, predicting whether they would float or sink, then testing this out in water! We also created some wonderful iceberg themed artwork – we focussed on using the best materials to make the water as life-like as possible. Next week we will move on to our new topic.

 

 

P4/5 May 2021

Maths – We continue to work on our fractions, moving between simplifying, ordering and matching equivalents.  We have been fortunate to do some fractions games outside in between the rain showers!

Literacy – We have been asked to write a persuasive letter to some approved funding bodies to help with improvements to the school playground.  The children have discussed what they think would make a good playground and what arguments we could use to write our letters.  We will continue with this next week as well.

Techfest – We have been fortunate to join Techfest this week with their on-line meetings.  We have learned about bugs from the Critter Keeper, looked at fossils with a palaeontologist, heard about a sustainable café in Torry Battery and been amazed at the amount of plastic in our oceans during a presentation by Macduff Aquarium.  If you would like to find out more, many of the presentations have been recorded.  The link for Techfest is: https://www.techfestsetpoint.org.uk/

 

 

P3/4 May 2021

Last week we had great excitement in P3/4 as we received the news that all our diary entries for the Young Writer’s Competition were chosen as winners! I am so proud of the children for the effort they put into their writing. Everyone is excited to have their story published in a book.

This week we have been working hard to plan a persuasive piece of writing linked to our Water topic. The children had the great idea of trying to encourage wider recycling in school, so this is the theme of our writing. So far, we have discussed the main arguments we will include and have gathered facts to backup our points. Next week, we will start the first draft of our writing.

We have learned about synonyms to widen our vocabulary. We identified ‘boring’ words we use too often and used a thesaurus and lots of books to help us create a Synonym Flowers wall display. The children thought of fantastic words we can now use to make our writing even better!

In Grammar, we have been learning about singular and plural nouns. The children have learned different rules for making singular nouns plural – although there are lots of rules to remember! We have practised this through games and sorting activities.

Last week in maths, we revisited multiplication. The children are making big improvements in their mental recall of the multiplication facts of the 2,3,4,5 and 10 times table. We practised our times tables through problem solving activities – the children particularly enjoyed trying to work out secret codes using their times table knowledge!

This week we have been working on place value and addition and subtraction. We have discussed lots of different strategies, comparing them to see which is the most effective.

Next week, we will be learning about fractions.

We had some fantastic discussion around Internet Safety in Health and Wellbeing. The children enjoyed watching a ThinkUKnow video on playing games online. We talked about the importance of being safe, and only speaking to people you know online.

This week we focused on Rights and Responsibilities, and we learned the difference between them. The children found it interesting to learn about their rights, and all the children showed a great understanding of what they are responsible for and how they should treat others.

We have continued with our Water topic this week. We tuned in to a brilliant live session on Marine Plastics on Tuesday. The children were fascinated and shocked by all the information about plastic pollution – this sparked the idea for our persuasive writing in Literacy!

We have learned about hot and cold climates around the world. From this we learned about why plants need water, and where the best places are for plants to grow. We made rain gauges and popped them around the playground so we can measure rainfall over the term.

Today we are carrying out an experiment on dissolving solids – I am sure the children will enjoy this!