In Literacy this term, we used a short film called Shadow of Blue as stimulus for our writing. The children wrote brilliant character and setting descriptions, up levelling their vocabulary using a thesaurus. We learned about synonyms and antonyms, and we explored symbolism and what different characters/objects might represent.

 

We have been reading ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’ which the children have loved! This book ties in with our topic this term, so we have been learning about key vocabulary which has helped us with topic work. P6/7 particularly enjoyed creating a list of questions they would ask the Prime Minister if they came to our school, then did a ‘Hot Seating’ activity where they acted this out with a partner.

 

At the start of the term in Maths we continued with Division. We learned how to use our times table facts to divide numbers beyond the times tables. We practised long division by 1- and 2-digit numbers, which proved to be quite tricky! This is something we will revisit next term for consolidation.

Over the past few weeks, we have learned about Money. The children applied their knowledge of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to problems involving money. We have learned about different ways to pay and have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each method (cash, credit and debit cards, digital wallets, banking apps). P6/7 have really enjoyed learning about budgeting – the children budgeted for a bedroom makeover and soon realised that things cost more than they initially thought!

Next term, we will be learning about Fractions, Decimals and Percentages, as well as Time.

In Health and Wellbeing, we learned about Online Safety. We created posters showing how everyone can stay safe when using the internet. We have practised our debating skills and have worked on listening to others and being respectful, even if our views are different from others.

In PE, we have loved learning to play Badminton this term. We have learned about grips, footwork, attacking and defending, and how to play a game. We enjoyed pairing up with P2/3 to play some games too. The children are becoming quite competitive!

Next term, P6/7 will learn about Food and Health.

Our current topic is Democracy. We learned key vocabulary by doing a QR code hunt outside. The children have created timelines of the Scottish Parliament, and most recently we learned about political parties in Scotland and their leaders. We will continue with this topic at the start of next term where the children will be creating their own manifestos and will be continuing to develop their debating skills!

P6/7 have worked so hard to plan for the Christmas Show which takes place on Thursday. We planned craft lessons to make props for the show with other classes. I can see the children’s leadership skills developing very well!

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Literacy

P6/7 have thoroughly enjoyed our novel this term – Wonder by R J Palacio. Our writing has been based around this, and the children wrote a diary entry from the perspective of one of the characters. We had lots of discussion on the characters and their thoughts and feelings during the planning of our writing. The children all worked well to use the novel to inform their writing. You can see the final drafts of these pieces of writing on Seesaw! Below is a picture of the Character Log we created for our wall display.

 

In Grammar, we have re-capped the Parts of Speech (adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs, pronouns) and have started to think about using these to up-level our writing to make it more interesting.

Next term, we will be focusing on Character and Setting Descriptions in our writing.

 

Maths

In maths this term we have covered Place Value and the 4 Operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division). We learned about the value of each digit in numbers to 1,000,000 and played games to reinforce this. We have covered lots of different strategies in addition and subtraction, including the empty number line method, column method, and partitioning (breaking the numbers down). In multiplication, we have been developing our confidence in sharing our mental maths strategies, as well as practising our times tables. We have learned the grid multiplication method for long multiplication, as well as the column method. Ask your child what their preferred method is!

With Ms Casasola, we have been learning about the names and properties of 2D and 3D shape. The children have also been practising to draw shapes accurately and neatly. Ms Casasola has also taught the children about different the types of triangles.

Health and Wellbeing

In Health and Wellbeing, we have been learning about Growth Mindsets. We have discussed the difference between a Growth and Fixed Mindset, and the children have reflected on their own attitudes towards their learning. We created a ‘Learning Pit’ display in the classroom where we can move our name to show where we are in our learning journeys.

In PE our focus has been on Striking and Fielding skills, and we have been putting this into action through Cricket. The children have written the skill they feel they have developed, which you can see on Seesaw. I have watched the children grow in confidence each week which has been lovely to see.

Next term, we will be focussing on Badminton in PE.

IDL

The children have enjoyed learning about Dundee in our topic this term. We have researched landmarks in Dundee and created a wall display with this information. The children created posters on Jute, Jam and Journalism, and the significance this plays in Dundee’s history. We have enjoyed doing some different STEM activities, building the Discovery Ship and V and A Museum which looked fantastic!

Expressive Arts

P6/7 have loved art with Mrs Gatherum this term! In music, the children have been learning about the different sections of the orchestra through listening to the Harry Potter Symphonic Suite – this was a big hit!

I hope you all have a lovely October holiday!

In Literacy, the children wrote a recount of Health Week and the activities they enjoyed the most. The children have been encouraged to write in paragraphs and use a thesaurus to up-level their vocabulary. We have been learning about the use of different punctuation in grammar.

In Maths over the last few weeks, we have been learning about Measurement. We’ve spent time learning how to convert units of measurement (for example, millilitres to litres, centimetres to metres etc) as well as doing lots of practical activities. The children became more confident at making estimations of the weight or length of classroom objects, before weighing or measuring them correctly.

Some children started learning to calculate the circumference of a circle using the correct formula.

Next week we will begin learning about Angles. This will involve naming, measuring and drawing angles.

In PE, we started our Tennis block this week. The children worked well with Mrs Anderson to practise their grip, front hand, and back hand. Next week we will learn more about serving.

We have finished our Food and Nutrition unit in Health and Wellbeing. The children learned to read food labelling and we thought about why labelling food correctly is important. We concluded our block of lessons by estimating and weighing the amount of sugar in common foods. The children were quite shocked!

In our ‘Inventions that Changes the World’ topic, the children have been learning about Alexander Graham Bell over the past week. Each table group were asked to research a different information and make a poster on what they learned. They then presented this to the rest of the class and received feedback on their poster and presentation from another group.

We have learned about electrical circuits. The children learned to draw circuits using the scientific symbols and they had great fun trying to make series and parallel circuits.

P6/7 have been focusing on a short film clip called Girl and Robot, linked to our new topic. Our writing over the last 2 weeks has been inspired by this clip. We did a lesson on emotions and tracked the emotions of the main character throughout the clip. We put this information into a line graph.

The children wrote descriptive pieces predicting what they thought would happen during part of the clip, before writing a diary entry this week from the character’s perspective.

Next week we will write a poem inspired by the Queen’s Jubilee. We will also be starting a new class novel next week.

The children have worked really hard in maths over the last 2 weeks. Last week we continued our learning from before the Easter holidays on decimals. We were learning to add, subtract, multiply and divide decimal numbers. This week our focus has been on percentages. We have learnt to find the percentage of a number, as well as linking fractions, decimals and percentages.

Next week we will be revisiting multiplication and division strategies to give children more confidence. Some children will begin learning about BODMAS.

In Health and Wellbeing, we have been learning about food and nutrition since returning after the holidays. We learned about the importance of a healthy, balanced diet. I asked the children to keep a food diary for a week, and this week they sorted their daily meals and snacks onto nutrition plates. The children then looked for any patterns they could see with the food they eat.

Next week we will develop our understanding of the nutritional needs of people who have different cultural requirements and backgrounds.

We have started our new topic this term, which is Inventions that Changed the World. The children have told me what they would like to learn. We kicked off our topic with a STEM challenge to design and build a theme park with only paper, scissors and glue.

We have worked as a class to create a new wall display, showing a timeline of inventions from the 70s to current day.

Literacy – Last week we wrote a narrative poem as a class based on The Tale of the Three Brothers. The children enjoyed working with a pair to write part of the poem, then putting the verses together to make a whole-class piece of work.

Our class novel this term is Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone. Together we read chapter 7 before completing comprehension activities. The children particularly enjoyed ‘Blankety Blank’, where they were given a passage of text from the book with words blanked out. The children had to think of the most appropriate vocabulary to fill the blanks – points were awarded, with the highest number of points being awarded if the children used the word the author used originally. This got quite competitive!

Next week we will start planning a piece of persuasive writing linked to climate change and our current topic.

Maths – We completed our wall display showing the data we collected about children who attend clubs in and out of school.

We started learning about Time in maths. We re-capped 12- and 24-hour time, before moving on to short and long time intervals. The children planned a journey from Brechin to Edinburgh Zoo on public transport, where they were required to research and correctly read bus and train timetables. Some children have started learning the formulae for calculating Speed, Distance and Time.

We went on a ‘Converting Units of Time Scavenger Hunt’ in the playground. The children were to convert minutes to hours, hours to days etc.

HWB – In Health and Wellbeing our focus for the remainder to term is on Body Image and Self Esteem. The children had brilliant discussion on Appearance Ideals and where these pressures come from to look a certain way. The conversations around this topic lasted days! The children then drew what this ‘ideal’ person looked like, and we came to the conclusion that it was not realistic!

IDL – In the last few weeks in our Energy and Sustainability topic we have learned about pollution. We learned about the causes and effects of Soil/Land pollution, Air pollution, Visual pollution, Water pollution, Noise pollution and Light pollution.

Being guided by the children’s interests, this week we started to look in more depth at Climate Change. We researched how satellite images from space can be used to track Climate Change. We then entered a ‘Logo Lift Off Challenge’ competition to hopefully have our logos displayed on rockets being launched from the UK later this year!

Last week we went for a walk around the village to do some litter-picking. We talked about where the rubbish could have ended up if we did not pick it up. We collected 4 bags of rubbish!

In literacy, P6/7 have been analysing the Tale of the Three Brothers from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We created detailed story maps depicting the main points of the story. We are now learning to write narrative poems and will use the Tale of the Three Brothers as our inspiration.

We have started to apply our learning of Figurative Language (alliteration, similes/metaphors, onomatopoeia, personification) to our writing.

We finished our Fractions topic in maths and have moved onto Data and Analysis. So far, we have learned how to interpret and read bar and line graphs. The children chose what they would like to gather data on before drawing their own graphs.

Next week we will be looking at pie charts in more depth, before creating a display in the school hall showing how many pupils attend clubs and activities with graphs and charts.

Last week we celebrated Children’s Mental Health week – this year’s theme was Growing Together. We took part in a live assembly before discussing how we can look after our mental health. The children were encouraged to think about their support network that they can go to for help if needed.

We have been focusing on Substance Misuse and have so far learned about the dangers of smoking and drinking alcohol. Next week we will be learning about legal and illegal drugs.

Our current topic is Energy and Sustainability. We learned about what it means to be sustainable. To start our topic, we learned about the Global Goals for Sustainable Development, and we have chosen the ones we would like to focus on (see picture below). We also explored renewable and non-renewable sources of energy, discussing advantages and disadvantages of things like oil, coal, wind energy, geothermal energy, solar energy etc. This week we started learning about Oil and Gas in Scotland – we looked at what happens on an oil rig and how we get oil, and the children will make a poster for our wall display showing what they have learned.

We were very fortunate to have Mrs Armstrong with us last week doing an art lesson. The children made robots using electrical circuits before doing some robot-themed prints. P6/7 have been enjoying drama recently, where we have been looking at improvising and playing a character, thinking about body language and facial expressions.