Category: (4) Upper Stages

P6-7 Term 4 Update – May/June

Numeracy – Primary 6-7 are now going back to different areas of maths that we have covered during remote learning to do some revision and ensure we are secure with every area of mathematics before moving on to the next school year.

Literacy – The children have been planning and editing persuasive writing and are now moving on to discursive writing in line with our listening and talking debates.

Primary 6-7 learned how to write diamante poems this week and we are now moving on to the features of a debate and how it links to our Topic of Current Affairs.

Topic – The class have been learning about the difference between the House of Commons and the House of Lords this week. We’ve talked about the rigorous screening that laws must go through parliament.

 

Sports Challenge – P6-7 are planning an obstacle course with Miss Davie to showcase to the parents and guardians for our sports challenge day in June. We look forward to welcoming you!

 

If you need anything at all, you can contact me on jodi.riley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk or you can still contact me via Google Classroom.

P6/7 May 2021

Numeracy – The children have been learning to solve algebraic equations in class. They are practicing using one and two step function machines and using these skills to solve basic equations. Some of the children are multiplying out brackets in equations and simplifying them by collecting like terms.

Other curricular areas –  We have started our current affairs topic and are learning about devolved powers within the Scottish Parliament. We spoke about the recent election and will be learning about the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The children will also have a go at writing their own manifestos and forming political parties.

PE – The children are learning and choreographing a dance routine in partnership with me! I am so impressed with how hard they have worked on this and the effort and enthusiasm they have shown has been absolutely amazing. Hopefully we can showcase it in some format (virtually or otherwise) before the end of term.

Virtual Learning – Primary 6/7 have been fortunate enough to take part in a variety of virtual learning this term so far. Last week was TechFest where we learned about Marine Plastics with a session from Ocean Activist Emily Penn in partnership with Macduff Aquarium. We also joined a presentation from Dynamic Earth who taught us about our carbon footprint. You can calculate yours at https://footprint.wwf.org.uk/#/

If you need anything at all, you can contact me on jodi.riley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk or you can still contact me via Google Classroom.

P6-7 Term 4 Update

We have loved our time back at school! The children are really thriving being able to work alongside their peers again!

Literacy 
We are learning to infer (read between the lines) when we are reading our class novel, Wonder. We are using the formula ‘text clues + background knowledge = inference’ to try to understand things that the author doesn’t directly say in the text.

The class are learning to write persuasively. We are learning about putting across arguments, backing them up with more information, writing an introduction and a conclusion and using bossy verbs.

Numeracy 
The class have been measuring length, mass, and capacity with some using formula to calculate volume. We were using the scales to weigh things and jugs to measure volume.

We are moving on to revision of topics covered over the year and consolidating topics covered during remote learning.

Other curricular areas 

Topic – This term, we have been learning about Europe and will be moving on to Current Affairs. Within this the children will be having a mock election and will write manifestos.

PE – The P6-7’s have been putting their hockey skills of passing, dribbling, defending, tackling and shooting into practice and we have been playing games of 4 v 4 and 6 v 6.

Health and Wellbeing – We are continuing to work on building positive relationships within the classroom. We have covered name calling, friendships, language and appropriate behaviour in school.

 

Thank you all so much for taking the time to meet with me for our parent teacher meetings. It was lovely to see you all again! If you need anything at all, you can contact me on jodi.riley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk or you can still contact me via Google Classroom.

P6-7 April Update

We have loved our time back at school! The children are really thriving being able to work alongside their peers again!

Literacy 
We are constructing a timeline for our novel, Wonder. We are considering the main events in the novel and what impact they had on the main Character, August.

The class have finished their ‘Perfect Planet’ reviews and have done their second drafts and are typing up a finished copy!

The children are designing information leaflets for an imaginary potential new family considering moving to Fettercairn! We looked at the school website for inspiration and added any additional information such as COVID-19 procedures.

Next term, our focus will be persuasive writing and debating.

Numeracy 
The children are still working on Measure. 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 first few weeks of next term.

Other curricular areas –
PE – The P6-7’s hockey skills are really improving! We were learning to Indian Dribble this week. Next term we will be working up to playing small games of Hockey.

Health and Wellbeing – We are continuing to work on the Ethos in our classroom. We discussed gaining consent before entering someone else’s personal space and behaving appropriately in the playground.

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.

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.

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.

P6-7 Blog Update

Literacy: The class are continuing to read Wonder by R. J. Palacio and are working on different reading strategies in line with this. They have used the novel to inspire a diary entry, do some research around health conditions and are answering comprehension questions as we go.

The children are also doing some creative writing using different images as stimulus for this. I love that all of the children go completely in their own direction with this while at home!

 

Numeracy: Primary 6-7 are working on decimals and percentages at the moment and did a little revision of time (the fractions and decimals are tough!!). Next we are moving on to Money. The children will use real life contexts to add, subtract, multiply and divide money, with some working out profit and loss. The class are working on probability with Mrs Casasola.

Other curricular areas: The children have a Scottish themed booklet by Miss Davie to work through instead of the grid activities for their afternoon work. There is also a separate booklet of activates for ‘Wellbeing Wednesday’ for some screen-free activities to break up your week.

I am thoroughly enjoying our video conferencing chats. I really appreciate the children coming on to chat to each other and engage with me about their work. It almost feels “normal” when I have lots of the class looking back at me!

 

As always, if I can do anything more to help or you need anything at all, email me on jodi.riley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk or contact me via Google Classroom. Stay safe! Miss Riley.

P4/5 Online Learning Update

Maths,

We continue to consolidate our work from term 1 in addition and subtraction.  The children are working very well and considering how to carry-over / use number exchanges when the value in a column adds to more than 10.  We are looking at representing values pictorially to help visualise the numbers in addition and subtraction sums.

For example:

The chimney sum is written at the bottom of the page and the visual representation of these values are written in pictorial form above. This method can support children in ‘seeing’ the values or numbers that they are working with.

Carrying over or number exchange is when the number is each column adds to more than 10 and 1 unit or a ‘one’ needs to be added to the next column.

 

Literacy:

All the children have received reading books to read at home and have been invited to join a weekly reading meeting on Teams.  We have also just finished reading our class novel, ‘The Nowhere Emporium’.  We will start our new class novel which is the sequel to the Nowhere Emporium, The Elsewhere Emporium on the week beginning Monday 8th February.

We will be focusing in on our creative writing skills in February with weekly writing tasks aimed at building confidence in writing.  We will build on the class criteria for writing skills which include:

Layout – Date and title.

Grammar – Punctuation, Use of quotation marks as appropriate, capital letters and full stops.

Expanding vocabulary – Using wow words appropriately.

Awareness of writing – To be able to re-read or redraft work, looking for and fixing mistakes.

There have been fantastic examples of creative writing handed in so far, I have been very impressed with the standard of work and incredible imagination of the children!  Keep up the good work.

P6-7 Remote Learning Update

I hope you are all safe and well as we begin remote learning and teaching again. I trust the packs provided with learning materials have been beneficial and that they make home learning a little easier for your family.

 

Literacy – P6-7 have started a new whole class novel ‘Wonder’ by R J Palacio. The children are enjoying the theme of ‘kindness’ running through and answering questions based on the book. It is lovely that they all have something in common to chat about while they can’t be together.

The children wrote Scots Poem’s with a COVID theme – and I have to say I was so impressed with them! We are continuing to practice our spelling using different strategies and doing some French with Mrs Casasola.

Numeracy – Primary 6-7 are working on concepts with fractions. They have been changing improper fractions to mixed numbers, adding and subtracting fractions and multiplying and dividing them!

Next, we are moving on to decimals and then a little breather with some revision on time. In the children’s home packs there are help sheets and some concrete materials to aid with this. There are also links to YouTube videos and BBC Bitesize to help support the children.

Other curricular areas: There is a grid on Google Classroom that is refreshed every two weeks with a multitude of activities for the children to choose from covering Health and Wellbeing, Drama, Art and Science.  Our topic this term is Light and Sound, with the children doing some research around this at home, as well as the opportunity to do an experiment.

I will use the timetabled slots for the next fortnight to meet with the children via Video Conferencing wherever possible. This is to help and support the children with specific questions regarding their work or just to have a chat. The timetable is available on Google Classroom and in the next packs.

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.