1st April – Primary 4/5

This week, the children have been working hard on multiplication and division and improving our skills in maths word problems.  We have also been working on 1 and 2 digit multiplication sums.

In literacy this week we had a class debate on whether children should wear school uniforms.  This topic was chosen by the children and they conducted themselves very well and had a well-reasoned debate.  The children also watched a video clip from CBBC Newsround on the opinions and ideas other children had on school uniform.  The children then wrote an essay on what they considered were the pro’s and cons of school uniform.

We have finished off our WW2 project this week with colourful posters telling evacuees to stay safe in the country.  The children thought about the different ways in which they could convey this message when they created the posters.

 

Term 4

Term 4 will begin with consolidation of multiplication and division in maths.  The children will be learning about different techniques for multiplying and dividing.  With the better weather, I hope to be doing more outdoor learning to extend understanding.  We will continue with daily practice of times tables so that the children maintain their fluency.

In literacy, we will continue with our class novel, ‘The Elsewhere Emporium’. We will use the novel to read for enjoyment and for listening skills.

Our class project at the beginning of next term will be ‘Dissolving Solids’, and I’m looking forward to doing some experiments with the children!

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.

P3/4 – 1st April

The children have worked incredibly hard since returning to school 6 weeks ago, and I am so pleased with the way they settled back into school and learning.

Literacy – Last week the children finished their diary entries for the Young Writer’s Competition. They are all so proud of their work! To conclude our topic on Habitats, this week we wrote a Habitat Fact File on our favourite habitat we learned about over the last 6 weeks.

We consolidated our knowledge of our spelling sounds we have covered since we returned to school. The children practised their words in lots of active ways at different spelling stations. The children said they enjoyed revisiting previous sounds as it helped to refresh their understanding!

Next term, we will learn in more depth about persuasive writing and poetry.

Maths – Last week we finished our topic on Division. We worked hard to apply their knowledge of division to various problem-solving activities. The children worked well to support one another.

This week we learned about Ancient Roman and Egyptian Numerals – the children have loved it and said it felt like they were learning a special secret code! It was great to see some of the children linking their new learning to a real-world context, remembering where they have seen Roman Numerals used before (on clocks, sundials etc).

Next term we will learn about measure, weight and capacity, as well as fractions. With Miss Davie, the children will work on their problem-solving skills in maths.

Health and Wellbeing – We continued with our focus on Safety in Health and Wellbeing. We discussed Safe and Unsafe places. We also revisited our ‘Learning Line’ display which we learned about prior to lockdown. The children created a ‘mini-me’ figure to be displayed on the Learning Line, and as we go forward into next term, we will use these to show our progress along the Learning Line when learning new concepts. This will encourage the children to reflect on their own learning and next steps.

IDL – Since returning to school, the children have loved our Habitats topic! We have explored Woodland, Ocean, Rainforest and Artic habitats. Last week, we had a whole day themed on The Arctic. We started the day by going through Security to travel by plane! We learned about Air Resistance, Artic Animals, and how people live in the Arctic. The children showed so much excitement and enthusiasm! This week, the children chose their favourite habitat and created a habitat in a shoe box – they are very effective!

 

P4/5 – March 2021

It has been wonderful to welcome our P4/5 children back to school.  The children have been very excited to be back at school.  We have had a lot of class discussions on the good and bad points of lockdown and returning to school and the clear winner was being back at school!

Maths:  This week we have returned to addition and subtraction in maths to ensure the children have a sound understanding.  We will continue with addition and subtraction until the end of this term.

Literacy:  We continue to read the class novel, “The Elsewhere Emporium”.  We will be writing some creative stories based on this novel next week.

We have also had a look at debates around topical issues.  This week the children voted to discuss racism and wrote an essay to explain what they understood racism to be.

Science:  We continue with our Friday science afternoon and today the children were looking at the effect of gravity on an egg.  The children designed a protective cocoon for the egg and they were dropped from a height of around 6 feet onto the playground.  Two out of 6 egg survived, well done to all the groups, there were lots of great ideas!

 

Egg being dropped from a height of around 6 feet.

This egg survived!

As ever, if you wish to discuss your child, please don’t hesitate to contact me at yvonne.baddeley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk

 

P1/2 Numeracy and Mathematics

P1/2 have been learning about Data Handling.

P1 has been organising , displaying and interpreting data to make a simple graph, for example counting the different numbers of coloured spots on a t shirt and showing it as a bar graph.

P2 have been working on organising their data in a table before using the table headings to label a bar graph and transfer the information. Then they have answered questions about the graph .

P3/4 – March 2021

In Literacy, we have been focusing on writing a diary entry for a Young Writers competition the children are excited to enter. We have explored lots of different ideas and have been working very hard to plan and write an amazing diary entry. The children’s imaginations have run wild and they have been very creative! We have worked hard to up-level our sentences to include adjectives to make our writing interesting to the reader.

We continue to learn a new spelling rule each week and practise this through our spelling homework and active spelling activities in class.

The children’s fluency in reading has continued to improve. We have been working on our comprehension skills to dig deeper on our understanding of what we have read. You can continue to use the comprehension cards at home to support this.

 

Over the last 2 weeks in Maths, we finished our topic on Multiplication and moved onto Division. So far, we have learned about dividing by 2, 3, 5 and 10. We have used cubes and Numicon to support our learning. With Miss Davie, the children have been learning about Information Handling, looking at different charts and graphs.

In Health and Wellbeing, we are focussing on Safety. We have discussed safety around medicines and made posters to show what we learned about safe medicine use. We have considered different scenarios, and how safe or unsafe they would make us feel. We continue to engage in daily mindfulness activities.

The children are loving our Habitats topic! We have explored Woodland, Ocean and Rainforest habitats to far. We went for a walk in the local woods to spot some plants and animals we learned about in the classroom. We used the iPads to research different Ocean Animals. We used the ‘Jigsaw Learning’ method to learn about Rainforests – each group were given a different aspect of the Rainforest to research and create a poster on. The children then became the teacher and taught their peers about what they learned. Each group gave feedback to one another – this was a big hit!

 

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.

P4/5 Update

Maths – We have moved on in maths from addition and subtraction to multiplication and division.  We continue with our daily times table practice to ensure fluency and accuracy.  A good knowledge and understanding of times tables will really help support the children with the multiplication and division lessons.

Arrays:  We have been looking at different ways to represent times tables including arrays which show how to group numbers together is a very visual way.

Below is an array depicting the sum 4 x 6 = 24 and 6 x 4 = 24.  Making these visual connections helps to understand that it doesn’t matter which way round the sum is, you still get the same answer.

Literacy

We have recently finished our exciting class novel, ‘The Nowhere Emporium’.  The children have completed a lot of their creative writing based around the novel and have produced some amazing stories.  We have also started the sequel to ‘The Nowhere Emporium’, called ‘The Elsewhere Emporium’.  Our main characters are on a new adventure and I am excited to find out where it leads us!  The children recently wrote a story based around the novel where they found themselves in a carnival and had to describe what kind of magical event would take place when they entered one of the tents.

Here is an example of one of the stories, well done to the writer who followed our class criteria for writing which is linked to the curriculum for excellence expectations and outcomes.

Example of our ‘Elsewhere Emporium’ stories.

Return to school.

I am very much looking forward to returning to school on the 15th of March and I hope that your child(ren) is too. If you have any concerns about your child and their return to school please do send me an email and I will be glad to help.

Best Regards

Mrs. Baddeley

 

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.

P1/2 – School Return

After our return we did some assessments and dived into learning!

 

P1 have started learning reading and writing 2 letter sounds and continued to revise number bonds to 10. P2 have been ordering numbers to 100 and 1000 and counting in steps of 10.

 

 

In H&W we have learnt about the importance of a good night’s sleep. We talked about good routines and how they affect our learning.

In topic we found out about carbohydrates, protein and dairy, and how they help us grow. We enjoyed sorting food and thinking about what is healthy. We are putting it into practice in our Healthy Café corner.