This week we were sad to say goodbye to Miss MacLean who was a teaching student from Stirling University.  Miss MacLean has spent the last 5 weeks in our class and so we were very lucky to have two teachers teaching us for a while.  We wish Miss MacLean all the best for her next teaching placement.

This week we also learned about Roman Mosaics and we worked on creating our own complicated pictures using small mosaic tiles.  What do you think?

A visit from the SSPCA was a great way to end our week.  Leigh was great fun and she had so many exciting stories to tell us about what goes on in her job and what a great job they do in order to keep all the animals (pets and wild animals) safe.  We enjoyed playing a game where we had to put ourselves in the shoes of the workers for the SSPCA and attempt to prioritise a variety of jobs that may arise for them on a daily basis.  It was such a tricky job but we now know that if an animal is injured then that becomes the most important job and we would need to see to that first.

Primary 4 have been so busy since we got back to school that we haven’t had time to up date our blog.  So here is a wee summary of what we have been doing since January.

We were really excited to start our new topic all about the Romans.  We have learned about the Roman Army and all of the groups that go together to make a Legion.  There are 8 men in a Contubernium, this is the smallest group in the whole Legion.  A century has 80 men in it and a Cohort has 480 men in it and then there is The Cavalry which has 120 men and they are used for scouts and messengers.  Altogether there was over 5,000 soldiers in a Legion.  We have used these names for our class cooperative learning groups and this is helping us to remember them all especially ‘contubernium’ because it is such a tricky word.

We really enjoyed making our mini and life size Roman Soldiers. They look amazing on our classroom wall!

We also learned a Scottish song and poem for our Scot’s Event, which was held in school on Friday 25th January.  We really enjoyed reciting our poem ‘A Dug, A Dug’ by Bill Keys because it is really funny and Ben from our class does it so well that he has been chosen to compete in the Burn’s competition being held this week.  We wish him the best of luck!  ‘ The Welly Boot Song’ was also great fun to learn.  It was really amusing listening to everyone singing in Scots.

As well as all of that we have been working on our times table skills in maths, focusing on beginnings, middles and endings in story writing and we have been introduced to writing Book Reviews.  As always the children in primary 4 have been busy busy bees.  They have  had a great start to the year and we are looking forward to taking on the rest of the challenges that face us in 2013!