All posts by Mrs Johnston

December, November, P1 M Blog, P1W Blog, P2 Blog, P3 Blog, P4 Blog, P5/6 Blog, P6/7 Blog

School Trip to Pantomime – Sleeping Cutie  

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This year the whole school trip to the pantomime at the MacRobert Arts Centre will be Sleeping Cutie on Tuesday 4th December 2018.

In order to confirm the booking we would be grateful if you could please return the completed permission slip below along with payment by Friday 23rd November 2018.  

As always the pantomime is subsidised by the parent council and we are grateful for their contribution.  The subsidised cost is £7.00 per child and must be paid by 23rd November 2018.  Any late payments will be for the full cost of £14.00 per child.

We will be unable to take children to the pantomime for whom we have not received payment and permission slip. Any permission slips received without full payment will be returned.

Click here to view a printable copy of letter sent home with permission slip attached.pantomime 2018

November

Assembly 2/11/18

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Thank you to all of the family and friends who came to Primary 5/6 Assembly this afternoon. Primary 5/6 shared everything that they had learned about endangered animals and how we can all work together to protect our environment and their habitats. Things that we can do included – reduce, reuse and recycle glass, cardboard,metals and plastics, use bamboo toothbrushes and put our litter in bins. The children were very confident. Well done everyone!

As part of our school improvement priorities to encourage and support reading,  BillieRose, Nikodem, Rosie and Noah S, talked about books that they were enjoying including ‘TheSmartest Giant In Town’, ‘The Hodgeheg’ and ‘The Snail and the Whale’. All classes will have a chance to share their favourite stories over the coming weeks at assembly.

Please see below for our ‘Deerpark Stars’ for this week!

Signers of the Week
Leah Brown  and Hannah MacFarlane.

PE Stars
Alix , Patrycja , Noah S  and Leah.

Numeracy Stars
Ted, Blane , Robert, Nikodem,  Steven and Xander.

Literacy Stars
Duncan, Nyco , Chloe W, Conner, Katie, Leah and David

Star Pupils
Alexander, Ava, Jake K, Noah P, Dean , HannahMac, Leah C

Clean Cloakroom of the Week – Primary 6/7

Most improved Clean Classroom of the Week – Primary 2.

Clean Classroom of the Week – Primary 1W!

Well done to everyone for their efforts and achievements this week. We are proud of you all.

Have a happy and safe bonfire weekend. Remember to vote for your favourite Guy on Sparks in the Park Alloa Round Table Facebook Pages. Perhaps Deerpark will win for the third year in a row……

* Confident individual, * Effective contributor, * Responsible citizen, * Successful learner, Health and Wellbeing, November, P5/6 Blog, P6/7 Blog

P5/6 and P6/7 visit to United Auctions

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Today we went to United Auctions in Stirling, to learn all about farming.

We visited a range of different stalls including ‘eggtastic’ eggs, lif eof chicks with the Coop, bees, food assurance, cereals, muesli,transport, animals, food miles and dairy.

🍎 🥩 🐣 🥚 🐄


At each stall we learned about the importance of farming in these different areas, the jobs connected to them and the different skills and interests required for different roles.

🐝 🍯✈ 🚛

Our last stop was a trip to the auction mart, where we bid on the different animals that we had met earlier in the day.

Deerpark hadthe highest bid for the geese and the Pigmy Goats. 🐐
We participated, listened well and gave positive feedback about our experience, when we returned to school.

P1 M Blog

P1M ~ A Snapshot of our First Term

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P1M doing a fantastic job at developing our pencil control.

 

We had the Scottish Wildlife Trust in class today to talk about thewildlife in our local environment. We learned about various animals including deer, sheep, basking sharks and foxes.

Today we had Liz Ferrall from the Bat Conservation for Scotland visiting our class. She told us more about different bat species in Scotland, their anatomy and where they could live. We discovered some bats live close to our school! Fantastic listening throughout the presentation! Well done all P1’s!

We were learning about the properties of 2D shapes today! We used straws and Lego to check how many sides and corners each shape had. We also had to select specific shapes to make animal pictures. Well done everyone!

 

P1M making sure they can form the sounds we have learned sofar! We used pens on paper, Lego and even our bodies to form the sounds!

As our class topic is ‘Our Environment’, we went for a walk in our playground environment and collected some objects to help us fill an empty autumn tree. We looked at various creatures and plants! We took time to look at the sky, the pupils described this as‘beautiful’!

We have been learning numbers 1-5 and have been practising forming our numerals. We have also been learning our sounds this week.

Practising writing the number 4 in a variety of ways.

Well done everyone, you all worked hard when forming your numerals.

Outdoor learning practising forming our numerals. We have learned 1,2 and 3 so far!.Well done everyone!

In P1M we were developing our memory skills, completing listening tasks using our 4 rules of listening and playing circle time games that promote good listening and turn taking.

Sharon from Child Smile came into class today to speak to the children about brushing their teeth. They met Elvis the dinosaur and have all been given a toothbrush for brushing their teeth in school! Letters in school bags  with more information.

Picnic social snack  in P1M. Pupils can chat,eat their snack and then spend their play time outside playing. Today the pupils wanted to listen to a story whilst they ate their snack, so we read ‘The Lighthouse Keepers Cat’!

P1M exploring their local environment with Jenny Ventham from the Forestry Commission.

They were learning about North, South,East and West.

Collecting items to remind us of our journey outside the school and were being responsible partners whilst we walked in our local environment.

We then sorted all the items into the order we found them on our walk.

 

P1W Blog

P1W ~ A Snapshot of our First Term

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Congratulations to our P1W dancer who returned to school today from a VERY successful dance competition in Wales! All of P1W are reallyproud of you. Well done!

 

Well done to P1W children for standing up in front of the WHOLE school at assembly this morning and sharing some of our favourite books that we have read as a class. You all did very well and were very brave.

A very impressive collage of the children developing their pencil control. Good work P1 W

Great teamwork, being helpful and lots of great sharing.

 

* Confident individual, * Effective contributor, * Responsible citizen, * Successful learner, P5/6 Blog, P6/7 Blog, Problem Solving, Thinking Skills, Working with others

P5/6 & P6/7 Visit to Forth Bridges Education Centre

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Primary 5/6 and 6/7 enjoyed a visit to the Forth Bridges Education Centre Exhibition Area in South Queensferry.

We enjoyed finding out about the Forth Bridges and Engineering from Elaine, the Civil Engineer who was our guide for the morning.

Then we all took part in an engineering workshop challenge to build the tallest structure we could using small wooden blocks. We had a fabulous time and learned a great many things throughout the day.

Our team building, leadership, planning and organisational skills were excellent, with everyone working well in their teams and each group produced impressive stuctures!

We ended our visit with a stroll accross the Forth Road Bridge.

P2 Blog

P2 ~ A Snapshot of our First Term

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We are reading The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark in class. Today we made clay owls. We will paint them when they are dry and then we will bring them home to show you.

 

This afternoon we learned about different vegetables that are grown on a farm. We learnt how carrots get from farm to the shop and how crisps are made.
Later we cleaned our hands then followed safety instructions to peel or grate a carrot using kitchen tools. Primary 2 were responsible and listened well – well done!!🥕🥕🥕

P2 have been challenged to have a chat with you about how another food is made and tell you where bread, carrots or crisps come from to share some of their learning! Please support this & encourage pupils to share

Primary 2 first Stay and play of the new term was a success……children were all excited to share what  activity they liked best.
There will be other opportunities throughout this term. Thanks to all.

Primary 2 learned about where bread came from and how it is turned from wheat to bread.

Then we made a healthy sandwich with lettuce, cucumber and tomato!

Yesterday’s photographs of our time working with Jenny in the woods. We learnt about animal habitats, listened to a fantastic story about a hedgehog that was looking for somewhere to live and made hedgehog homes for hedgehogs to hibernate in! A great morning with amazing listening skills from P2.

 

We are learning all about Farms and how they work! We started offtoday by looking at how the farms in Sauchie look and painting apicture of the fields. Some people told me they even have cowsbehind their house!

 

A very successful first day in P2! Lots of hard work, good listening and smiling faces!

 

P4 Blog

P4 ~ A Snapshot of our First Term

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SCIENCE:
A few photos from our experiment today where we learned a bit about stratification (where liquids don’t mix because of their properties).

The children had really interesting ideas as to why the colours didn’t mix when water was added.

All groups had the chance to change one variable in their experiment. Some chose to add hot water, some added more coldwater, some just changed the number or arrangement of the skittles. What they realised was that hot water evoked a quicker recruit where the colour left the skittles ‘like when you wash mud off yourself in the shower’

We took our numeracy learning outside this morning. We used chalk to practise a variety of number sequences.

 

Primary 4 made fruit kebabs and fruit smoothies today as part of our Fit for Life topic.

They all worked very well in making sure everything was properly cleaned before we started and they also worked very safely when chopping the fruit. A great time was had by all !

 

Today’s maths session focused on introducing compass points.This is useful as this topic really focuses on direction andpositional language.

We covered the 4 cardinal points (North, East, South and West)and briefly looked at North East, South East, South West and NorthWest.

 

Today the children worked on Fairy Tale STEM during science. They worked collaboratively to plan and implement a design for a raft, which would allow the goats to bypass the troll by avoiding the bridge.

The only items they could use were straws and pipe cleaners, but after learning beforehand about their properties the children were able to make decisions about how best to use them.

Some interesting ideas and good thinking today – with great examples of resilience in an activity where the solution wasn’t obvious.

Well done Primary 4!

P5/6 Blog

P5/6 ~ A Snapshot of our First Term

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We’ve been working in teams this term in PE.

As part of a new Health and Wellbeing programme (RSHPScotland), we have been revisiting ‘friendship’.
This week we looked at ‘fall outs’.
Before discussing this topic, we played a game of human bingo. We had to find different people in the class that matched to each of the 12 statements on our cards. It was a fun way to warm up our thinking and talking/listening skills.

Earlier in the week P.C. Laura Robertson came into to talk to us about wildlife crime.
She spoke to us about some of the crimes that are committed,involving Scottish wildlife, ways to make sure our actions don’t harm wildlife or get us into bother and what to do if we discover a wildlife crime has been committed.
We had lots of questions for Laura and enjoyed seeing all the different resources she brought with her.
She was impressed with how much we knew already!

Today we had visitors, Catherine and Nick, from the Scottish Wildlife Trust come in to talk to us about local animals.
They set up 4 stations for us to explore:
1) feely boxes
2) matching skulls to the animal
3) beaver dam building
4) wild cat vs domestic cat
We all really enjoyed ourselves.
The charity are going to send Mrs Robertson info to let us set up a wildlife group in the school too!

The whole school enjoyed Stuart Reid’s presentation this morning.
They learned a lot about what inspires his stories and about techniques that they can use in their own story writing (onomatopoeia, alliteration, ellipsis, visualisation).
Everyone was engrossed from start to finish.

After the school event, the class enjoyed a workshop lead by Stuart.
He talked to them about how to be successful in writing.
The class will hopefully put some of his ideas and suggestions in to practise.

Following the workshop, the children had a go at writing their own character descriptions, using Stuart’s suggestions.
The characters they developed will hopefully feature in some future stories.
During daily mile time, some boys who purchased Stuart’s books couldn’t put them down, so asked to read instead! 📖

 

We enjoyed our talk from Liz from the Bat Conservation Trust today.
Lots of things to consider when thinking about caring for local wildlife. 🦇

Loose Parts Play

Reading buddies 📚 📖

We were involved in both indoor and outdoor learning experiences today to help us understand and discuss natural vs manmade and biodegradable vs non-biodegradable materials.

Thursday morning active spelling before art. Lots of different activities going on.
Some of us opted to practise this week’s spelling words but others, who felt confident in the spelling rules, challenged themselves with spelling different words.

The upstairs reading buddies group in action

Today’s Loose Parts Play.
We had Kadi’s nans soup in the mud kitchen, crate building (and crashing), a new tyre swing, trucks, jumping, a tyre tutu and lots more!
Imagination, risk taking, teamwork and fun!

Two pupils asked to share their homework about polar bears this afternoon. The class enjoyed listening to their facts.

Using our own methods to complete a range of addition questions.

Numeracy- sharing strategies for a variety of addition sums.

ICT- practising computer skills (opening/saving/editing).

 Active spelling this morning.
Children took responsibility for their own learning by deciding how to practise their groups’ spelling rules.
 
 Practising place value outdoors.

Some P5-6 pupils representing the school at cross country this afternoon! Well done everyone for your fantastic efforts! 🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♀️

Hard at work during Numeracy Ninjas this morning. Lots of different techniques and strategies on display for solving problems.

 Today’s Loose Parts Play experience. Lots of creativity and communication going on.

 

Today we enjoyed an outdoor learning experience with the loca lcountryside ranger.
We looked at which species had their habitat in the local woods and then looked at the habitat of the school playing field. We also tried to lure some worms up from their underground habitat.