Welcome!
Welcome to our blog and online newsletter for Term 2! We have been incredibly busy in P6M this term so far. We have started our new whole-school cross-curricular topic of Space. We will be learning about various aspects of space, including astronauts, space travel and the Space Race, as well as the planets in our solar system, comets, meteors, asteroids and shooting stars. We have been learning about the first British astronaut, Tim Peake, and we will be following his journey as he prepares to visit the International Space Station (ISS). We will be learning about this topic through different curricular areas, including Literacy, Numeracy, Technology, Heath and Wellbeing and, of course, Science.
Primary 6 will be teaming up with Primary 2 to explore how astronauts stay healthy and what they eat. We will find out more about this soon.
Numeracy
In Numeracy, we are mainly focusing on addition, subtraction and multiplication of thousands, hundreds, tens and units. We are practising and improving our 9 times table. We have been working on developing our skills of using numbers in the millions and recognising the values of these numbers. We are also working on multiplying thousands, hundreds, tens and units by a one-digit number. We often use Education City as a resource for learning a new concept or developing our skills within a familiar one. We will be using Numeracy in our Space topic, too! This will involve using our knowledge of weight, scale and measure, as well as learning about the extreme temperatures in our solar system by using negative numbers. We will also be developing our knowledge of decimals soon as we strengthen our understanding of using whole numbers in different contexts.
Literacy
In Literacy, we are learning about and developing different reading, writing and listening and talking skills. We are reading group novels by authors such as Michael Morpurgo and Philip Pullman. Eventually we will rotate these novels so that we all get a chance to read them! We have been developing our comprehension skills by using Reading Detectives activities. Some of our reading, especially non-fiction texts, is found through our cross-curricular topic of Space. We have been focusing on various writing skills this term and have been particularly focused on up-levelling our writing by using VCOP to make it more interesting. This helps especially with creative and imaginative writing as we have been talking about creating suspense and atmosphere to grip your reader’s attention. We will be using our Space topic in writing, too: we will be writing letters, imaginative stories, poems and persuasive arguments soon which focus around our topic.
Health and Wellbeing
P6M have been developing their gymnastics skills this term. We have also been going on our ‘Daily Mile’ as part of Physical Education: we attempt to walk one mile each day (weather permitting!) to improve our fitness levels and stamina. We set personal goals before the October holidays and many of us have achieved this already! One mile is about six laps of the school’s Trim Trail and we can choose is we walk, skip or jog this.
Art and Music
P6M continues to work with our specialist Art and Music teachers, Mrs Barron and Mrs Pennie, on a Tuesday. We will also be working on Art and Music activities within class which relate to our class topic. We will also be starting to rehearse our Christmas concert songs with P6T!
We will be keeping this blog as up to date as possible, so please keep checking back for more information about what we are doing in P6M!