We had the opportunity to take part in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) workshop today. Our instructor, Karen, brought along Knex for us to make water wheels that would generate electricity.

It was great fun and all teams successfully made the object spin, therefore demonstrating that they had generated electricity. We then experimented with the force of the water we used with our water wheels to see if this caused the object to spin faster or slower.

We went on a very interesting and enjoyable trip to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh today.

We got to take a seat in the debating chamber, we were taken on a tour of the building and we got to meet some MSPs.

We finished our day with a game of Rounders at the bottom of Arthur’s Seat.

Here are some photos of our day…

We had a very successful Outdoor Learning Day today!

Our outdoor activities today were:

*Running relay races in PE

*Writing a ‘Summer is…’ poem after going on a noticing walk and being surprised by the things we see everyday but never really pay attention to.

*Creating a visual representation of the number of seats held by each political party in the Scottish Parliament.

*Applying our data handling knowledge to create a human bar graph to represent the number of children who have birthdays in each month of the year.

Here are some photos for you to enjoy…

Dear Parent/Carer,

I hope you find the following information useful. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me

Learning focus this term:

This term the children will develop their learning about Scottish Parliament by:

• Comparing and contrasting the role of Scottish Parliament and UK Parliament.
• Researching the roles of key figures with in the Scottish Parliament.
• Investigating the main parties and what their policies are.
• Visiting the Scottish Parliament.

In a series of Sustainability lessons, the children will be learning about the impact that plastic and non-recyclable products have on our planet. Through these lessons pupils will learn to/about:

• The impact plastic is having on the earth, sea and the creatures that live in both.
• Investigate what society can do to help the issue.
• Conduct a school based campaign to raise awareness of a sustainability related issue.

Core Literacy:

We will be focusing on creative writing to ensure our stories are well structured and full of interesting and engaging language. Through our topic, we will be applying our learning to a variety of functional writing tasks.

This term we will be reading and studying ‘Wonder’ as our class novel.

Throughout this term we will be learning about/to:

• Identify the author’s style, applying prediction and inference skills and identifying various forms of rhetoric.
• Developing our knowledge and understanding of our own talking and listening skills.
• We will continue to use VCOP strategies to develop our writing.
• We will develop our creative writing skills, including quality descriptions, various forms of rhetoric and correct structure.
• Children will be given opportunities to develop their listening and talking skills through a variety of class based activities, including cooperative group work and debating.
• The children will read a novel during class reading lessons and will use Blooms Buttons and Book Detective strategies to check their comprehension.

Core Numeracy:

• Pupils will be able to read, interpret and create various forms of graphs.
• Pupils will be working on developing knowledge and understanding of the strategies required to solve word problems.
• Pupils will be using mental and written strategies to solve mathematical problems
• Pupils will apply their knowledge of multiplication, division, decimals and fractions to solve word problems.

General Information:

Our PE days will be Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

We will continue to have Art, Music and Spanish on a three week cycle.

Homework will be issued on a Monday and should be returned on Friday morning.

Reading homework will be issued on a weekly basis.

Many thanks,

Mrs Brown

We had a fun afternoon cheering on the Redwell Euro Quiz team as they competed in the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh! We were very proud of our team and loved catching sight of them on the live feed.

Some of Primary 6 went to the Clackmannan County Cricket Club to take part in a Kwik Cricket competition. 23 pupils took part in 3 teams in a variety of games and skills practice.

All of the pupils have been working on the skills needed with Mr Richardson as part of PE. The pupils worked well in their teams and demonstrated great sportsmanship.

Redwell A came third and received bronze medals. All the teams did the school proud.

We were very privileged to have a special visitor this afternoon. Duncan Scott, a former St John’s pupil, came along to share his swimming success story with us.

Duncan recently competed in the Commonwealth Games and won a gold, silver and 4 bronze medals. We had the opportunity to ask Duncan some questions about how he became a competitive swimmer and found out about his journey into Team Scotland.

Duncan also spoke about getting the opportunity to race against his childhood hero, Michael Phelps.

It was a fantastic opportunity for us to hear all about his sport, training and successes. We were very impressed and enjoyed our afternoon finding out about Duncan.