We are sorry we did not upload a blog post last week , here is what we have been up to…

Writing – some of the class entered their piece of writing into the BBC 500 word competition. Miss Mcewan was really proud of so many of us being confident individuals and entering our story (and thinks we have a big chance of winning).

-We completed our writing  in a different format tis week through ‘story boards’. To start our thinking we completed an ‘I see, I think, I wonder’ activity to get our brains thinking about pictures. We then all picked a picture to use as a stimulus for our story, and then created our writing with beautiful illustrations to match. Take a look at how fantastic these looked…

Maths – we have been working on fractions and building up our understanding of these. This week we have been focusing on finding a fraction of an amount, we noticed the link this has with division and how we can use strategies to find fractions of amounts.

We also linked maths with PE this week in a ‘building fitness challenge’. In PE we completed a number of different excersised and recorded how many reps we could do in a minute with a partner. In class we used calculators to add up the total number of reps in our pairs and converted this amount to metres. We then worked out what building we would be able to climb according to our reps completed. We enjoyed using the calculators and learning how to use them correctly…

IDL – we have been learning about the sensory organs and their functions in our topic ‘Human Body Systems’. We are all very enthusiastic and have lots of questions to ask and stories to share, we love learning all the weird and wonderful facts about our bodies.

Makaton – We have been learning lots of new Makaton, Miss Mcewan is so impressed with how much we all remember. We learned the alphabet and practiced spelling our names. As a class we sang a song and signed using Makaton at the same time, we are experts…

World Book Day – On Thursday it was world book day, we were very lucky to have a guest reader in to visit us. We also got a delivery on world book day, it was a parcel with a new book inside for Miss Mcewan to read to us. We all love a picture book and all the questions and discussion that come from these.

Quotes of the week:

‘This week we did fractions and it was very hard but I tried and tried again’

‘I loved when we did sensory organ posters such as the mouth and the ears’

‘PE was amazing, I liked it because we got to do lots of activities. We practiced Makaton and we learned lots of new words’

‘This week we did sensory organs in topic it was very interesting finding out how they work’

Makaton – This week we learned more Makaton signs and practiced singing a song with Makaton. We all have a fantastic memory and can remember all the signs. Ask me to show you the signs for: noodles, butter, jam, yoghurt, dog, bird and TV.

Human Body – We made group information posters on either the respiratory, circulatory or digestive system. We had to include a clear title, key information and pictures. We then shared our posters with the class and peer assessed them to check if we met the Success Criteria.

As we looked into the digestive system we were exploring the small and large intestines. We used string to measure the length of these…

Class Novel – We have been using our class novel as a focus for our reading activities this week. We worked with a pair to highlight exciting, descriptive vocabulary in the book. We then had to guess the meaning of the word before finding it in a dictionary and making our own sentences.

Art – we created toucans focusing on contrasting colours. We used paper plates to make these and had to design our own toucan beak using contrasting colours. These looked so cool when they were finished…

Thank you for reading our blog 🙂 

This week in P5E…

Literacy – We have started sentence battles in our class, this is an activity that allows us to uplevel sentences by adding exciting vocabulary, openers, connectives, punctuation and description. We complete this whilst a song is on and then we read our peers and decide the winning sentence from our team. There are 4 people in the final and whoever gains the most points wins. This is a really fun way of improving our writing.

In writing this week we completed our imaginative stories from our plans. We all did such a fantastic job and Miss Mcewan was so impressed with the improvement in our writing. We then focused on redrafting our writing on the laptops, taking our feedback and working on this.

Maths – This week in maths we were converting 12 and 24 hour time. We then looked at real timetables from Alloa that were in 24 hour time, from this we created our own timetables – ‘day in the life of us’. We had the choice of completing it in 12 or 24 hour time and then we had to swap our timetable with a friend who then converted it. We all have worked super hard using time so ask me at home to tell the time in different ways.

IDL – This week in topic we have looked at the respiratory system and the circulatory system, ask me about these to see what I know…

Thank you for reading our blog 🙂

Maths – Time

We have been learning about 12 and 24 hour time this week and have worked on converting between both times. This has been  very tricky at times but we are all showing a growth mindset and have made great progress.

IDL – Human Body Systems

This week in IDL we have been learning about the main organs and their functions. We then worked in groups to created a life size picture and added the main organs to this, together we labelled the organs with their function.

Here are some pictures of our fabulous work…

Makaton 

Miss McEwan is currently taking part in a Makaton training programme and is sharing all of her new learning with us each week. We are all very enthusiastic about learning Makaton and we aim to try and use it more in our daily routine. Ask me to show you how to sign some different words in Makaton…

This week we said goodbye to Miss Robinson who is going to Uganda, we were very sad to see her go but we are wishing her all the luck in the world in her new adventure.

Thank you for reading our blog 🙂

Miss Mcewan – P5E

Dear Parent/Carer,

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

General Information:

We had a very busy but enjoyable second term in Primary 5.  We completed our Romans topic, which provided the opportunity to learn about the Roman Empire and the impact of the Romans in Britain.  Our Fairtrade topic was interesting and we had the opportunity to learn about a range of Fairtrade products.  We completed a variety of areas of Maths, including directions, co-ordinates, shape and multiplication.

Homework will continue to be issued on a Monday and should be returned on a Friday. As well as this, children are encouraged to complete reading at home whether it is a book from school or a book of choice at home.

The children will take part in 3 PE lessons per week and these will be on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.  PE kit can be kept in the classroom.

The children will continue to earn DOJO points for positive behaviour and choices within the classroom.  House Points will be awarded in the playground and when they are lining up.

We continue to add information to our class BLOG and this will be updated weekly.  Our BLOG can be accessed via the school website.

Learning focus this term:

This term in IDL we will be learning about Body Systems.

Through our topic we will be learning about/to:

• The function of the major organs in the body.
• How tissues and organs formed.
• What the sensory organs are and how they help me.
• How my body responds to external influences.
• The effect of alcohol, drugs and poor diet on the body.

Core Literacy:

• We will develop our writing by working on the tools for writing, including using paragraphs correctly; identifying direct speech and continuing to develop the use of sentence openers, connectives and punctuation.
• We will be using our topic as a stimulus for writing in a variety of different styles, such as report writing, information sheets and posters.
• Children will be given opportunities to develop their listening and talking skills through a variety of class based activities, cooperative group work and presenting a talk to the class.
• During class reading lessons, the children will continue to implement a range of comprehension strategies.  They will have the opportunity to use Blooms Buttons and Book Detective strategies to check their comprehension.
• We will also use our new class novel ‘The Explorer’ by Katherine Rundell as a focus for developing our literacy skills.

Core Numeracy:

• Pupils will use written and mental strategies to complete division calculations.
• Pupils will develop their understanding of time, including telling the time on an analogue and digital clock; converting 12 and 24 hour time; reading timetables and calendars and calculating duration.
• Pupils will develop their understanding of decimal fractions, including identifying the value of each digit and completing a variety of calculations.
• Pupils will develop their understanding of fractions and mixed numbers.

RME/ Health and Wellbeing

This term our RME focus will be Islam.

As a Health Promoting school we actively encourage and teach our children to make healthy choices, to enable them to become healthy, active and emotionally resilient young people of the future.

We are delighted to be able to continue to deliver 2 hours of PE a week as well as opportunities for children to be active in our fabulous new grounds.

I look forward to working in partnership with you this session.

Kind regards,

Miss McEwan 🙂

Maths –  In maths we are continuing with our topic of division, this week we have focused on using remainders. We have used a number of different strategies to help us do this. We had time on sumdog this week.

IDL – Our new topic is Human Body Systems, we have looked at how the organs in our bodies work and what they do. Here are some fun facts we have already learned

-There are roughly 206 bones in the adult human body. Did you know that children have more bones than adults?

-We lose 30000-40000 pieces of dead skin a minute.

-When you swallow chewing gum it stays in your body for 3 days (not 7 years)

Ask me to tell you some more facts?

During ERIC this week we explored some of our topic related books…

Writing – We used the Australian bush fires as our focus for writing a descriptive piece of text. We thought about what we would be able to see/hear and smell if we were there, we had to focus on using exciting vocabulary.

We took part in the BBC 500 words competition and we are going to continue to plan and create our own stories.

Quotes of the week

“I liked doing the 500 words, we had to plan a story to write”

“PE was really fun this week because we got to play tidy the garden”

“In maths we have been doing remainders, at first it was really tricky and now it’s quite easy”

“Our new topic is amazing and I’m looking forward to doing lots of fun experiments.

Thank you for reading our blog 🙂

Welcome back to our blog, we hope you all had a lovely Christmas and a happy new year. Our first week back has been very busy and we have made a great start to the new year.

Maths – This week have been learning different strategies to divide. We have been using the reverse multiplication strategy, sharing and grouping. As well as this we have been continuing our work on time with Miss Robinson on a Wednesday.

Reading – In reading we have our new books which we have started reading with our partner. We completed a ‘first look’ questionnaire that allowed us to think about what the different features of the book has told us already.

Writing – We competed two excellent pieces of writing this week. We firstly completed our goals for 2020, this allowed us to think of personal goals we want to work on/achieve this year both in and out of school. Some people had some very ambitious goals which is fantastic to see.

Also we completed a postcard based on our class novel ‘Wonder’. We learned about the key features of a postcard and then made our very own A4 postcard sharing Augy’s stories about his trip away at the nature retreat – these looked so effective.

 Quotes of the week…

“I enjoyed doing the  beep test in PE”

“We painted trees onto a glowing moon in art”

“I enjoyed writing the 2020 goals it was very fun”

Thank you for reading our blog 🙂

Our final week of term has been filled with lots of festive things. On Wednesday we had our Christmas party which was a lot of fun. We did our social dancing, played games, danced and had a snack. Here are some pictures from our party…

Writing – this week in writing we watched a number of Christmas adverts and discussed the key messages in them and shared our thoughts. We based a piece of writing on the Sainsbury’s Christmas advert from 2014 about the soldiers in the war. We had to write a diary entry from the perspective of one of the soldiers, these were fantastic and we have shown we are now experts at writing diary entries.

P5E have worked extremely hard this term and deserve a fantastic holiday from school before a busy term 3.

We hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year 🎄🎄🎄

Hello everybody, we have had a very busy couple of weeks in P5E with rehearsals and concerts. We had our Christmas concert this week, we hope everyone who came along to see our performance enjoyed it.

PE – This week in PE we have been practicing social dancing in preparation for our Christmas party next week. It has been good fun and we have also practiced some party games too.

Writing – We used our Fairtrade topic as a focus for our persuasive writing this week. We had to persuade our reader to buy Fairtrade products by using persuasive language and including key information about the benefits of Fairtrade.

Here are some examples of a piece of work we did this week based on our class novel. We had to use descriptive words to describe Augy’s character…

Fairtrade – over the past few weeks we have been learning lots about our topic. We have learned about the different Fairtrade products and farms, we have discussed what life is like for workers on Fairtrade farms and how important Fairtrade is to them. We have also researched how far our Fairtrade products travel before reaching the UK and then located the countries on a map.

Here is our Fairtrade wall in class that shows some of our fantastic work…

Quotes of the week:

“I liked the colouring sheet in maths, I liked it because we could colour in and it helped us with our times tables.”

“I liked coding because we get to use the laptops”

“We did our christmas concert and it was really good because you got to sing Christmas songs”

Thank you for reading our blog 🙂

Literacy –  This week in literacy we used our class novel to learn about summarising a chapter. We had to highlight key parts of the chapter and then summarise these using our own words. This was quite tricky but we will continue to practice this skill in reading. As well as summarising, some of us were illustrators and had to draw a comic strip showing the key parts of the chapter through pictures.

In writing this week we used different pictures to help us write an imaginative story. We had to focus on including WOW words in our writing and using correct punctuation throughout. We peer assessed our stories by reading them to a friend and then some people read their stories to the whole class.

World Book Week – This week as part of world book week, we all took part in an authors live activity. We rearranged our classroom so that we could copy the illustration. This was really fun and we all did a fantastic job of copying Alex T.Smith who helped us draw Claude…

Maths – In maths this week we have been focusing on multiplication and how we can use different strategies to help us solve questions. One way we did this was by using think boards, we started with a story that included the question, we then had to draw a picture diagram, use a bar model and write the calculation. This allowed us to use different strategies to represent and solve the question. We then had the chance to make our own think boards, we all did an excellent job at this and shared some of our think boards to the class.

We were also using buttons to build, describe and count arrays to help us with multiplication questions.

PE – We have been doing a variety of activities in PE this week including football, gymnastics, basketball, badminton and tennis. Here are some pictures of us in action during the gymnastics course…

We were very lucky this week as we got the chance to go and watch the P7’s assembly about Enterprise. They did a fantastic job, well done P7!

Quotes of the week:

“We have been doing a course all the way around the gym hall, it was really, really good”

“In Literacy we have been doing partner reading, it is fun!”

“In maths we have been doing think boards and i think it is really fun”

Thank you for reading our blog 🙂