Hi everyone,

This week we have continued to learn about angles in maths. Some of our groups were learning to find missing angles from ‘clues’. We have also been working on our mental maths skills and have been creating our own number patterns and asking a partner to continue the pattern. We have been taking part in the daily challenge where we can select the subject and difficulty of mental maths questions. We are getting really quick and efficient when answering mental maths problems.

In Literacy we have been creating and answering our own questions from our reading books. We have also been learning about the world of work and thinking about career paths we would like to take when we’re older. We had a look at the world of work website and thought about skills, qualities and qualifications for different jobs.

We learned about gender stereotypes in Health this week and about the word consent.

In P.E we got to take part in a scavenger hunt.

Sorry our post is short this week, we are so busy!

Happy weekend!

Good afternoon,

Here is a little snippet of what we have been doing in P7M this week…

Health

In Health this week we carried out an experiment with sanitary products. We looked at what happens when sanitary products have liquid on them and about changes during puberty. We made information tri-folds about how to stay clean during puberty.

Literacy

To celebrate World Book Day, we visited Alloa Academy Library. Mrs Smith, the librarian, showed us how to make cool origami bookmarks and gave us a little tour of the library.

In spelling we have completed two mini spelling tests and most of us achieved 90 – 100%! We were learning about silent letters this week and know lots of little strategies to help us.

We worked on presenting our work attractively using digital technologies. We learned about the coronavirus and ways to protect ourselves and others. We created posters using Microsoft Word and learned how to use colours in the background, add special effects to our words and added photos. RM thought writing about the coronavirus was really fun and let him understand it more. We have plans to print them out and put them up on walls around the school!

Maths

In maths we were learning about different angles. Some of us were working on identifying missing angles, some of us were naming angles and some of us were drawing our own angles!

P.E

We worked on our fitness. We took part in different activities, such as; running on the bench, speed bouncing, tricep dips, sit ups and bean bag throw into the hoop. On Thursday we had a choice of things to do and we voted. The class voted to play dodge ball. Today in P.E we worked in groups of 4, partners or individually and we played 2020 Olympic game sports. L, D, H and K were the winners! Maybe future stars!

Art

We drew realistic eyes using ballpoint pens and learned about shading techniques.

Technologies

We all managed to log in to Glow this week and download Interland to our Glow tiles. Some of us have been practising emailing too.

Oh, last but not least. We had a good giggle at all of our baby/toddler photos in class!

Happy Friday!

What have the pupils in P7M been learning this week? Read on to find out!

Health and Wellbeing

We learned about Young Carers this week. We learned about what some Young Carers do on a daily basis and we listened to some stories . We answered some questions about how Young Carers might feel and ways we can support each other.

Literacy

We created survival kits with Mrs Currie. Some of the things we decided to include were; first aid kit, a tent, a phone, a torch, canned food with a ring pull and water. In our reading comprehension lesson we looked at hurricanes and tornadoes. We had to fill in the missing word from a selection at the bottom of the sheet. We also looked at creating and answering remembering, analysing and evaluating questions using Blooms buttons.

Maths

We continued to look at time this week. Some of the groups were working on using a formula to calculate distance. Others were looking at converting 24 hour time to 12 hour and some of the groups were working on calculating durations. We also looked at money written problems. We had to have super listening skills for this.

Social Subjects

In our topic lessons this week we learned more about tsunamis. We also moved on to learn about hurricanes. We learned that hurricanes are measured using a scale which is based on the wind power. We have also been presenting our homework projects this week. We have also been  learning about the sustainable goals and have been designing our own sustainable products. This linked to our writing this week where we were continuing to work on our use of persuasive language.

Art

In art with Mrs Barron we finished our koala pictures. We painted the pictures and then added more detail with black pen.

P.E

On Monday we played badminton, volley ball and football. In badminton we were practising our back hand and the smash. On Thursday we played football. On Friday we continued to practise our volley ball skills. We were working on team work.

Topic/Learning Context

Our Learning Context for this term will be:

Natural Disasters

We will be looking at various natural disasters and extreme weather systems. We will the impact these events have on the people whose lives are affected by them and the impact they have on the economy and the landscape. We will also be learning about the impact Climate Change is having on these systems and what our responsibilities are.

Health and Wellbeing

We will be learning about:

• Friendships, relationships and families
• Physical and emotional changes during puberty
• Body image and self-worth/emotional wellbeing
• Menstruation, reproduction, pregnancy and birth
• Correct vocabulary for male and female body parts including reproductive organs
• Maintaining a healthy body/personal hygiene
• Risk awareness of keeping myself safe
• Parenting and responsibility, caring for a child/baby

Literacy

We will be:

• Learning about persuasive features of texts
• Learning to write persuasively using emotive language
• Learn note taking skills and how to effectively skim and scan for information.
• Continue to improve our written work and story writing skills through focusing on some of the technical aspects of our writing, for example, creating plots, settings and character descriptions.
• Continue to work on comprehension skills during our Reading and Language skills through our class novels.
• Continue to learn spelling rules, topic related words and high frequency words to help develop our spelling.
•  Core Numeracy

• Continue to develop our Mental Maths and problem solving skills.
• Learn how to identify types of angles and how to use a protractor to calculate the measurement of an angle
• Investigating common units and different ways to measure time/speed against each other.
• Continue to develop our Money skills will focusing on budgets and strategies to solve money problems.
• Working on calculating durations of time and reading timetables

RME

We will be learning about Christianity and the link between belief systems and how that impacts their outlook on living their lives.

Here is a little overview of what P7M have been learning about this week…

IDL

In our IDL lessons this week we have been learning about another natural disaster; tsunamis. We know that tsunami means ‘harbour wave’ in Japanese and they are caused by underwater earthquakes mostly. They can also be caused by meteorites, volcanoes and landslides.  We learned that tsunamis can travel over 500mph. We created quizzes on the laptops this week. We know lots of facts about tsunamis including what wavelength means, the areas which are at most risk and about the 2004 tsunami as well as the earthquake in Japan in 2011, which caused a tsunami. We have been choosing ways to share our learning. Some people have chosen to create posters, mini movies and news reports.

Maths

In maths this week we have been finding out about calculating durations of time. We counted on in hours and minutes and rounded up to the nearest hour. We have also been doing some revision on how to add and subtract fractions, convert improper fractions to proper fractions and change fractions to percentages. As well as simplifying fractions and working out percentages of any amount.

Food Technology

In Food Tech this week we learned about being vegetarian and vegan. Vegetarians do not eat meat or animal products and vegans do not eat meat, dairy or any other animal products.

P.E

In P.E we have been playing football, badminton and volley ball.

Spelling

We have been learning to spell words linked to our topic. Our focus this week was looking at words linked to tsunamis. BM1 and BM2 have created a ‘riddle’ game to learn their spelling words. Very creative!

Reading

For reading this week we looked at a blooms questions and we also had some comprehension questions about tsunamis. We had to focus on using part of the question as our answer. BM1 has found our class novel very interesting this week as we have been learning about all the stuff refugees have to go through.

Writing

In writing this week we have been writing persuasively. We have been writing to the president of the Philippines after we learned about the preparations put in place in Japan. We tried to persuade the president to spend money on things such as installing coastal walls, plant trees near the coast to absorb the force of the waves and perhaps even thinking about making building more earthquake resistant by adding a ‘base-isolation’ under buildings.

Good afternoon everyone,

Here is a little snippet of what we have been doing in P7M this week…

P.E

In P.E this week we developed our ball skills. We got a choice to play volley-ball, badminton or tennis. With Mrs McGirr we played dodge ball outside. It was a bit different because we didn’t have the benches and had to make some of the rules a little bit different.

Maths

We have been working on ‘time’ this week in maths. We looked at how to calculate duration of time between two given times. We revised how to ‘count on’ when calculating this. We also reminded ourselves how to work out 12 hour and 24 hour time.

Literacy

We finished our 500 word challenge on the laptops and we were going to email them to Mrs McGirr in our technology lesson, but unfortunately most of us have forgotten our Glow password! These will be reset by next week so we can learn how to do this.

We also wrote a persuasive story about natural disasters. We had to summarise the three natural disasters we have learned about so far and persuade our teacher which one was the most destructive. We looked at sentence starters to help us with our persuasive language.

In our reading lessons this week we continued to practice reading fluency, and some of us answered Blooms questions about what we were reading. We also learned about the famous poem by Robert Burns; To a Mouse. We watched a youtube video of it being recited in Scots, and then we heard the modern translation to help us understand the words. Some of us will recite a poem at the Burns competition in February.

In our reading comprehension lesson we looked at volcanoes around the world. Some of us were comparing and contrasting different volcanoes.

IDL

We learned about what volcanoes are and what active, dormant and extinct means. We looked at a PowerPoint about volcanoes and took notes. With our notes and some books we have in the classroom, we created information posters. These look fab!

Technologies

We have been playing SumDog, accessing code.org and cool maths games this week. We also learned how to quickly save a document once we had named it.

Scots Assembly

This week we have been learning a song by The Proclaimers. We learned to sing the song ‘500 miles’ and Mr Swan played his guitar for us. We performed at our Scots assembly on Thursday. We also said goodbye to Mrs Ainsley and Miss Robinson at our assembly.

Music

In music we were learning to play chords on the keyboard and played a little rhythm on the drum pads.

Just a wee reminder that our P7 Leaver Hoodie letters need to be back ASAP to allow us to order them in plenty of time.

This week has been another busy one.

Literacy

In Literacy this week we have thinking about our class novel, The Boy at the Back of the Class. We have been developing our understanding of the text through comprehension lessons. We have learned about the flag of Syria, about the conflict and what it means to be a refugee. We made PowerPoint presentations about Syria and had to include; the population, the language spoken, food eaten, currency used, famous people, landmarks and about the neighbouring countries. We also watched the BBC live lesson about creating a 500 word story. We have started our own 5o0 word stories and will continue these next week.

Maths and Numeracy

We have continued to look at algebra and percentages in maths this week.

Science

We have learned about energy transfer in food chains. We were introduced to the words; producer, primary consumer, secondary consumer and tertiary consumer. We will look at food webs next week.

IDL

We learned about the layers of the earth’s crust and started learning about wildfires. We created information leaflets about the wildfires and we know what to do before, during and after a wildfire. We will move on to learn about volcanoes next week.

Art

On Tuesday we completed a mixed media piece of art which used the map of Australia and a picture showing the devastation inside. Our art work was very effective and it has been displayed in our classroom.

SSPCA Visit

We had a visit from the SSPCA and we got to programme a ‘robocat’ as we learned all about how to look after animals and prevent cruelty.

Welcome to our first blog post of the decade! Happy New Year!

This week we have been a little more tired than normal but we had lots of learning to do, so it was business as usual.

In P.E we have been working on our stamina and fitness and completed the 6 minute run and the beep test. Some people recorded how many laps their partner did in the time. We are going to use this data to create a bar graph and see if our fitness improves. We also played dodge ball and R’s team were the overall winners!

We learned about different religions and food that people eat. We watched some videos about special ceremonies. We learned about Sikhism, Buddhism and Judaism. We looked at all of this with Mrs Tavendale in Food Technology.

In our Literacy work this week we have been working on punctuating direct speech correctly. We used this to write our own newspaper reports on the Nepal earthquake. We have also started a new class novel, The Boy at the Back of the Class. We made predictions about what the story will be about and used evidence from the text so far. We had lots of great ideas such as the new boy being; a spy from America, from a family of lions or from the most wanted list for dangerous crimes! We have since found out that the new boy is in fact a refugee from Syria.

During reading comprehension this week we read a passage about earthquakes and we focussed on writing the answers to the questions using full sentences.

In Maths this week we looked at time durations and we had to figure out how much time had passed between two given times. We shared the strategies that we used. We also looked at algebra and can now all figure out what numbers the letters represent and some of us even learned how to change side, change sign. Lastly, we had a look at graphs for information on how many earthquakes happened in the year 2012. We found out there were more earthquakes in Europe than in Africa.

Hi everyone,

Sorry we have been a bit quiet on our blog recently. We have been working so hard to prepare for our Christmas Fayre.

We had a very successful Fayre yesterday and made a lot more money than we could have ever imagined, or hoped for! Thank you all so much for your continued support.

We have also performed in four concerts!

This week we have also been planning a Christmas party in Maths. We had to apply our knowledge of fractions, percentages, time and money to plan the food, entertainment, drinks and decorations.

In Health this week we learned about having a positive body image. We will continue to learn about this next week.

That’s all we have time for just now as we’re just back from practising our social dancing in P.E and we’re looking forward to our party next week.

Before we go, just a reminder that we have our school trip next Wednesday (18th December). Pupils need to bring a packed lunch, a waterproof jacket, a snack and can wear casual bottoms. Pupils should wear their school jumper.

Good afternoon,

Literacy

“In reading we were practising fluency and expression”

“We have also been reading for information”

Maths

“We were learning about the disadvantages and advantages of using a credit card”

“We were buying items on a shopping list. We needed to go onto three different websites to compare the prices of the items on the list”

IDL

“In IDL we have been working hard to design a chocolate bar. We had to think of a new design, a slogan and we made up our own pitch”

“We were learning about slogans and adverts. We took notes in our topic jotter about the good features of an advertisement”

“We had our third business task where we were asked to create an advertisement to sell a hover board”

P.E

“We were playing dodge ball, gymnastics and football”

Art

“We made remembrance pictures. We were learning about people affected during the war and the famous poem about WW1.

We learned that the poem was written in the back of an ambulance by a soldier after his friend had died”

Health

“We were watching short clips about bullying. We were learned about different ways you can deal with bullying. Some of the things we learned to do are: tell an adult, act like you’re not bothered, talk to a friend and write in a diary”

“In Food technologies we learned about personal hygiene”

“We also learned about checking the date on ingredients and checking the environment before cooking”

“We learned about storing food correctly and safely. We know not to place raw meat on the top of the fridge as all the juices could drip down and spoil the rest of your food”

Technologies

“We played SumDog this week and visited code.org”

“We used Ipads for making short video clips to film our hover board advertisement”

“We researched about slogans and packaging ideas during IDL”

Phew, what a busy week! Just a reminder that we have our P7 Sharing of Learning afternoon next Friday (22nd of November) from 1:45pm – 2:50pm. We will be selling teas, coffees and biscuits, as well as hosting a raffle, to support our fundraising efforts for our P7 End of Year Celebration.