Mr Sturrock’s Maths group took part in a Maths marathon in class recently. They were given a 4digit number and had to race round the classroom answering lots of questions based on their number, such as giving the number before and after, and adding numbers to their given number. We had great fun doing this and we were very competitive when trying to finish in first place!

In the first 4 weeks back from school, we have been working on basic skills in P.E – running, jumping, throwing/catching and dodging. We have been playing team games and taking part in stations activities which have given us opportunities to develop these skills further. This will help us when we are learning about and taking part in different sports in P6 this year.

Here we are practising a range of different skills:

Mr Sturrock’s Maths group are working on place value at the moment. We have had great fun in class playing lots of games and carrying out activities focusing on numbers involving 4,5 and 6 digits. We have played Maths bingo, carried out mental activities on whiteboards with partners, played games on the Interactive Whiteboard and played card and board games like place value top trumps.

Recently in class, we have been learning about working together as a team. As part of our health lesson, we talked about ways we can co-operate and help each other in our class community. We played lots of co-operative games, including “Tangles” and heard a story called “Piggybook” where we got to see the consequences in a family who did not work co-operatively.

We carried out mini drama pieces where we created our own factories. We decided what we were going to make, talked in our group about how each person would mime their part in the factory line and put these roles together to make a group co-operative mime. We had factories making many different products, including cars, clothes and sweeties. We explained how each role worked and how everyone relies on each other in the factory to make the final product.

We are all now set in our reading rings in class, and have been given our first reading rings novels. We have five different readings rings taking place, and we carry out our reading on a Tuesday in class. This involves some reading aloud time, followed by a chance to apply the book detectives role of the week we have been learning. Here are our reading rings, and the books we are reading.

Red: “Hooey Higgins and the Shark” by Steve Voak.

Orange: “George’s Marvellous Medicine” by Roald Dahl.

Yellow: “The Iron Man” by Ted Hughes.

Green: “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” by Jeff Kinney.

Blue: “The Suitcase Kid” by Jacqueline Wilson.

We have been working very hard in our reading rings. Here we are reading our novels and carrying out discussions based on the reading detectives role set.

As a class, we will be using the book “Street Child” by Berlie Doherty as our class book study. Through our book study, we will be learning more about “Book Detetive” roles, and will have a chance to apply these skills when reading our reading rings novels. Our topic for this term is the Victorians, so we are working on a book based on life in Victorian times. It is all about a boy, Jim, who becomes an orphan and experiences life in a work house. We have really enjoyed the book study so far, and look forward to finding out more about what happens to Jim.

In the first week of the book study, we have been carrying out the role of “illuminators”. This involved finding clues (words and phrases) in the text which are to do with the feelings, emotions and personality of characters in the story. Here we are highlighting an extract from “Street Child” to be illuminators.

We visited Douglas on August 26th. We had the chance to choose personal reading books for our classroom and to find some interesting topic books. We chose a wide range of genres, from fact books to comic-style stories and quiz-style books. We will have the chance to enjoy these books during free choosing opportunities.

In class recently, we have been finding out about different styles of learning. We have been learning that people can be kinaesthetic, auditory or visual learners. Sometimes, we can enjoy a mixture of styles. We carried out a quiz in clas to determine our preferred learning style, and followed this up in Maths to gather data about class learning styles. Finally, in ICT we learned how to produce colourful graphs using Textease to show the different styles of learners in our class.

  Towards the start of P6, we have been looking at co-operative learning. We have been learning about the skills we need to work with others and will be using these skills throughout the year across the curriculum. We will have a set skill to develop over a set period of time and will apply this skill when carrying out different tasks. Here we are working co-operatively to create table group names.

Primary 6 will have P.E. on Wednesdays and Fridays. Our school P.E. kits consist of white t-shirt, dark shorts and black plimsoles. It would be helpful for all P.E. kits to be in school by Friday 23rd August to ensure we are all in the correct clothes for our sports activities. We should also remember to have jewellery removed for P.E. days (a small wallet or envelope with pupil name on the front would be appreciated for storing jewellery whilst we are in the gym hall).

Mr Sturrock loves art and craft activities, and we will have these experiences at least once per week. These activities are often linked to our topic and help us learn more about our learning theme for the term. Please ensure you bring an art apron or old baggy shirt /top to cover your school uniform during art lessons. These will be kept in our class trays.