On Wednesday 18th April, P5/6 met Matthew Fitt at Menzieshill Library.

“Matthew Fitt is a well-known children’s author. He writes poetry and stories which are read and enjoyed by children of all ages. His most popular book is The Eejits, a Scots translation of Roald Dahl’s The Twits.” (Taken from Matthew Fitt’s website).

Matthew spoke to P5/6 about his life growing up in Dundee and his life in the Czech Republic now. He made us chuckle when he told us a funny story about his little boy talking to him in Czech and Scots. Matthew has just finished translating Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes and putting his own twist on the stories. He read “Cinderellie” and received a lot of laughs throughout and a round of applause at the end!

Matthew chose a child from P5/6 to dress up as Harry Potter and gave him a broom. He gave other pupils soft orange balls and one child a yellow ball (snitch). The children enjoyed throwing the balls at “Harry” whilst he worked hard to bat them away.  This was such a fun game for the children to play and we will ensure we play this again in the gym hall/playground this term).

We would like to take this opportunity to say, “ta very muckle fir yir banter, us bairns had a richt guid laugh wi yi!” 🙂

Thank you very much Matthew Fitt!

On Tuesday 17th April, P5/6 were visited by Sally Romilly from the One World Centre, Dundee.  Sally is also an ambassador for Greenpeace and works voluntarily to raise awareness of many issues relating to Global Citizenship, such as Fair Trade and Plastic Pollution.

Sally visited St Ninian’s before the April holidays as 2 pupils in P5/6 wanted to interview her for their front page entry for The Courier’s Junior Journalist Competition. She answered questions the girls had written themselves and offered to come back to talk to the whole class.

On Tuesday, Sally showed the class a PowerPoint presentation relating to plastic pollution and answered pupil questions at the end.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Sally for giving up her time to raise awareness of the work of the One World Centre and Greenpeace.  A few of our pupils have expressed an interest in this field in the future.  Thank you Sally!

Today P5/6, used Numicon and Cuisenaire boxes to help deepen our knowledge and understanding of numeracy.

We used a range of specialist maths vocabulary to discuss the relationship between various numbers, i.e. more. less, double, half, quarter, third, fraction, multiple and so on.

At the beginning of term 3, P5/6 made their own learning pits to record their thoughts and feelings towards “Telling the Time”.  A learning pit helps pupils to consider and record strategies they can use to help them when they are stuck.

In January, there were a variety of mixed emotions towards telling the time both in analogue and digital clocks.  As we are nearing the end of term 3, it has been amazing to see the progress made by the majority of pupils in P5/6.  Well done everyone!  I’m very proud of you! 🙂

P5/6 enjoyed a variety of fun-filled-fitness sessions during Fit Thursday last week.

We would like to say a special thanks to Mrs Jones, who coordinated our hockey session.  We had great fun, thank you!

So today, we bid a fond farewell to P5/6 pupil B who is heading off to a new school.

Some of the girls made a card for him showing his favourite mode of transport, his trusty bike!  P5/6, staff members and other pupils signed the card and B was presented with this at hometime.

We wish you lots of luck in your new home and at your new school.  Please remember to keep in touch with us through GLOW.  Goodbye!

This week in the ICT suite, P5/6 answered 50 questions relating to their attitudes to school and helped P2 answer 28 questions in a “Pupil Attitudes to School Survey”.  Upon completion of their surveys, P5/6 enjoyed working with a P2 buddy on different maths games on Topmarks.

P5/6 have been enjoying opportunities to discuss their learning in our Outdoor Classroom area.  Mrs Robertson has asked pupils to think of ideas for lessons that can be carried out outdoors in term 4, incorporating different areas of the curriculum.  The majority of P5/6 have expressed an interest in using the Outdoor Classroom for Expressive Arts, particularly Art and Drama.

This term, P5/6 are studying different features of newspapers, i.e Sports/Entertainments/News/Editorials/Features/Advertisements/Humour and pupils are learning how to find examples of biased/balanced/sad/funny/inspirational news stories.

P5/6 enjoyed a newspaper treasure hunt, whereby they had to work with a partner to find the answers to questions relating to articles pinned around the classroom.  Pupils took part in “Have I Got News For You” activities where they guessed the missing word in a headline and made up their own word to add humour to the headline.

P5/6 were given words relating to newspaper articles and worked in groups to decide what the stories were about, i.e plogging, park, rubbish, photo, Instagram, London – Joggers in London are running through parks, collecting rubbish as they go then displaying photos of the rubbish collected on Instagram.  This is called “plogging”.

P5/6 pupils are reading up on the issue of plastic pollution and are carrying out their own research to allow them to write a newspaper article

We have been watching clips from SKY’s ocean Rescue “A Plastic Tide” and “A Plastic Whale” to gather notes.

This term, P5/6 are building up their physical fitness levels by travelling around stations in the gym hall.  Each station has a mat with a card detailing the activity to be carried out.  These include burpees, squats, sit ups, press ups etc.

Pupils are encouraged to use the correct technique and to set a personal best for themselves.