This year, Primary 6 were treated to a trip to the Whitehall theatre, where we were introduced to a number of authors and illustrators. We had an amazing trip! We decided that we as a class would like to read all about Catherine Doyle’s book, ‘The Storm Keeper’. We have purchased a copy, gotten it signed, and cannot wait to get reading!

Here we are enjoying the event 😍

As we come to the end of our fractions unit, what better way to consolidate our learning than with food?! 😍

We created a fraction of ‘how much of our pancake we will eat’. The maximum denominator allowed was 8. We then used our knowledge of common fractions to order our pancake fractions from smallest to largest, at our tables. We then of course, ate them!

Today, we centred our outdoor leanring on equivalent fractions. Many of us understand that 1/2 is equivalent to 2/4 or 4/8; but there are still a number of us that could do with a different perspective on this topic, using concrete materials. Today we ventured out in search of twigs, leafs, rocks, grass… Anything we could use to make concrete versions of equivalent fractions. For many of us, this was the extra little bit of help we needed to make sense of this topic… Abi said, “Oh I get it! They’re all the same! 2/4/ is the same as 1/2”

Here are some of us creating some of these equivalent fractions.

1/2 is the same as 12/24

Here are Robbie and James explaining their equivalent fractions train to us, showing us that 1/2 is the same as or ‘equivalent to’ 10/20 and 2/4. They used twigs and leafs to show us their shapes being split into these fractions. Making it clear that all of these shapes represented 1/2! Well done boys!

This week we had our first reading session with Primary 1; introducing them to the four books up for the award! On Friday we took part in a a number of activities evolving around the first book we have read, ‘Baby’s First Bank Heist’.

This week, to contextualise the concept of fractions, we ventured outside to ‘show’ Miss Nimmo some fractions that we either found or made! This was an ideal opportunity to deepen our understanding of fractions, and to see them in a real life setting.

Here we are building our fractions 😀 :

Here is a display of our knowledge of equivalent fractions – 1/3 = 3/9 = 2/6

James, James and Robbie showing us their take on 1/4!

Here is Holly’s take on 1/3:

And here we have Klara acting as the Numerator, Aysha as the Fractional line, and Sian and Rebecca as the Denominator!

This Tuesday, we were treated to a reading from Aysha of her own book! In her spare time Aysha wrote a book called ‘Magiciy and the Surprising Fun’. She said that she took inspiration from our part in the Dundee Picture book award. She wrote her book for the younger ones in the school, completing it with a word search, puzzle and quiz at the back!

Well done, Aysha! Keep up the excellent writing 👏

Last Friday we had a couple of visitors in from Play Champs!🤹‍♀️🏃‍♂️⛹️‍♀️

We are learning how to be effective leaders in play. This is important in boosting our self-esteem and ability to address groups of people.

This week we spoke about what it means to be a leader, creating mind maps and then taking part in a number of team building games, boosting our communication skills.

Last week, we were lucky enough to have a visit from Debbie, who introduced us to the benefits of yoga. The main exercise that most of us enjoyed was the breathing techniques. We learned that these exercises help to calm our nervous-system down and focus our brains. When trying it, Corrina said, “I feel calm, focused and ready for the next task!”

We have been using these techniques as a means of refocusing our brains after busy lunchtimes and break times 😜⏩😌

Today we were back to basics! We were consolidating our previous learning of fractions, as well as enhancing our conceptual understanding of the process behind giving equivalent fractions and simplifying fractions. We understand that we can’t move forward until we have a sound understanding of the basics! ↗

Therapony Mondays are the best Mondays! 😁😍 Here we are with the lovely Rosie. We were allowed to pet her, brush her and take her for a walk around the playground.

The therapony sessions have a number of positive outcomes, including developing empathy and compassion in our young people. We loved every minute, and would welcome another visit soon!