Newsletter September 2020

In this section of our blog we will be showing you what we have been learning during Term 1. It has been great to be back at school and we will love sharing our learning with you.

Literacy

I have really been enjoying reading an extremely fascinating book about WW2 called Friend or Foe by Michael Morpurgo. I find it has good language and really good detail. I always get engrossed when I am reading I feel like my eyes are glued to the book. By Chloe.

Maths

In Maths we have been learning about fractions, we have been learning how to simplify and turn fractions in to mixed numbers. We always try our hardest and work at our own stage. In the morning we start off with a little mental maths carousel, every day each group is either at Number Talks, Sumdog or Mental Agility By Lily B.

I have enjoyed Maths because we have been doing mental agility, sumdog, simplifying fractions and many other things you could name. I enjoy maths mostly because it helps you think more and get stuff in to your head and it helps us prepare for future jobs. By Alicia

In Maths I really enjoyed maths week Scotland which had a Sumdog challenge for schools all over Scotland to take part in. You are given 1000 questions on a Monday and you have until the Thursday to complete them. One of the pupils at Heathhall came in 22nd place out of the whole of Scotland. I really enjoyed taking part in this because it pushed a lot of our class to their limit and I enjoyed playing the games and answering the questions. By Scarlett B.

HWB/P.E

In HWB we have been learning how to resolve conflicts. We have also been learning how to keep ourselves safe online. We have been taking part in the Couch to 5K and we have been paired with running partners and we try to encourage each other not to stop running. By Elijyah.

In PE with Mrs Sim we play fun games like Cross the Golden River and with Mrs Clanachan we do more fitness like run the daily mile. We also do team relay games to improve our speed and stamina. By Alex

I have enjoyed PE because we have been running the Couch to 5k with Mrs Clanachan it has been lots of fun and it has got lots more people to get fit/healthier. I enjoy this because we get to go outside and also because I am a good runner. By Tyler.

Other

We drew our dojo characters and pinned them up on the wall. We think they look really good and we enjoyed doing it because it was our last day with Mrs Clanachan. so we got to choose what we did and we did dojo characters and outside games. By Beth

Term 1 in Primary 4

Term one in Primary 4 has been extremely busy. We have been doing lots of writing, reading, listening and talking and maths.

We have even managed to squeeze in some art. We have been drawing pictures using perspective. We have even been looking at the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his famous rose.

We are looking forward to Term 2 and what we are going to be learning.

In p1/2 we have been learning about journeys and transport. We went on a walk around our local community and identified lots of different things we could see. We then made 3D maps with our findings. We have been using the Beebots to practise directional and positional language and are getting better with left and right. During outdoor learning we made up our own routes for our classmates to follow. We were only allowed to use forward, back, left and right. It was really tricky to try and stay like a robot!

In literacy we’ve been practising our sounds. We enjoyed doing this in orange gloop.

In Numeracy we’ve been focussing on counting on using the secret square to help us. We’ve also been subatising (learning not to count for patterns) Some of the P2s have been using 100 squares to partition numbers into tens and ones.

We’ve also been developing our sensory garden. We’ve cleared it all out and planted different herbs and colourful flowers for the spring.

In P3 we have been learning a little bit about our five senses as well as autumn and the signs of Autumn.  We have used our Outdoor Learning session to go and look for the signs of Autumn in our school environment.  From this we are hoping to write an Autumn Senses poem.

In Numeracy we have continued our work on Developing Number Knowledge and partitioning numbers (up to 4 digits!!!) and recognising their digit values. This was tricky to begin with. We also have been using our knowledge of numbers to compare and order a range of numbers from smallest to biggest. We enjoyed it when Miss Anderson wrote different numbers on the balls and threw them around the class. It was fun!

In Maths, we have started to look at 2D shapes and their properties. There are some with very funny names like a parallelogram and trapezium! We have been counting how many sides and corners each shape has. We also went into the playground to hunt for the shapes. Squares, rectangles and circles were the most common. We couldn’t find a single pentagon!

In literacy we’ve been reading – we like sharing our book with a partner in class. We have also started to look at comprehension. Did you know – comprehension is showing that you understand what you read.  We are also practising to write in proper sentences with a capital letter and a full stop, knowing when we need to begin a new sentence.

In Health and Well Being Mr Ross has been teaching us about having a Healthy Lifestyle and we made posters to remind us of this. To have a healthy lifestyle we need to; get enough sleep, eat a balanced diet, have a shower/bath, drink water, etc.  We also began looking at the five main food groups and identified foods which came from each group.

We are really excited to get started PE with Mr Sharp today and fingers crossed we can carry it on after the October holidays J

In P5/6, we have been learning lots! In maths, we have been learning about decimal points and place value. We have practiced the bar method and the formal written method for multiplying and the formal written method for addition and subtraction. We have also learned about negative numbers. Currently, we are learning about time and how to read timetables. For Maths Week Scotland, We took part in the Sumdog competition and came 180^th! We also completed Pascal’s Triangle which was tricky!

In literacy, we have been using lots of descriptive language such as synonyms and similes – we have been using Outdoor Learning to help us with this and have created our own Tweets to summarise how we have done this. We have been writing imaginative stories and including descriptive language in these. We have been summarising lots of texts such as our class novel, our Accelerated Reading books and short video clips. We have also been practicing our prediction skills. We have practiced using punctuation such as, speech marks, commas, capital letters and full stops. We read Christophe’s Story as a class and focussed lots of our learning in Literacy around it.

In Health and Wellbeing, we have been learning about food labelling and what the traffic lights mean. We have focussed on what foods are good for you and which foods are not – and learning about healthy choices and how food gives us energy. We created our own food pyramids. We have been learning about how we are resilient and what strengths we have to help us through difficult times. In P.E., we have been focussing on football and practicing our passing and travelling skills.

Autumn Term Blog

We had to get used to lots of changes to keep us safe.

We have been reading George’s Marvellous Medicine and doing pieces of work connected with it.

We also read Horton Hears a Who! And had lots of discussions about what makes a good friend.

We did poetry connected to our outdoor learning about trees. We have started Accelerated Reading. We did the Tiger’s Whiskers with Mrs Renaud and acted it out. We have done lots of work on using describing bubbles to help us with our descriptive writing. We did leaf art where we invented our own patterns. With Mr Ross we did doodles and flower art. We have done some geometric autumn art.

We have looked at addition and subtraction, involving exchanging and decomposition. We have explored place value. We have revised some of our tables. Recently we have revised shape and data handling and started looking at negative numbers.

We have been learning about ways to include people and how to deal with different situations. We have been looking at and discussing the book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse.

During Term 1 we have been busy in P6/7.  We have been focussing on Maths, Literacy, Digital Literacy and Health and Well Being.

In Maths we have been learning about decimals.  We have been looking at the place value of decimals, ordering, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing them.  The week beginning the 28^th of September was Maths Week Scotland 2020.  Each day we looked at a challenge set by the Depute First Minister of Scotland, we completed tasks from the Maths Week Scotland website, we solved a Cryptography clue and we watched and discussed various women who use maths in their jobs.  Everyday we do mental maths to warm our brains up for the maths lesson.  We read the weekly issue of the Daily Rigour.  It creates maths problems based on current news stories.  We also follow a mental maths rotation.  In the mental maths rotation one group completes a mental agility booklet page, one group discusses mental maths strategies with the teacher and the third group answer questions on Sumdog.

In Literacy we have continued reading Oranges in No Man’s Land.  We have completed a word finder task using the book and have created literal, inferential and evaluative questions based on the text.  A partner then had to answer the questions we had created.  We created a mind map based on a news article and then used the mind map to write a summary of the article we had chosen.  In writing we have focussed on writing our own character and setting descriptions.  We are going to use these in a creative story.  The week beginning the 28^th of September was the Reading is Magic Festival.  We watched various videos and listened to different authors.  We created our own cartoon portraits and were encouraged to be more creative by Cressida Cowell, the Waterstones Children’s Laureate. We took part in a Big Draw contest between two illustrators.

In Digital Literacy we have been using the My World of Work website.  We have been up-levelling our writing onto a word document and recording our learning.  We are using Microsoft Teams and our Glow email to access and complete our homework.  We have looked at how to stay safe online.

We have been creating friendship board games with Mrs Woods as part of Health and Well Being.  We have designed and created them and are hoping the P2 class will have a go at playing them.  During our work on friendships we have discussed different scenarios involving issues which can occur in friendships.

October 2020 Newsletter

What a busy first term!

A small peek at some of our outdoor and indoor learning as well us enjoying our school lunches.