Hi everyone 🙂

Last week was a very busy week from performing at the Edinburgh Playhouse, bowling and rock climbing, learning how to play rounders to writing poems!

Firstly, I want to say a huge well done and express how proud we all are of both Primary 5 and Primary 6 showcasing their talents and all that they had learned over the last 8 months up at the Edinburgh Playhouse last Monday! It was an unforgettable experience and every single pupil did brilliantly. Unfortunately that is Disney finished for this year but it has been hugely rewarding for everyone involved. We would like to give a final thank you to all pupils and family members with their help and support with the production and a huge thank you for making the journey to Edinburgh to celebrate with us!

The fun continued for P5 last week on Thursday as we finally got to go on a school trip! We all had great fun at the climbing wall in Kilmarnock where the pupils tried new things out with their comfort zones, challenging themselves and their peers and demonstrated great team work together as a class. This continued at the bowling where there was some fun competition between peers and even had Miss Mair and I throwing some bowls! The great day was finished off in the sun with a game of rounders that we learned to play this week as part of PE, building on our team work and communication within different groups in the class.

Despite the very busy week we did still achieve lots of learning in class as well! We used the outdoors to collect information using our senses about summer time and used this to write a poem called ‘summer senses’. The pupils were able to use their rhyming knowledge and personal experiences about summer to write some fantastic poems which we will redraft this week. Within literacy we also spent a lot more time on our class novel ‘The Queen’s Nose’ which continued the theme of poetry in one task where the novel presented a riddle which we analysed together to solve. We also used our metalinguistic and inference skills to work out the meaning of tricky words and phrases to build on our comprehension skills and understanding of the book.

Within maths we came to the end of our block on expressions and equations which the pupils have really enjoyed. We have been using our already established knowledge on the four operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division to complete some algebra type equations and solve some missing number problems. We also used this knowledge in function machines and the pupils liked the different spin on ordinary sums and having an insight into some of the areas of maths that they will be experiencing as they move up the school.

Primary 5 also started an art piece on drawing a picture of themselves in a graduation gown which we will populate with their goals for next year moving into Primary 6. We aim to finish this during this busy week and pass it on to their new P6 teacher.

I can’t believe that it is the last full week of term! We have a lot of busy, fun activities planned for the next 8 days and I can’t wait to spend my last few weeks at Hurlford with Primary 5. They have been a pleasure to teach over the last year and I am so proud of each of them.

Happy holidays when they come!

Miss Gibson 🙂