Welcome to our ‘Snapshot of Learning’ week. P4/5 hope you enjoy seeing what we have been up to and gain an insight into the range of learning activities we experience in a typical week here at St Patrick’s PS.

Monday

On Monday morning after our literacy time we went outside to record the weather. We have signed up to gain an award from the RSPB and part of the requirements is to record a weather diary for a week. We made ourselves human weather gauges to detect wind levels, precipitation and temperature. There was plenty of precipitation! We learned about reading scales on a thermometer, which led to a great discussion about negative numbers. P4/5 are making connections!

 

 

In our Numeracy we have been working on addition and subtraction, using the place value counters, numicon, and the base ten materials to help us with partitioning.

In the afternoon we had PE. We are currently working on a block of Athletics and have been learning about track and field events. We have been sprinting, hurdling, running longer distances and have tried some jumping. We set up the hall like an athletics stadium and moved round the activities. We had…

• relays round the track
• standing long jump
• running long jump
• speed bounce
• standing high jump

Amazing teamwork and 100% effort. Well done!

Tuesday

On Tuesday we were focusing on reading skills. We were working on metalinguistics, investigating the words in our reading books. We selected new and interesting vocabulary and discussed with our reading partners what we thought the words might mean. We then used a dictionary to find the words and the correct meaning. After that we suggested which words the author could have used in place of the original word. There was some fantastic discussion!

In the afternoon we had a Rugby session with  Cumnock Rugby Club.

It was lots of fun!

Wednesday

On Wednesday mornings we have our whole school assembly with Mrs Bradley. Read about Assembly Here

In Numeracy today we were demonstrating our learning in addition and subtraction on our posters of understanding. We were able to use a range of strategies confidently and made our thinking visual. Impressive work!

In the afternoon we welcomed parents and carers in to classes to see all our amazing work. We enjoyed sharing our learning.

We took part in a number of activities related to our topic on Ancient Egypt. We were

• designing a Tutankhamun death mask
• painting our names in hieroglyphics onto  ‘papyrus’ which we made ourselves last week
• completing a fact-finding treasure hunt using the ipads and QR codes around the room
• playing the Ancient Egyptian game of Senet which was extremely competitive and absolutely brilliant fun!

Thursday

Wow! What can we say about today. “The best day ever” was one of the comments at hometime!

Today we were at Dumfries house all day to attend the Spring Festival of Farming at Valentin’s Farm. It was organised by The Kings Foundation and RHET Ayrshire and Arran. We learned so much about farming,  food and other agricultural produce.

We saw so many amazing animals and got to pet and even hold some of them. We learned about bees, worms and soil, tractors, rare breeds, wool spinning and so many other things. We took part in a pretend livestock auction and April did a fantastic job of being the auctioneer. She sold Oliver’s lambs to Callagh for over a million pounds!!! We go to be butchers and make beef patties and meatballs. We examined pollen under the microscopes and we got to hold the cutest little goslings and other baby birds. Ask your child about their packed day of learning.

 

Friday

Today we spent a lot of time talking about our amazing day yesterday. We recalled everything we did  and what we had learned from it. We looked back at our MANY photographs and created a timeline for the day.

We then used our previous learning about how to write a recount to create some excellent writing about our visit. Lots of focus and some super descriptive language! Well done!

You can read your child’s recount in the Snapshot jotter.

We finished our week by checking  and recording the weather. Thankfully much less precipitation than Monday!

We hope you enjoyed getting a ‘snapshot’ of our busy week, Phew!