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!

Primary 4/5 are learning a range of strategies to help with addition.  Ask them about partitioning or jigsaw numbers! You’ll be amazed at the calculations they can solve.  Great Learning! 

We made it! The Christmas art is done! 

We worked really hard on the final touches.

After that we took time to reflect on our learning for this week. We shared our thoughts about what we enjoyed and what was challenging then we completed our learning logs in our snapshot jotters. It is always a calm and peaceful writing task.

Look how focused we can be.

 

 

 

 

 

Advent

Today we marked the start of Advent by having a very special prayertime in class. We learned about the Advent Wreath and the colours of the candles. We sang “Light the Advent Candle” together around the wreath.

P4/5 then each came up with a kind or helpful “advent thought” which will go anonymously inside our wee stockings. One will be taken out each day of advent during our prayertime. It will remind us that Christmas is about more than just sparkle, glitter and gifts. I am really proud of their messages.

 

What a busy week. We hope you enjoyed our Snapshot. 🙂

Happy St Andrew’s Day!

It’s always great starting the day with P.E.! In this block of learning we have been working on basketball skills. We have learned to use different types of passes in different situations. The last two weeks we focused on dodging, marking and getting into a good space. Today we put those skills together in a mini 2 x 2 game. There has been some amazing progress!

 

This afternoon we were excited to have parents and carers visiting our class to see how we work and learn in P4/5. We enjoyed different activities from across the curriculum. We explained how we use our amazing Chromebooks in class. We demonstrated a Giglets reading activity, a Sumdog challenge, and accessed information on St Andrew on Teams so that we could create a fact file on Scotland’s patron saint. We showed off some of the presentations we have created. We also enjoyed an “Angles Art Challenge” and continued work on our Shepherds. Some of them now have sheep! Hurrah! Just a star and some sparkle to add tomorrow… phew!

Christmas is in full swing in P4/5 now. We have been practising our song for the concert and perfecting our actions.

We have also been continuing with our Christmas art to decorate the hall. This year our theme is shepherds. We have already painted beautiful sunset backgrounds and now we are cutting and sticking to make the shepherds.  Will we make the deadline for Friday?? Stay tuned to find out!! 🙂

P4/5 continued their learning about angles. They used right-angle testers to check for right angles around the classroom and were amazed that they are completely surrounded by them. A few clever clogs made the connection between the words “right angle” and ” rectangle”.  They worked in pairs and listed as many objects as they could on their white boards.

During the month of November we have been learning about saints. As it is St Andrew’s day  on Thursday  we wanted to find out more about him. We used our chromebooks to carry out some research about St Andrew. We practised our note-taking skills and will use our notes to create a powerpoint presentation for Thursday.

We absolutely LOVE using our newest app Clickview. We watched a video about St Andrew’s Day.

We had a happy start to the week as it had been Ella’s 8th birthday at the weekend. She got be on the BBC (Big Black Chair!) and we all sang happy birthday to her.

We also had our regular check-in to see how we all are and share our news. We pass around “the talking egg”, taking turns to speak. It is a chance for us to show respect to each other as we develop our talking and listening skills.

 

In Maths and Numeracy we are learning about angles.  P4/5 wanted to show you the fun they had outside finding right angles in our environment. This led to working out half turns , quarter turns and relating this to compass points. Kioni was amazing at explaining her thinking!