EWHCF Class of 2020

On Monday 26th August 2019, all the Primary 7s from went to an event called “ Safety in the Park” at Arthurlie House in Barrhead. Safety in the Park is all about different ways to keep safe. There were nine different stations however today we will tell you about our favourite three.

The one that was my favourite was an event in which we had to solve a murder. We had to look around the crime scene to figure out what the cause of death was. The body was in the centre and next to the body there was a bag. There was a knife covered in blood in the bag but there was no blood near the body. There were two empty bottles that were originally supposed to be filled with alcohol, one of them smashed and one still intact. We had a lot of theories about the cause of death.  (Rebecca)

My favourite station was the alcohol safety station. At this station we were taught about alcohol related guidelines and laws and got to try on beer goggles and complete a task. The goggle  simulated 25 units of alcohol, it was really weird. (Cameron)

My favourite station was another crime scene, but it was involving a cyclist and a driver. First of all we investigated the car. Then we asked the driver some questions about the murder and Craig the driver of the car said that it was the girls fault because she was cycling in his blind spot, but we didn’t believe him. After that we investigated the girl and we saw that the girl was wearing the wrong clothes, wrong shoes and she wasn’t wearing a helmet. There were also things wrong with the bike: the tyres were flat, the front wheel wasn’t on properly, one of the pedals was not on the bike, the saddle was loose, the chain was too loose and the final thing was that the brakes weren’t working. We were all surprised that the bike was not well looked after. Everyone in my group thought that it was Craig’s fault and that he was the one who caused the crash into the girl on the bike. ( Ava)

Overall this day was extremely fun and everyone learned a lot. 

We have been working so hard over the last few weeks with a lot hard work taking place in our classroom.

Whilst learning about the United States of America we have researched history, current issues and traditions as well as landmarks and geography. The learners in the class have been engaged and brought a lot of enthusiasm to their learning. Take a look at some of the activities we have been working on.

We may be primary 7 but we are loving play doh! To help us learn some new and tricky concepts in numeracy and maths we have been appplying the ‘concrete, pictorial, abstract’ approach where we use resources to help us visualise and act out our learning. Making play doh pizzas and chocolate bars to help us with improper and mixed fractions really got us visualising and understanding the problem.

To finish off this week we have an update from Jessica and Harry –

This week has been really fun it has had a lot of exhilarating and enjoyable tasks and we will tell you about these below.

Let’s begin  on Thursday when we invited our parents for an afternoon watching us all work and for us to show them some of the stuff that we had been doing for the last 3 or 4 weeks. It would have been like a meet the teacher of parents however we did that last year and we have the same teacher this year. Mrs Norman is our teacher and we are all happy at that because she lets us do fun things all the time. One of these examples were when the parents came in and our task was to make a brochure to places like the Grand Canyon, Washington Monument, and mount Rushmore.

On Friday we decided as a class to raise money for a charity called Jeans for Genes and basically this charity helped with people that have genetic disorders. It’s in the name really (Jeans for Genes) and it was the best and we raised a lot of money.

We have had such a busy week in our first week of Primary 7 that we are all tired and ready for the weekend! Take a read at some of the activities we have enjoyed and what we are looking forward to.

JL – I enjoyed having to read Wonder. Usually I don’t like books but I just love this book so much! I am excited to go to Safety in the Park, it is going to be so much fun.

SR – This week in Primary 7a we have done a lot of art and signed up for lots of jobs. We also completed our Class Charter where we made Pixel art people and put them on the tree in the classroom. I have really enjoyed the first week of Primary 7 and I am looking forward to the rest of Primary 7.

EM – This week we drew self portraits where you would draw half of your face then on the other side of the paper we wrote our names and drew a background.

AC – Finally we are back to school. In the first week we have done so many things. We made patterns as part of maths, we were looking at how maths is everywhere. We also made self portraits which was very fun too.

BF – Our first week back was fun as in literacy we recapped our VCOP. VCOP stands for vocabulary, connectives, openers and punctuation and we use this in our writing so that it can be up-leveled. This helps it to sound better and make it more interesting. We wrote some imaginative writing so our VCOP came in handy.

HT – This week we started and finished our class charter. We decided to choose 5 articles, article 29, 22, 12, 31 and 19. We all agreed as a class that these rights suited us. The charter is a big tree that says ‘Primary 7 Tree of Knowledge’ that our computer pixel art characters are climbing.

What an incredible year P6B has had! Well done to everyone for all their achievements and hard work! Below are some snapshots of the activities we got up to on our last day in P6 with Mr Atkinson.

Mr Atkinson’s Comment

I am so proud of everyone and I hope you all have a wonderful summer holiday. Thank you again to all the parents and guardians for their support and help over the year. Good luck in P7!

We have been engaging with our healthy lifestyle learning, acknowledging the importance of making healthy choices in our lives.

As well as celebrating success we are also using our writing this week to reflect on the positives we can take out of situations when they don’t go to plan.

In our art we used the movements of the body to create ‘Futurism’ inspired pen drawings that trick the eye to show speed and movement. We enjoyed making these so much that we decided to create life size pictures as well, moving our bodies in to different shapes to create the effect. They look brilliant on display.

With sports day only a few short days away we have been practicing the different activities we will be taking part in. The hula hooping proved to be a challenge for some, whilst others were naturally talented. Between the groups competition was high to achieve the longest throw with the javelin. Which house will walk away from Sports Day with the most points? Good luck to everyone taking part!

In our final lesson with the Confucius Institute Chinese Teacher we learnt how to use Origami to create patterns and we even got to participate in a traditional Chinese Tea ceremony.

Snapshot of P6B’s learning!

This week Mr Atkinson had arranged for a teacher from the Confucius Institute to come visit both P6 classes. Mr Atkinson explained to us that the Confucius Institute is an educational organisation affiliated with the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, whose aim is to promote Chinese language and culture internationally. The teacher, who is from Shanghai, taught us how to say the Zodiac signs and different colours in Chinese. She then showed us where Pandas come from and how they grow. After that, we then started to design our very own pandas which will be used to create a habitat display. We can’t wait for the Confucius Institute teacher to return next Wednesday!

P6B have now finished the China topic and have started the ‘Primary 6 Guide to a Healthy Lifestyle’ topic. First, we all created a daily fitness tracker for the week. We achieved this by applying our previous learning of Excel Spreadsheets to generate and populate a chart which we will update everyday. Mr Atkinson introduced us to instructional writing which involves providing the reader with a clear set of directions. As part of our starter task Mr Atkinson set group challenges that involved plotting a route from the class to the Quiet Zone in the playground. HOWEVER, the groups all had different limits in regards to how many instructions they could use. We soon discovered through trial and error that when the directions aren’t clear this can result in confusion. We learnt that by creating clear and detailed instructions there is less of a likelihood for misunderstandings to happen. We then linked this to our new topic by investigating, planning, writing and illustrating our healthy recipes.

In maths, one group was busy creating 3D objects by correctly creating nets based off of measurements. Another group has been investigating how data and charts can be misleading or purposefully vague depending on the targeted audience.

Mr Atkinson’s Comment

Another busy week in P6B! The class have been doing a great job with their Bikeability! As the Scottish weather has been surprisingly glorious I would recommend that all pupils come to school with either a bottle or water container so that they can drink out of it during class, in P.E. or outside in the playground.

Snapshot of P6B’s learning!

Over the last couple of weeks some maths groups have been conducting surveys and recording the information in different charts and graphs such as line graphs, bar graphs and pie charts. Mr Atkinson then linked this to our ICT sessions which have involved investigating the different ways in which Excel spreadsheets can be used to record and generate data. Mr Atkinson gave all the pupils a challenge to research and present the growth of China’s populations over the last 50 years. This required the class to apply their prior knowledge of excel formulas and functions to generate a range of graphs and charts. During this exercise we debated what a reliable source of information is and how data can be misinterpreted. After selecting the years that we were going to analyse, we then worked in pairs to record and input the information into excel spreadsheets. Following this, we then shared our results with our peers.

This week we were issued our new group novels which we were all very excited about! Some groups will also carry out comparison tasks related to their novel. This will involve pupils carefully analysing and noting key features of clips and segments from the films based on their books.

We have been learning about China’s one child policy and we investigated the effects it had on the country’s population, economy and social structure. The class also made links to the UNCRC Rights of the Child during this exercise. Next week we will finish off our China topic by exploring how the country developed from the ancient Chinese dynasties to modern day China. After than our new topic will be the fitness and body topic which will involve the class creating healthy recipes for smoothies, tracking our fitness in P.E through the use of diaries/logs and some outdoor art.

Mr Atkinson’s Comment

Well done to everyone who has been completing their Sumdog homework and taking part in the competitions – keep it up! I would like to thank all the parents, guardians, volunteers and Mrs Norman for assisting with Bikeability. All of P6B have been participating in this and I have heard that some pupils have also been practising at home – well done! Thank you to all our guest speakers for coming in for Skills to School week. All of the presentations were thoroughly interesting and the pupils have been raving about how enjoyable they were.

Snapshot of P6B’s learning!

As part of our China topic we have been learning about different Chinese foods, dishes and ingredients. After doing some research we asked the catering staff to help us create our very own spring rolls and noodles. At first it was challenging to shape the pastry but after a few attempts we all managed it. The catering staff then brought our spring rolls and noodles to our class so that we could take them home – delicious!

In P.E. we concluded our tennis series by firstly dividing into groups and then we designed our own mini games for a class tournament. Then Mr Atkinson showed us how all the skills that we have been developing (forehand, backhand, serving, position, direction and spatial awareness) can enable us to play a tennis match. Mr Atkinson explained to us the scoring system and what the lines on the court meant. Our tennis series has even inspired some of us to go to a club and continue to learn. Our upcoming P.E lessons will focus on athletics with Mr Judge and general fitness with Mr Atkinson as both of these areas link with our new topic.

In art we have been busy creating our very own Chinese fans. When planning our assembly we learnt that fans often had pictures or scenes on them which represented a philosophical tale or ancient story. We investigated the different imagery that can be found on Chinese fans and used these pictures to inspire us to create our own. This was very difficult as we had to have steady hands in order to carefully recreate some of the iconic pictures.

We have now finished our drama and Mandarin sessions with Mr Atkinson and Mrs Norman. Mr Atkinson taught us how to count to 20 in Mandarin as well as some basic phrases such as greetings. Mrs Norman has been teaching us about improvisation and then challenged us to use it in our  China family stories.

Over the last few weeks in writing we have been focusing on poetry. We have been learning to confidently use similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia and alliteration in range of different contexts.

Mr Atkinson’s Comment

This term P6B will be taking part in Bikeability every Thursday. Please can permission slips be returned as soon as possible. Soon the class will be starting the new fitness and body topic and as a result pupils may be taking part in daily exercises. As a reminder can pupils ensure that they have appropriate footwear in school, shoes for indoors and outdoors.