EWHCF Class of 2021

What a busy first week back!

We completed our last outstanding gymnastic P.E. lesson from the gymnastics block that we started last term. First we reviewed clips from the The London 2012 Summer Olympics. Then we discussed how some of the techniques and skills taught at a primary school level can transform into world class performances. Afterwards we moved to the gym hall where some of our peers created a warm-up routine to help us stretch our muscles. We completed a circuit with lots of different apparatus; these stations challenged us to develop our balances, jumps and rolls. Finally we all performed a three stage gymnastic routine in front of the entire class!

In writing this week we wrote a personal reflection on our winter holidays. We were challenged to use all the VCOP throughout our paragraphs.

In Maths we all completed our Sumdog update assessments. Mr Atkinson created multiplication challenges and questions based off of the topics taught in the previous term. It was difficult at first to recall all of our strategies  but after a while it got easier.

In language and literacy this we were all given our new books – The Nowhere Emporium, Chill, Holes and The Emperor’s Underwear.  We all got a chance to read the first few pages before being given chapters to read as part of our homework. We also learnt new spelling sounds by completing questions from the Nelson Spelling Books and through active spelling tasks. After this we answered several evaluative, literal and inferential questions from a range of comprehension extracts.

On Friday we also had a short ‘show and tell’ session because a lot of people had some very exciting stories to share with the class that happened to them over the winter break.

We also started learning about Tsunamis and how they form as part of our social studies Natural Disaster topic. Over the next few weeks we will be researching hurricanes as well. After this we will start our country comparison study: Scotland and Brazil.

Mr Atkinson’s Comment

Welcome back everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful break! Now that we have finished gymnastics we will move onto racket sports. With Mr Brown pupils will be taking part in touch rugby sessions in the MUGA so please bring appropriate clothing, especially as the weather is still so unpredictable. We will spend a few more days on Natural Disasters before starting our school show topic – country comparison: Scotland and Brazil. Thank you to P6B for all there help with collecting the crisp boxes and the recyclable paper bin bags, this contributed to the schools recent Green Flag award.

20/12/19 CLASS BLOG

This week we finished our explosions. We exploded them with bicarbonate soda , vinegar and some red food coloring so it looks like lava erupting from a volcano .

In science we made a blizzard in a bottle with oil,water , a medicine tablet and some blue food dye .

In P.E we have been doing social dancing and we have also been doing handball.

We had a christmas party and played christmas corners, pass the parcel.

In literacy we did spelling stations and we were at each station for 15 minutes. I liked that we got to move around the stations. 

In writing we wrote a poem about a snowman and it was a-b format in stanzas.

As a Christmas present Miss Estlick bought us cupcakes and biscuits and we got to decorate them. Thank you Miss Estlick.

By Kailah, Cole and Abu

On thursday 1st december 2019 our class walked to the church for an adventure trail about advent. There were different stations including a quiz, stories about Jesus, movie clips. It was fun. We got to make tiles and a wreath! We had nice home baking and got to see Lewis’ mum.

We also did solo talks on natural disasters some were about earthquakes, volcanos, hurricanes, tsunamis, and it was very fascinating. We liked making the cross section diagrams of the hurricanes and got to put them on the wall. 

 On friday we did are first lesson of social dancing in which we learnt how too dance the Gay Gordans, we all found it really fun. At first we didn’t want to do it but then we ended up really liking it. 

In maths the mathletes were learning about volume and got to work using cubes to show volume in cubic centimetres. We liked doing active activities and got to build different volumes using the cubes. The number Ninjas got to learn about quadrilaterals and different triangles and how to find the missing angles. The Cool Calculators were learning about rounding and got to use number lines to help. It was good. The Problem solvers were doing addition and used the rods to help them.

We also started to make our own papier mache volcanoes!

By mhairi, eleya and ethan.

We have finished our maths assessments and  we all passed! .

We were off Off on election day and it was fun to hear what everyone did on their day off.

We also did our christmas crafts wich where plates that we were to design. We managed to sell every single one! 

We wrote our christmas poems and they sounded so good we put them in our cards..

We also used the laptops to make food webs and food chains

We done social dancing and learned strip the willo, canadian 2 step, Gay Gordens. We also learned a new dance called the cheeseburger. 

We did solo talks it was fun to see everyones.

We can’t wait until the last week of school because Miss Estlick has planned lots of fun activities for us to do.

By Aliyah, Alexander and Hamza

Hello and welcome to our blog

Maths

The mathletes – have been doing area and then after we did area we did area of triangles we did 2 assessments and now we have moved on to numbers to one million and we did a h7  on the numbers to a million

number ninjas – have been learning about fractions of whole numbers

cool calculators  – this week we have been learning about time and it was tricky but easy at the same time we enjoyed learning about time. For one of our tasks was an assessment it was quite easy butt it was a full                                                                                                                                                                              

We also played lots of fun games in the multi-purpose room.

Writing

In our writing we wrote a leaflet persuading others to use or not use social media. This meant that we had a lot of debate and discussion about being safe online. We had to think about how to organise our leaflet and how to lay it out.

This week we have also been making Christmas cards for the local carehome. We are entering our cards in to a competition and one person from both P6 and P7 will be picked to be the winners. their cards will then get sold at the care home.

For IDL we have been learning about tectonic plates and faultlines. We put these on to the map. We also created a pop up cross section of a hurricane and it looked really good. We got to put them up on the wall.

This week was our last week of DYW until we come back after christmas. We are sad that it is over but we cannot wait to get on to our new skill.

Rosie, Ryan and Lauren

Mr Atkinson’s Comment

Just a short blog this week. All the pictures from the Christmas party captures the mood of the week perfectly! Everyone has done an excellent job learning their Scottish/Social dances, hopefully you can remember them for any future events. I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas presents – biscuits and cupcakes from Miss Estlick and I. Next term we will finish off our natural disaster topic and resume gymnastics. Have a wonderful holiday everyone!

This week we continued to hear more of the natural disaster solo talks. Pupils presented to the class on some of the following:

• This tsunami linked to the explosion of the Krakatau volcano
• 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
• 2010 Haiti Earthquake
• 1976 Tangshan earthquake
• And some of last weeks disaster

This week in Maths two groups were using protractors for the first time. Both groups had to identify a range of different angles including, obtuse, straight line, reflex, right angle and acute. Following this they then had to measure and draw their own angles. Next time the groups will calculate composite angles which will also test their addition skills.

Isaac Newton have continued to learn more about their information handling topic. This week they independently conducted surveys in class, recorded their findings and then created their own graphs. Next time they will be using Excel to generate bar graphs and line graphs.

In Literacy we have been writing winter themed poems using the techniques of rhyming and ABAB. First we watched several clips of wintry settings and then we had to note key features related to the five senses based on the videos. After that, we used dictionaries to help us generate more words that might be useful when structuring our poems.

In Social/Scottish dancing we learnt the Canadian Barn dance and the Strip the Willow dance in preparation for our Ceilidh during the Christmas party next week. We really enjoyed these dances as they were lively and challenging!

We also continued learning more about our Life Cycles science topic this week. We investigated different habitats and learnt how altering the food chain can affect animal populations. Next we found out what an ecosystem is and how a food web can show multiple food chains. Finally, working in partners, we used the Chromebooks to help research and create our own food webs using Excel. Whilst doing this task we discovered the importance of keys and colour coding information in the food webs as it makes it easier to identify trends.

Mr Atkinson’s Comment

Excellent work everyone with their solo talk! I really enjoyed reading your winter themed poems, next term we will investigate other poetry related techniques. Remember next week is the Christmas party! There will be three Scottish/Social dances, several games and a break for some food and drinks.

This week we presented our solo talks based on natural disasters that we researched at home as part of our talk homework. Everyone will be sharing their talks with the class over the next couple of weeks. Some pupils even brought in props such as cooled molten rock. So far we have heard about:

• Japan’s Mt. Fuji – active volcano
• Hurricane Katrina
• Hurricane Andrew
• Hurricane Sandy
• Mount Saint Helens – active stratovolcano

On Thursday we visited the Baptist Church with P6A. It was fantastic! Look at the photos below to see some of the highlights. Thank you to all the parent/adult helpers and to the congregation for hosting us.

We started our Social/Scottish dancing this week. Mr Atkinson and Miss Estlick demonstrated to us how to do the Gay Gordons and the Military Two-Step. Initially the sequences were tricky to learn but by the end of the lesson we were all able to confidently to dance to the music with no pauses.

On Friday we started learning about our new science topic, Life Cycles. First we learnt what the terms; consumer, top consumer, predator, prey, producer, primary consumer and secondary consumer. To help us we watched clips from the Lion King (Circle of Life song) and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (there is always a bigger fish scene). Afterwards we had to create our own food chains and label them.

Mr Atkinson’s Comment

Well done to everyone for their participation in Social/Scottish Dancing, we will continue with dancing until the Christmas break. Thank you again to all the parent/adult helpers and the congregation at the Baptist Church for hosting us – everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves! Remember to have your solo talks ready to be delivered over the course of the next two weeks so that we can reflect and assess them before the holidays.      

At the start of the week we divided ourselves into groups to debate a range of road safety related issues. To help us, we used the Chromebooks to research differing opinions and then we used the gathered information to help us create persuasive posters. Some of the groups found this difficult as it was challenging to argue against a position which has a lot of evidence to support it. We also discovered that it is a lot easier to persuasively argue for a position that you personally support or believe in.

During spelling we completed a range of active spelling tasks such as rainbow writing, Play-Doh spelling, Nessy Spelling on the Chromebooks and the Name Adjective game that Mr McMillan created and challenged us to try.

Our maths lessons have been very busy and fun this week! Emmy Noether have been learning how to correctly use different timetables and schedules. First we had to apply our previous understanding of converting 12 and 24 hour times and then use the counting on and back methods to calculate durations. Mr Atkinson challenged us to then plan a journey from Patterton railway station to Manchester Old Trafford Stadium. We were allowed to use any route and mode of transport so some of us went onto the ScotRail website and other pupils tried to find suitable plane times from Glasgow and Edinburgh airport. Some of us discovered that certain routes were quicker than others, for example; we found a flight to Manchester from Glasgow… that took 11 hours via Dubai!

Albert Einstein & Maria Agnesi have continued to work very hard with Mrs Fry! With Mr Atkinson we completed our area and perimeter topic. For our final lesson we were challenged to create shapes with the same perimeter but have different areas, it was very fun testing out the various combinations. Our first lesson of the new angle and degrees topic involved us making links to compass directions and right angles (90 degrees). Next week we are going to go outside and use the compass on the playground floor to help us complete a few problem solving challenges.

Isaac Newton have been consolidating their 2,5 and 10 times tables at the start of every maths lesson this week. We have been learning how to draw bar graphs and pictographs as well as interpret the information in these graphs. We have also just started carrying out our very own surveys and recording this information by using tally marks.

In Social Studies, we have been learning about tectonic plates and the Ring of Fire. We drew the tectonic plates and the Ring of Fire onto our maps and over the next couple of weeks we will add the locations of dormant and active volcanoes to them.

Mr Atkinson’s Comment

What a busy week! As mentioned in the prior blog due to the naivety plays and Christmas shows we have had to alter our P.E. time and relocate to a more appropriate space. Mr Brown’s P.E. session will continue to be on a Monday but for the remaining couple of weeks before the Christmas holidays we will be doing our Scottish Social Dancing in the P7B classroom during periods 3 and 4 on a Friday. Please can pupils bring the correct P.E. clothing in order to take part in a wide range of physical activities. It is encouraged that pupils either have their name or initials on their clothing to avoid losing items. Pupils should also bring indoor and outdoor shoes given the unpredictability of the Scottish weather. We appreciate your ongoing support with this.

This week we had our second gymnastics lesson! We warmed up by honing our balances by working with partners to support and encourage each other. We then used the mats to help us perform a range of manoeuvres such as front, back and pencil rolls. Some of our peers modelled to us how to correctly perform some of these exercises. Afterwards Mr Atkinson set up the gymnastics apparatus! We used the spring board, vaults, climbing frames, yoga mats and crash mats to allow us to safely create a sequences of balances, rolls and jumps.

In literacy, after completing our spelling and reading we had to closely analyse a comprehension passage on volcanoes which is linked to our natural disasters IDL topic. This required us to identify key information as well as compare and contrast different types of volcanoes.

Prior to starting our writing lesson some of us shared what we had learned when doing our talk homework. Then we created ‘surviving an earthquake’ information posters. To help us with this we used the Chromebooks to research what you should do when an earthquake happens. Afterwards we wrote a diary entry of our experiences in an earthquake.

All of the class have finished off their models of earths layers which you can see from the photographs below. Next week we will use these models to help use identify tectonic plates, fault lines and the Ring of Fire.

In maths this week, some groups have been continuing to calculate the area of squares and rectangles. Another group have been using Venn and Carroll diagrams to separate shapes based on their properties. Next week they will be interpreting bar graphs and tally charts. Emmy Noether have been converting 12 and 24 times and been calculating the duration of journeys.

On Friday we took part in a couple of Road Safety activities. One of the tasks required us to create a safe street using speed signs, cycle paths and zebra crossings.

Abi shared with the class videos of her successful model ship first voyage which she had previously brought into class.

Mr Atkinson’s Comment

Congratulations to our two dancers who raised money for their chosen charity, great work! Next week, P.E. with the high school teacher will still be on Monday but our P.E. double period will be on Wednesday. There will be one more week of gymnastics before we move onto Scottish Dancing, which will also link into our Christmas Party. Please bring appropriate shoes to take part in P.E. (gym shoes/trainers in P.E. and school shoes for outside in the playground). Starting the week beginning the 2nd there will be weekly spelling check-ups based on the homework sounds and words.