We have loved reading Tom Fletcher’s novel The Christmasaurus. We were even more delighted when we found out that Miss Mitchell had treated us to the musical edition! It is a story about a boy named William Trundle, and a dinosaur, the Christmasaurus. It’s about how they meet one Christmas Eve and have a magical adventure. It’s about friendship and families, sleigh bells and Santa, singing elves and flying reindeer, music and magic. It’s about discovering your heart’s true desire, and learning that the impossible might just be possible . . .

Oliver said, “I really enjoyed the songs because they make you feel really good! They make it easier to sense the mood of the story because there will be upbeat music when the story is happy and slow when the story is sad.”

By looking at meals we enjoy eating and creating a healthy eating pyramid, we have been able to discuss and identify where we could be making better choices to have a healthier diet.

Ben shared, “I found out that some foods that I enjoy eating all of the time, like crisps, are unhealthy and should only be eaten every now and again.”

Innes realised, “Some of the foods I enjoy eating are unhealthy and I will stop eating them, for example cheese and biscuits. They are fine as a treat!”

We have discussed the important part that numbers play in the world and explored a number system that was used by civilisations in history to record numbers.

Alice said, “I used to have a clock that said the Roman Numerals on them. It was fun to learn about different numbers.”

In French lessons we have been learning about the alphabet and have started to speak about different types of weather. We can spell out our name in French.

Ella – uh, el, el, ah

Bryony – beh, er, ee-grek, oh, en, ee-grek

Aaron – ah, ah, er, oh, en

We are becoming more confident when answering the question Quel temps fait-il?

Lucy said, “Il fait chaud means it is hot.”

Murray explained that, “Il neige means it is snowing.”

We also took part in the Hour of Code and worked through some short Star Wars activities. These taught us to write simple code to programme characters in a maze game. We had to think about clear and concise instructions, possible variables and interesting ideas.

Achievements in November and December

We have been developing our drawing skills. Two of our pupils were very impressed with how realistic their self-portraits were. Pupils have performed well in dancing exams and have moved up a belt colour in martial arts.

In Science we have been exploring food chains and webs. The pupils were able to use scientific vocabulary to describe different animals in a food chain. We learned about Carnivores, Omnivores and Herbivores. The pupils can create their own food chains and webs and identify the Producers, Primary Consumers, Secondary Consumers and even the Tertiary Consumers.

Eshan created a food chain showing the transfer of energy:

Leaves à grasshopper à spider à frog à snake à hawk à fox

We then moved on to investigating Vibrations and Sounds. We explored how sound vibrations are carried by waves through air. In groups, the pupils created a short television show script and PowerPoint to teach the other class about sound waves.

Rosie, Katie and Amelia created a fantastic show called “The Science of Sound”. In their episode they explained that loud sounds create large vibrations and quieter sounds create smaller vibrations. The size of the vibrations is called the amplitude.

Escher patterns will provided a stimulus for our expressive arts study this term. Through Maths, we discussed and explored the properties of 2D shapes and identified those that tiled.

Emma explained, “First we looked mosaics made from lots of little squares. These helped us to think about shapes fitting into each other without leaving any spaces.”

We then practised making repeating patterns using shape and colour.

Cameron shared, “I found drawing the repeating shapes patterns on the dotty maths paper quite difficult at first but it showed me that I had to slow down and concentrate on making sure the shapes were the same and no spaces were left between them.”

Next we created own fish and ghost stencils to use to create our Escher patterns.

Eva said, “To make our stencils we had to cut a shape out of one side of a rectangular piece of paper, and then stick it to the other side. This meant that the stencil fit into itself easily.”

Finally, we all worked together to make a huge class lizard pattern.

Laaibah explains, “Everyone had a piece of the big picture. We had to make sure we all used the same colour pattern. We then worked together to join all of the lizards together.”

Achievements in October

Our sporty Primary 4’s have been developing their skills in a range of activities including skate boarding, tennis, karate and swimming. Cricket club and coding club have inspired some pupils to further their skills at home and practise batting and creating their own computer games.