in March some of the P7 pupils went on a residential trip to Dounans Outdoor Centre. We stayed there for 5 days and did lots of outdoor activities. We had a brilliant time!
Some of the activities that we took part in were:
Burn Scramble- walking through a burn.
Cat Walk- climbing a tree and walking across a log in the air, then jumping off.
Archery
Leap of Faith- climbing up a pole and jumping off.
Raft building
Mountain exploration
Night line- walking in a line in blindfolds through an assault course.
Throughout the week we learnt to have confidence in ourselves, become more responsible and independent and overcome our fears.
We have been learning new gymnastics skills in PE this term. So far we have been working on floor routines, practising inversion, flight, different types of roll (forward, backward, teddy bear) and balancing.
We had success criteria for our routines to make sure that they included lots of different skills. We had to ensure that we had:
Starting position
3 different types of roll
Inversion
Flight
Different levels
Different directions
Group balance
We have been really enjoying gymnastics so far. We have especially enjoyed choreographing routines with our groups. We are now looking forward to using more apparatus in gymnastics.
We have been reading the novel Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian as part of our I.D.L topic, World War 2. The book is about a young boy called Willie who is evacuated from London and sent to a small town called Little Weirwold. He is taken in by Tom Oakley who, at first, seems to be a grumpy old man but he gradually becomes more caring and very fond of Willie. Willie did not have a good life in London because his mother told him lies and continually beat him. However, his life in Little Weirwold is much better as Tom does not beat him and buys him lots of treats and essentials.
We did some character analysis on our chosen character and wrote quotes from the book to back up our ideas. We then wrote a character description using our characterisation notes. Finally we drew our character and annotated it using our notes.
Cameron’s illustration of WillieEwan’s illustration of Tom
Next we took notes from the text about the setting (Little Weirwold) and used these notes to draw a map of Little Weirwold so far.
Chloe’s setting analysis and mapJoseph’s setting map
We then looked at life as an evacuee by watching videos and compared it to our own lives using a Venn diagram.
Today we were visited by Dean Bowen from Homefront Histories. He had organised a whole day for us to learn about the Homefront during World War 2 and experience what it might have been like to live in that time. We were Privates in his army and we were told that we needed to complete his mission for the day.
We spent the day working at different tables, looking at original artifacts from the 1940s including lots of weapons, armour, gas masks and even food tins and soap powder boxes. As we were doing this, we were answering various questions about The Blitz, Weaponary, Rations and more.
We got to dress up in original military jackets, hats and helmets and the best part was that we got to hold real, original guns which were deactivated. We each had our photo taken beside Winston Churchill.
In the afternoon we went outside to practice extinguishing an incendiary bomb. We had to pump the water and use the hose to put the bomb out. We were then given the chance to sound the air raid siren which was very noisy so we knew that it was definitely loud enough for small villages to hear back in war times.
We had a fantastic day learning about lots of different aspects of the Homefront and were delighted to be able to see and touch real World War 2 artifacts up close. As this was our introduction to our new Social Studies topic, we are very excited to learn even more about the Homefront.
Ewan and Gary giving a salute with gas masks on
Original WW2 gas masks
Jamie reading a newspaper from 1940
Thomas (P7a) using the binoculars and holding a bomb
A soldier’s necessities
Fraser and Lewis trying on some of the belts and weaponry
The week of the 11th September – 18th of September was Maths Week in Scotland. Our class had an excellent week taking part in lots of maths related activities.
We played in a Sumdog competition each day to try and get into the top 1000 classes. We exceeded our own expectations and came an amazing 454th place out of 4900 classes. The top three children in our class were:
Aimee
Joseph
Beth
We also brought in our own device to use as a compass and took part in a treasure hunt activity outside using our compass app and directions to guide us.
At the end of the week, in groups, we made up a short game to teach the P2 children. We did a carousel activity where we got the P2 children into groups and each of the P7 groups taught them a different game. It was a fun experience teaching P2!
On Friday 6th October we shared our learning and teaching from Term 1 in an assembly with P7a. Everyone in our class spoke about a topic of their choice. The topics we discussed were:
P7 Roles and Responsibilities (Jessica & Cameron)
Safety in the Park (Ryan & Charlie)
Science- The Respiratory System (Jeanie, James & Chloe)
Art- elipses (Amber & Ewan)
Literacy- VCOP (Beth & Jordan)
Health and Wellbeing- Wonder (Jamie)
RME- Islam (Sophie)
P.E- Fitness & Possession Games (Frase & Joseph)
Maths Week (Aimee)
Singing Children of Africa (Elise & Harley)
Paige and Emma then concluded our assembly with a final thanks and summary of our favourite points of P7 so far.
P7 entering East Renfrewshire Council Headquarters
Today P7a & P7b visited East Renfrewshire Council Headquarters to take part in the Provost’s debate. The motion for discussion was ‘This house believes that people over 60 continue to receive free bus travel?’
We had proposers who were for the motion and opposers who were against the motion. The debating team members from our class were: Jamie, Aimee, Sophie, Cameron, Emma, Jordan and Chloe. Cameron gave the first opposing point about perhaps raising the age for free travel to 67 in line with the retirement age.
Proposers waiting for the debate to begin
We had an excellent debate, with lots of reasons for and against the motion. We came up with many rebuttals when we heard something that we did not think was correct.
We used emotive language and rhetorical questions throughout to try and persuade the people in the public gallery. The public were also given the opportunity to put forward their own arguments.
We had a fantastic morning in the Debating Chamber and were so grateful to be able to take part in a debate with Provost Jim Fletcher.
Last week the Singing Children of Africa choir visited our school to help raise funds for their charity. We were so excited to meet them after hearing all about them from Miss Watt. Some of the children visited our classroom and explained what life and school was like in Africa. Our lives are very different. one of the main differences was that the African children had to walk 5 miles to go to school whereas we get the bus to school if we live more than 1 mile away. In the afternoon they treated us to a spectacular concert with lots of singing and dancing. Our favourite songs were Flower of Scotland and Can’t Stop the Feeling. We had a great day and would love to meet our friends again.
Joseph showing his friend how to play Sumdog maths games on our laptops.
Over the last few weeks we have been taking part in bikeability lessons in the school playground. Last week we started our first lesson on the road; it was quite scary but really exciting!
Firstly, we had to do our bike check to make sure that our bikes and helmets were safe to go on the road. We then walked our bikes to the road where we were going to do our practising. The manoeuvres we were doing were:
Left hand turns
Passing a side road
U-turns
Safe stops
We were constantly improving our skills by making sure we were in control of our bikes at all times and making safe starts and stops. There were some obstacles along the way because some cars passed us or were driving behind us so we needed to make sure we didn’t panic and that we signalled in advance. We are looking forward to practising right hand turns this week along with our safe starts and stops.
On Thursday 23rd February, we organised school fundraising ‘Dance-a-thon’ event to raise funds for Malawi.
The P4-P7 children got a dance lesson from a dance teacher from Le Dance Studio in Barrhead. We danced to a song from the Trolls movie, called September. We had so much fun and managed to complete a dance routine for the song- we were great!
We went round each of the classes in groups of 3 and taught our water dance to other children. We had already practiced how we would teach the dance and what instructions we would give to make sure it was easy to learn. The classes did really well and managed to learn the dance by the time we had finished. A great effort!
The infants went to the gym hall to do ‘Just Dance’. Their favourite dance routine was to Ghost Busters. They were really enthusiastic and enjoyed themselves.
Whole school dancing
We ended the day in the gym hall and our parents came to join us. P4-P7 performed our Trolls dance routine and then the whole school did two Just Dance routines. It was so so much fun!! We managed to raise more than £140 for a great cause.
