Category Archives: Literacy across learning

Goodnight Mr Tom- Analysis

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 Willie
Ewan’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 map
Joseph’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.

Elise’s Venn diagram

 

P7 Assembly

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.

 

 

Learning and Teaching Assembly

On Friday 17th Febuary, our class and primary 5 led a learning and teaching assembly on expressive arts. We learned how to work with another class and improve our confidence in speaking to an audience.

At the begining of the assembly we spoke about our art lessons; in particular our lesson on Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Primary 5 talked about their mandalas and landscapes.

We then Moved on to drama where Ewan, Joseph, Ryan, Harley and Cameron performed their Thesues & The Minotaur story. They had lots of expression in their performance.

We then spoke about what we had learned in music and clapped out some of the rhythms we had learned. We then sang a song called “The Sands o’ the Shore’ and we really enjoyed it.

Finally we spoke about some dance that we had taken part in at school and out of school. Lucy and Jessica performed a highland dance to start with. Then Primary 5 children performed the Gay Gordons dance. Jessica, Emma, Paige and Jamie then performed a short Just Dance routine to let our audience know what the Dance-a-thon day might be like.

Everyone enjoyed watching our assembly about what we had be doing in expressive arts and we enjoyed performing to such a great audience!

Celebrating Water Dance

We have been investigating global issues relating to water such as wastage.  We have decided as well as taking our   own steps to address the issues faced by the world, we would also raise awareness amongst our peers.

We have been learning about how areas of populations have been built around water sources such as rivers because water is such a valuable resource.  We also found out that many cultures have traditional dances to celebrate water such as the Native Americans. We learned a traditional dance from Israel called  Mayim Mayim which means water water. The dance celebrates the discovery of a stream after a long search for water in the desert.

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As we are participating in a danceathon on Thursday to raise money for Malawi, we decided this would allow us to teach others the dance and raise awareness of  this issue.

We created our own dance celebrating water and the other elements.

We listened to the music and worked together to create simple actions and dance steps to represent the elements. We wanted it to be a group dance to reflect working together and the need for balance. We also designed masks to represent the different elements. The masks helped us get into character and feel even more part of the group.

We hope you enjoy our dance and think about how important water is to us all and the part we all have to play to tackle this global issue.

We are planning to continue to raise awareness, create an action plan   and showcase our learning.

Literacy Circles Get Graphic!

In class we have been learning about Greek myths and legends in our literacy circles. We learned about Theseus and the Minotaur, Odysseus and the Cyclops, Perseus and Medusa, Medusa and Athena and Daedalus and Icarus.

We got into groups and chose our favourite Greek myths. We then read the text again and tried to simplify it for a younger audience. For our writing lesson, we planned our story using the mountain climber template and then put our story into a graphic novel. We made sure to include a beast, a villain, a destination a hero and Gods. Our graphic novels told the story of our chosen myth by mostly using our drawings and only small bits of text.

Our groups were:

Theseus and the Minotaur- Joseph, Ryan, Harley and Ewan

Daedalus and Icarus- Jessica, Emma, Elise

Perseus and Medusa- Paige, Charlie, Amber and Jeanie

Medusa and Athena- Jamie, Sophie, Beth and Chloe

Odysseus and the Cyclops- Jordan, James, Cameron and Fraser.

Once we had finished our graphic novels we went on to tell our stories to Primary 2. We changed some of the words to make them easier for P2 to understand and acted out some of the scenes. We have really enjoyed the experience. d1 d2 d3 d4 d5 d6

The Life and Times of David Livingstone

We have been exploring the life and times of the  Christian David Livingstone. We have been utilising  our reading and research skills to learn about this extraordinary man.

By utilising g our read to learn skills  we were able to identify significant events within David’s life and the key dates.

We organised them onto a timeline using ICT.  We used our timelines and summarising to write a biography of his life.

paiges-timeline
David Livingstone Time Line by Paige
beths-dl-summary
The Life and Times of David Livingstone by Beth

 

 

 

 

World Book Day – 3 March

World Book Day was on Thursday 3 March. We had a lovely time when boys and girls from Miss Macdonald’s Primary 7 class came to read to us.

We heard a variety of stories such as Thumbelina, Rapunzel, Under the Skin and Jack and The Beanstalk. We also listened to poems from the Ring of Words Anthology. Mark and Elliot also SANG a book to us – Miss McDonald had a class!

Thank you to Jamie and Chloe, Elliot and Mark, Charlie, Victoria and Heather, Archie and Lauren, Ethan, Callum, and Cameron. We really appreciated you doing this for us!

Later in the afternoon, we had to take part in a scavenger hunt where we had to look for certain characters, animals and items, such as a happy ending, a mystery, a moral lesson which can be learned etc.,  in books and say where we found them.

It was an enjoyable day!

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P5b Assembly

On the 11 September 2015, our class delivered an assembly to the whole school and our parents. The title of our assembly was ‘Literacy’.

Together in class we had to decide what our assembly was going to be like and we each had to write out own parts. We described what literacy means to us: to be able to write, read, talk and listen well.

We also showed how we can use literacy in all our curricular areas and in everything we do every day.

Below is a link to our power point, which will give you a flavour of our assembly.

Primary 5bAssembly