We had a great day celebrating all things reading for World Book Day 2020! We enjoyed reading time in the gym hall with pretty fairy lights and a calm reading environment. We loved having some time just to relax and read away from our busy schedule. In class we took part in ‘Book Tasting’ 📚 We each placed our books on our plates. We moved around the room with our ‘menus’ and explored 6 different books. In our menus we took note of the genre; what attracted us to the book; the title and author; any characters; impressions after reading a few pages; if we would want to read the book and gave it a star rating! We worked really hard at this task and found lots of books that we would like to read! In the afternoon we each went to a teacher to listen to some reading. We signed up to the book we wanted to listen to. It was a fab day and we loved celebrating books and the joy of reading! Our reading is improving everyday thanks to our hard work in class and support at home.

We have enjoying learning how to identify and recall vocabulary in Mandarin. We have also been learning how to celebrate diverse cultures different from our own. We love it when Mrs Qiu becomes her alter ego, PanPan! He tests our conversational language and sometimes we even get to wear him on our heads! We learned all about Chinese New Year and how they celebrate and prepare for their biggest event of the year! We have been learning how to pronounce sports in Mandarin and introductory words. We only have a few weeks left of Mandarin so we are making the most of visiting our amazing Mandarin Classroom. Our Mandarin timetable will end at the Spring Break. 🐲🌸🐉

Within Digital Technologies we took time to remind ourselves how to be safe online and why it is so important. We thought about things we enjoy to do which does not use the internet and things we like to do that do need the internet. We know it is important to do things both on and off the internet and that too much screen time can sometimes isolate us from socialising and talking with our family. We entered the Cross Arthurlie Digital Competition by designing a Internet Safety Shield. We followed the school online safety code: Zip It Block It Flag It Cyber Safe. This reminds us to Zip our personal information safely; Block anyone we do not know or is suspicious; Flag this information to our parents, a trusted adult or Mrs McMillan; be cyber safe at all times. Brilliant results and a great message to remind ourselves of!  💻⌨🖥

In Science we have started our new Science Topic: Energy. We are learning how to explore and investigate different types of energy as well as become aware of how to use energy efficiently to protect our planet. We learnt this week how to sort renewable energy from non-renewable energy. We know that when we use non-renewable energy it is gone and cannot be replaced. We know that renewable energy can be replenished naturally so long as we look after our climate. We studied the renewable energy of HydroPower which we call Wind. We created windmills to celebrate our learning and experiment with the wind!

We are learning how to write, identify and create comparative vocabulary. We learned how to spot and write a simile.  We know that it is when you compare two things to give more detail for the reader and that it will always use the words ‘as’ or ‘like’. We searched for similes around the room and used our imaginations to create comparisons. Once we were confident, we write our own simile poems! The results were brilliant and made our writing much more interesting! Well done, everyone! ☺️

In Science we are learning how to explore and investigate Magnets. As part of this learning outcome we are to learn how magnets can be used for fun and creativity as they allow things to be moved and pulled. Now that we are confident with what attracts and what repels a magnet, we used attracting metals to create a fun ‘Hook the Fish’ game! We worked in teams to design the game, how it would work and how it would look. We wrote a question or a ‘would you rather’ question on the back of each fish. Next we hooked each fish with a paper clip. Player could then use the wand magnets to try and hook a fish using the magnetism. They then had to answer the question on the back of the fish. We choose a paper clip as it is magnetic but also very light. We had tried some alluminium first but we discovered that even though alluminium is considered a type of metal, it is not magnetic! 😱 Did you know that drinks cans are not attracted to magnets? 🤯 We were excited and surprised when we tested it out! We took time to play each other’s games and had a great Friday afternoon! Well done, everyone! ☺️

In Art we are learning how to apply depth to our artwork. This week we learned how to manipulate the paper to make it look at though the image is 3D and that there are things in the foreground and background of the main image. We have been learning about the history of Roman buildings in Social Studies so we used this as our context. We folded a piece of card in half and made two cuts into the paper. We pushed the cut though to make a wee table that our Colosseums could be glued to. This made it stand out and stand up by itself. Next we learned how to apply colours smoothly by circling the coloured pencils instead if scratching them back and forth, This gave an overall strong and smooth effect of colour to make it stand out. When we were finished we added images to the background and foreground to add detail. The abstract colours and fun finish made it look a wee bit like a postcard from Roma! Now we just need some pizza and we are good to go! Ciao! 🇮🇹♥️🍕🏛

This is the link to the website I used for inspiration for this task if you would like to try it at home. You could do it with any image for a special card or gift! arteascuola.com/2013/06/pop-up-italian-roman-arenas/

In ICT we are learning how to programme motion pathways on a PowerPoint. We are learning how to speak and present in front of an audience and we are using technology to enhance our learning. We learned how to insert a shape, change its colour and outline to make it more aesthetic and we learned how to add a motion pathway on top of it. A motion pathway allows us to programme the shape or image to move in a certain way. This will allow us to build up into coding different things within ICT. We loved adding pathways to make the pictures move in a fun and creative way! Well done, everyone! 🖥📱💻

In Science we are learning how to explore and investigate Magnets. This week we experimented to see if liquids have an impact on the magnetic force. We started by creating and organising our lab book for the experiment so that we could record the learning process. After this we put a paper clip in an empty dish with no liquid. We found that the paper clip moved freely with the magnet and the force was very strong even though the glass dish was between the magnet and the paper clip.

Next we measured the exact same amount of water, cooking oil and syrup into three dishes. We placed a paper clip in each liquid and used the wand magnets to investigate! We discovered that the: water had no effect on the magnetism; the cooking oil didn’t work as well as the water but it still allowed the paper clip to move with the magnet; and the syrup still let the magnet move but it moved very slowly. We were so excited to use all the different materials in our experiment! We decided that liquids definitely do have an impact on magnetism. 🧲🦠🧫

Yesterday I sent home Glow Login cards. If you google Glow, your child can log into Glow. Glow is a Scottish Government website for all pupils in Scotland. Glow allows free access to many great resources and learning apps. It gives you free access to Microsoft Office. You can download it to any computer or laptop for free! Microsoft Office is somewhat expensive and so it may be useful for the whole family. Simply log in, scroll to the orange Microsoft Office App tile and download.  Your child uses the second orange tile (also Microsoft but not the download file) often in school.  Here they can use all of Microsoft Office online and it saves their work automatically to their secure account. ☺️💻📱