Welcome to our first blog post of Primary 5. Everyone has made a good start to the new school session and we are all working hard. We are settling into our new class routines and getting back into the swing of school life after the summer holiday.

In class we have been busy discussing Children’s Rights and have created our Class Charter which the class voted to give a Space theme. We have also begun creating some new artwork to personalise our classroom. Please visit regularly to keep up to date with the fantastic work we will be doing over the session.

Some useful information:

• PE Day: Tuesday period 1 and 2
• Violinists will meet with Mr McNaughton on Mondays
• Music Specialist: Mrs Carey will visit every second Tuesday
• Homework will begin week beginning 25.8.25

 

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The sun was shining for our Sports Day this year and Primary 4 were very excited to take part in their first P4-P7 potted sports and races.

Everyone was in good spirits and wearing their house colours. Well done to everyone for taking part! A special congratulations to all the pupils who put themselves forward for the races and tug of war. 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️💪

We each had a great time!

P4.2 embraces outdoor learning and we made the most of the good weather.  We have been exploring observational drawing using a variety of media, from pencils to watercolour. We went on a nature walk around the school grounds and looked closer at the shapes and colours of leaves, flowers and plants. We then sketched the leaf or flower on cartridge paper and added colour and detail with water colour paint.

April was a very short month in school due to the holidays but we had lots of fun playing and learning!

In French, we now know our numbers to 49 off by heart. The class wete challenged to match the numbers to the French word – fastest wins. We’re just a little competitive in P4.2! 😅

In Maths,  we have been revising lots of learning from First Level as we begin to progress through Second Level.  The children had asked for more revision on aspects of time, fractions and finding change with money.

We have been learning about Electrical Circuits in Science. We explored how a circuit worked through videos and experiments. We even created a human circuit by having everyone in the class join hands. 🤝 The magic rod we had lit up and beeped showing that our circuit was complete. P7 have been supporting us in our learning and on the day they came to visit, we tried the circuit again with 42 children holding hands and the rod still lit up! It was very exciting! 💡

We have been building and drawing circuits. We needed our battery to be in the circuit and all of the electrons had to pass on the current and not let the current break. We have been exploring jobs connected to electricity and we have experienced being energy surveyors, exploring how electricity is used in Cross Arthurlie as well as electricians who can spot a fault in a circuit.

P7 came to visit after we had a few weeks of experience with building circuits with lights, switches, buzzers and motors. They taught us how to build a Scribblebot – a motor-powered moving machine that creates patterns on paper. Groups worked very well together, listening to instructions, gathering materials and communicating clearly.

L was tinkering away in the tuff tray exploring what the inside of a computer looked like. We explored insulators and conductors and could identify examples of these from the components of a computer.

F was inspired by a P7 to begin exploring solar panels. He managed to build a circuit powered by a renewable source of energy (the sun) that made a light come on and a motor move! In the end, he built a fan that helped us to cool down on a particularly warm Tuesday! Thanks F! ☀️

Primary 4.2 were clocking in at work as they became energy surveyors around Cross Arthurlie. We explored how electricity was being used around the school: to produce heat, light, sound or movement.  Mrs Denny even let us ring the bell using the special button!

P4.2 is full of bright sparks! 💡✨️

Life Skills: Sewing and Textile Technologies 

P4.2 have been learning how to sew with Mrs Denny. We have learned how to thread a needle and sew a running stitch. We also explored tools that help sewing, like pins and thimbles. Our tuff tray had binka material and blunt needles for us to experiment with threading a needle and creating a running stitch.

To celebrate love and kindness on Valentines Day, P4.2 created adorable squishy Lovebugs to gift to someone at home or to keep for themselves ❤️  We used a running stitch to attach two pieces of felt together and stuffed them with fluff. Mrs Denny’s mum is part of a local sewing group in Barrhead and came along to help us out. She was very impressed by our manners, resilience and effort! For most of us, it was our first time sewing and we absolutely loved trying something new!

We were so engaged with our sewing and Mrs Denny loved to hear that so many pupils tried sewing at home after their lessons. 🧵 We have been continuing our Health and Wellbeing lessons all about Friendship, Empathy, Emotions and Kindness.  Our Lovebugs are a little symbol of love and kindness and we will gift them on to someone who means a lot to us.  What’s nicer than a handmade gift? ❤️

During our Viking topic, we explored different types of materials Vikings would have worked with, such as wool, leather and linen. We worked in groups to create a large Viking man and woman from collating different materials. We learned how we can mark material with pencil and pull it tight to cut it.

Health and Wellbeing: Friendships, Kindness and Empathy.

In Health and Wellbeing, we have been exploring empathy and trying to understand how our friends are feeling by looking at body language and facial expressions as well as listening to what they are saying. For many weeks we have explored ways to be a better friend and deal with disagreements. We created a friendship tree with examples of things that good friends do, like apologise to each other, compromise and make each other laugh!

Using clips from the movie Inside Out and having class discussions, we have explored  how we ourselves and our friends act when experiencing different emotions. We have also explored certain emotions in more depth and discussed how we can support ourselves and others when feeling these.

We continue to encourage all children to be extra kind to everyone around them and it has been lovely to see P4 showing more maturity and doing lots of things for each other without being asked, like putting jotters away, checking in with each other or collecting a friend’s coat. We have put examples of ways we are being extra kind around our friendship tree. ❤️

Literacy and English: Class Novel

We are still reading our class novel, Ottoline and the Yellow Cat. We have made some interesting predictions and asked excellent questions based on the evidence we have collected in our notebooks.

Building on our Health and Wellbeing lessons, we tried to understand the thoughts and feelings of a strange little character called Mr Munroe who could not speak. We had to look for clues about his body language and actions in the novel. Mr Munroe was wearing many crazy disguises in the story to get the attention of his friend, Ottoline. Can you spot the different item added to his disguise each time?

We tried a drama technique called a ‘Forum Theatre’. Two pupils were the actors and the rest of class had to instruct them how to act by looking back in the book. In particular, we had to look for verbs and adverbs. We had so much fun using props to enhance our drama and staying in character.

Ten o’clock: Ottoline inspecting the curtains and Mr Munroe trying to get her attention.

Eleven o’clock: Ottoline inspecting the polishing of the door handles and Mr Munroe trying to get her attention.

Twelve o’clock: Ottoline is checking the taps in the bathroom and Mr Munroe is starting to get fed up of being ignored!

Mr Munroe slams the door as he goes into his bedroom in a huff! Much to the shock of the maids who were sorting the towels.

Lunch was a bit awkward between Ottoline and Mr Munroe.  Not much was said!

Two o’clock: Mr Munroe STILL can’t get Ottoline’s attention as she inspected the MB Hoovering company.

Three o’clock: Mr Munroe has resorted to wearing flippers and gloves to get Ottoline to notice him…but she is too busy inspecting the maids folding her pants and socks!

Four o’clock: Ottoline is enjoying relaxing in her comfy bed and she’s had enough of Mr Munroe trying to ask her a question!

Five o’clock: Dinner time and Mr Munroe has given up! He is nowhere to be seen. Ottoline has dinner alone, served by the cooking company.

Six o’clock: The last inspection of the day! Ottoline helps the Light bulb Company inspect the roof lights. However, Ottoline wonders where has Mr Munroe gone after bothering her all day…

We gave amazing directions to the actors and all actors managed to stay in character really well! Mrs Denny thought the boys using white fabric as Ottoline’s hair was very funny and inventive! We had great fun gathering all the props and exploring the interaction between the characters in more detail. ❤️

The XA Factor – 21st February 

Congratulations to our lovely pupils that got into the final of the XA Factor and who ended up being in the top 3 acts!! 🙌 We are so proud of you all and your confidence and talent on stage was great to see! We have so many talented pupils in P4.2, many of whom auditioned this month. Keep up the confidence as I know you have inspired many other pupils to audition next year.

Happy New Year! ✨️

We have been easing ourselves back into routine and enjoying the opportunity for a fresh start in the new year. We reflected over the goals we set in September and celebrated the many pupil successes! Many of us achieved goals such as learning our multiplication tables, improving our story writing and spelling, and drinking more water.

“I actually know my multiplication tables now. My 6, 7, 8 and 9. I just need to get better at dividing – I’m not as quick”

“I’m actually so proud of myself. I feel like my writing is a lot neater and my capital letters touch the top line.”

We can tell we have been successful through improvements in scores and personal confidence. Our new goals have been set for March and we’re motivated to work towards them! 💪

 

As we learn new concepts in Literacy and Maths, we are always revising previously taught concepts from P2 and P3 (First Level). In Maths, we realised that we would all like some more support on fractions, finding change from money, step division and reading time. Over the next few months we will be continually revising alongside our new learning to boost our confidence! We have already made a start through play, game boards, Chromebooks challenges and lesson starters.

In Literacy, we have been continuing to improve our comprehension skills by scanning through the text for keywords and highlighting them. We have been doing this in both English and French! We can now use highlighting (text marking) to accurately sequence events in a story.

[Highlighting text photo coming soon]

P4 have also started a month of Mandarin lessons. So far we have learned greetings, tones and numbers through playing lots of games. We have also tried writing Chinese characters – something which has been very popular with pupils.

January brings Burns Night on the 25th. We have been getting cosy and listening to lots of stories in front of our fireplace in January with many of these stories being in Scots. We already knew the meaning of quite a few Scots words and we explored more using the Oor Wullie Glossary! We made these fantastic speech bubbles which show the meaning of the Scots words through lettering, colour and illustrations.

We have also started a fantastic new class novel, Ottoline and the Yellow Cat 💛 It is a mystery novel which has a mixture of detailed pictures and text. Last term, we were learning to find evidence within a text and we are now having to put that to the test as we search for clues in our novel this term! We are keeping a notebook full of clues and evidence whilst we read! We are asking lots of questions to try to make connections between the clues in the book. Who will be the first in the class to crack the case?

In Topical Science, we have been keeping an eye on the night sky as it has been very active in January, with planet alignments, meteor showers and the Northern Lights on display. We have been watching footage of all the action on Newsround and TWIG Reporter and learning the science behind it.

One educational video was all about how the Northern Lights occur and we saw beautiful footage captured over Canada and Iceland. We then accessed a Menti on Chromebooks to enter 3 WOW words to describe what we felt about the Aurora. All of our words appeared on the board in a word cloud. We have been focussing on widening our vocabulary and using a thesaurus in Literacy.

With 2024 being one of the most solar active years, we explored the Northern Lights in Art. We have been learning about watercour technqiues and creating depth in artwork by adding detail in the foreground, midground and background.

“If something is far away, it looks smaller”

We then moved on to creating our beautiful artwork on cartridge paper. We tried a new watercolour paint technique called wet-on-wet which starts with clear water on the paper and then a wash of paint with the colours commonly found in the sky: blue, purple, green, red and pink. Once dry, we use fine liner pens to create details, like trees in the foreground and mountains in the background.

We enjoyed relaxing music and videos of the Northern Lights whilst we painted. We hope you like our artwork as much as we enjoyed making it! It will be on display at Open Afternoon.

This term we are studying history and the pupils have chosen to learn all about The Vikings. We explored many key eras in history and made a human timeline. After discussion, we took a vote between The Egyptians and The Vikings.

We’re also continuing to improve our knowledge of the countries in Europe and beyond by studying maps and learning flags.

We are staying fit and healthy by completing our Daily Mile outside in the fresh air!

Primary 4.2 had the best time celebrating the festive season during December, mixing learning and fun!

We all looked fantastic in our outfits for our Christmas party. 🎄 Our classroom has been all cosy and decorated for Christmas so we took some pictures by the fireplace.

We played lots of games and danced the day away at our party ❤️

We have been rounding up all of our learning in Term 1 with lots of revision. We revised spelling rules using different games. Check out our Christmas tree word pyramids, magnetic letters and morse code words!

We wrote fantastic imaginative Christmas stories about going on an adventure inside a snowglobe! ❄️ We shared our stories with P2 and it was lovely to have so many family members reading together. ❤️

In Numeracy, we have all improved our speed and accuracy when recalling our multiplication tables 🏆 We have also been improving the speed of our mental maths by using number fans, concrete materials and quick quizzes.

In December, we were learning to identify 2 or more lines of symmetry within a shape or picture. We investigated the natural symmetry within snowflakes using microscopic images and then created these beautiful symmetrical paper snowflakes to decoarate our classroom. We had to be very accurate when folding and cutting. We think they look gorgeous! ❄️

Over in the creativity corner,  some of us chose to make some sustainable decorations. We made a beautiful gingerbread garland from cardboard and Posca pens and giant snowflakes from scrap paper. We love how personal and handmade they look. ❤️

In ICT, we applied what we learned about coding in Scratch and tried coding a BBC micro:bit using Make Code.  The BBC micro:bit is a pocket-sized computer that you can code, customise and control to bring your digital ideas, games and apps to life! We turned our Micro:bits into thermometers to measure the temperature outside during our climate zone topic and we even turned them into Christmas decorations. Some people created Christmas images in lights whilst others had scrolling messages. We love our glowing digital tree! 🎄✨️

We have been making excellent progress in French, so much so we needed a challenge! P4.2 were encouraged to read, write and speak in French using everything they had learned from reading the storybook Ours Brun (Brown Bear) 🐻 We played French Games on the Chromebooks where we had to match words to pictures and build sentences. Some of us even recorded ourselves speaking in French on Padlet, which you can listen to here. We are continuing to be exposed to French texts and words through the French reading corner and listening centre. 🇫🇷

We have also connected our skills from Literacy and French by using a bilingual dictionary to look up the meanings of French words and figure out if they are masculine or feminine. We created these beautiful mini-books.

We loved seeing our Christmas designs come to life when our order arrived in December. Thank you for the huge support in your orders.

There have been many school events in December and we thank all families for their support with these. P4.2 particularly enjoyed visiting P7.2 during their Make £5 Grow Sale. We were very impressed by their advertising and business ideas. It was great to see so many older siblings setting such good examples. 🥰

 

A huge well done to our P4.2 representatives that took part in the House Quiz. We are so proud of you both and we had lots of fun playing along in the Christmas quiz with the whole school. 🎄

Well done to our violinist who performed at the Christmas Service on the last day. We are so proud of you! 👏

We all enjoyed playing games together, drawing and dancing on the last day. ❤️

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year when it comes. ❤️

It’s been a busy but a fun month in P4.2! November has been packed with learning, new experiences and achieving goals. We have been working with a lot more independence and have enjoyed learning outside, with new technologies and in the classroom.

Our new topic is based around learning about different climate zones around the world and how they affect living things.  We have explored Polar, Temperate and Tropical climate zones and we are starting to name countries within each zone. We are becoming more familiar with the seven continents and five oceans and can point them out on a globe and on a map in an atlas.

We have been focusing on social skills a lot in P4.2. We continue to hold circle times, class discussions and workshops to take a closer look at friendships, working together and compromise. To apply the skills we have been talking about, Mrs Denny has been setting us challenges and tasks to work together. Lots of decisions have to be made and discussed and everyone needs to be involved. One of the biggest challenges Mrs Denny has set has been for P4.2 to create their own display wall for Climate Zones. Everyone discussed who should do what, thinking about what skills would be best for the job with no help from the teacher. We helped each other to make decisions, gather resources and complete the task. We all think the wall looks wonderful – team work makes the dream work! ⭐️

We joined a live lesson ran by the National Museum  who explored biodiversity in Scotland within  a temperate climate zone. We have also been learning to take notes whilst watching and listening.

We shared the animals that we knew from four different ecosystems: urban, rural, forest and coastal. This fantastic lesson brought artefacts from the National Museum in Edinburgh straight to our classroom! We studied different insects and animals, including microscopic images and looking at the skulls of different animals and learning how they have adapted to their surroundings.  

We read books, watched and listened to videos and researched how living things, such as animals, people and plants, adapt to different climates and made notes. We used these notes to create some excellent non-chronological reports.

At the end of November, the fantastic Parent Council organised a special Christmas surprise for us. Dasher and Dancer, two of Santa’s reindeer, came to visit our school. We learned a lot about reindeer from the people who look after them for Santa. The reindeer were lovely and soft when we patted them. They gobbled up all the carrots we fed them and were ready for more! One reindeer only had one antler as they often shed their antlers at this time of the year. We LOVED meeting them and we are so ready for lots of Christmas fun in December! 🎄🦌

 

October has been busy in P4 2!

We have been revising our 3 and 4 multiplication tables and some groups are now moving on to learning the 6 and 8. We have been looking at patterns within these even-numbered tables to make them easier to learn and playing lots of games to familiarise ourselves with the facts.

As well as revising their 3 and 4x table, some children have also been learning to recognise fractions of a shape and a number. Pupils have been challenged with fraction dominoes, magnetic fraction boards and games.

[Fraction games with Miss Howells coming soon]

We completed our Human Body Science-based topic and made sure we answered all of the wonderful big questions we had asked as a class. One P4.2 pupil asked about CPR and defibrillators after the were spoken about at his football club. We teamed up with the P7s who were keen to share all they had learned in their Heartstart lessons. Some parents have supported our topic by sending in items for our class hospital role play area and xrays for us to study.  Thank you so much.

P4.2 have been learning to use different media with increasing control. For a few weeks, we have been drawing creatively and adding lots of detail to our pictures. We previously drew a beautiful Winter scene for our Christmas card. 🎄 For Halloween, we studied the significance of Sugar Skulls in Mexico and talked about the detail that can be added to them. Afterwards, we used oil pastels to bring our skulls to life with colour! Oil pastels need to be used with the right amount of pressure to get a good coverage. We also explored how we can layer and blend with oil pastels. They all turned out beautiful in their own way. We LOVE our work and we hope you do too!

We have also been studying the work of Tim Burton as many pupils really enjoy his children’s films. We studied the characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie to notice the similarities in their features.

We used these features to create these Tim Burton inspired self-portraits, mainly focusing on the visual elements of line and tone. This was the first time many of us had experienced using charcoal!

One of the areas in our room at the end of October was the Spooky Words wall. Children had to use a bilingual dictionary to discover the words for each item. We used some of the vocabulary to read and understand a French poem.

In lessons, we gave been learning about how French adjectives come after the noun. For example, un chat noir is a black cat. 🐈‍⬛ We then had to colour the Halloween pictures correctly, recognising if they were masculine or feminine words and noticing how this can change the spelling of the adjective.

In music, we have been learning 3 pitches (so mi and do) along with our rhythms. We sang a song together and one mystery person had to be a ‘ghost’ and sing a line in a funny voice on their own. The child at the front of the room had to guess who sang the solo. We had lots of fun trying to guess who the ghost was! 👻

On the day of Halloween we had some fun! 🎃🧡 We shared our excellent spooky character descriptions with P4.1, exchanged good Halloween jokes, took turns to go Boo-ling with some cute ghosts and cheered each other on as we went dooking for apples 🍎

Primary 4.2 have been busy learning through play and challenging themselves in various areas of the curriculum.

We have all set targets that we would like to work towards achieving by Christmas. We learned all about SMART targets and made sure that we picked something specific, achievable and relevant to us. We displayed our targets in balloons as a reminder to work on them every day!

A popular choice from the pupils of P4.2 was to improve speed and accuracy of particular multiplication tables. We have been playing lots of games to help revise multiplication and related division facts. Here you can see our Tuff Tray and examples of us playing Uno Maths Games, ZAP, SumDog, Times Tables Rock Stars, Hit tbe Button and Power Towers to revise.

Primary 4.2 have been introduced to Blooket Quizzes. Pupils can be quizzed on any topic as they play together in class. The more questions they answer correctly, the more they can play the mini-games. To revise our multiplication and division facts, we played the Racing game. We LOVED watching our Blooket animals race up the track against each other and we had lots of fun whilst revising our Numeracy skills.

Every day when we come in from lunch, there is calm music playing and everyone gets comfy with their personal book. We have 10-15 minutes of just reading for enjoyment! Some of pick a book from the library, others bring some in from home and others like to listen to an audiobook. We look forward to this relaxing time every day 😊

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We were very grateful to have so many lovely family members in our classroom for Open Afternoon. Sorry to those I didn’t manage to catch for a photo (or maybe you are grateful!) We spoke confidently about our learning and showed our family members around our classroom.