We presented our solo talks this month and it was so interesting to hear about everyone’s hobbies, holidays, favourite animals or toys. Well done everyone ⭐️

In science we have been observing our cress plants closely to identify the best conditions for plant growth. We had changed the conditions for each plant (no sunlight, no soil, no water, and then a plant that was given all three) so we were then able to compare and decide what cress plant had grown the best. We also discussed in our groups if anything  surprised us.

We concluded that the cress with no sunlight turned yellow and the cress with no soil did not grow at all. The cress that was given sunlight, water and soil grew the best. We wondered if we could do anything to help the unhealthy cress plant become healthy again. We started to give the yellow cress plant sunlight, and soil to the one without.

In outdoor learning this month we were on the hunt for different items we could find in winter.

A big well done to Aurora, Breagha, Nora and Esme who performed at the XA factor. Well done, we are all very proud of you!

Numeracy  – multiplication and division 

In numeracy we have been working very hard  to learn our multiplication and division facts for 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10. Maths time is always very busy so there is not always time to take pictures. We have made board games and posters to help us remember our multiplication facts:

Money 

Money is another topic we are currently working hard at. So far we have learned to make different amounts using coins and notes, record amounts in different ways and add amounts. We are currently setting up our ASDA  shop in class so we can practise these skills as part of our room targets.

Literacy 

To consolidate reading skills we have been taught, each morning we work on a choice task independently, with a partner, or with our group. Some of the activities include: identifying similarities and differences between ourselves and a character from our reading book, creating questions for a partner to answer, identifying parts of speech, tracking the emotion of a character from our book, writing a book review, or identifying cause and effect.

Writing 

In writing, we are currently learning how to write an effective journey story. We have learnt how to use time connectives, adverbs, commas and exclamation marks. Next week we will plan out our writing, and challenge ourselves by including the new vocabulary, grammar and punctuation.

Art – pop art

In art, we are learning about pop art. We have currently looked at the artists Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. We have taken inspiration from their bright, cartoon style art work to create our own.

Modern languages – Mandarin 

This month, we have started our mandarin lessons on a Thursday afternoon.

Science – Growing plants 

Our science topic has been growing plants. We have learned about different ways plants disperse their seeds, germination and what a seed needs to germinate. We are currently carrying out an experiment to find out the best growing conditions for cress.
(Pictures to follow)

Outdoor learning 

In outdoor learning, we have planted sunflower seeds and made bird feeders to put out into the playground.

In P.E we are continuing to develop our gymnastics skills: balancing, jumping and rolling on and off equipment. Here are some action shots:

We had a very busy December! The Christmas concert, making our craft for the school Christmas Fayre, our Christmas party and making bread just to name a few.

Pictures from our amazing Children in Need talent show ⭐️

Science – Food Chains

We have been learning to use google slides (adding a new slide, inserting pictures and shapes, changing the background colour, font size and more). We created a google slide to showcase everything we have learned about food chains.

Over the past couple of weeks we have been working hard to complete our Google slide so that we were ready to share with our peers. We gave each other feedback on our work by saying things that we liked and things our peer could do better next time. It is important that we know our next steps and use them in our next piece of work so that we are always improving.

Art – Colour and value – slot canyons

We wanted to learn about animals that live in the desert so we watched Planet Earth. It allowed us to virtually explore South America and we were very impressed by the slot canyons. This led us to try and make our own slot canyon art using crayons to create warmth and value.

Writing – Instruction Writing

We brought our instruction writing topic to an end and have already started our new topic of persuasive writing.  During writing lessons we always make time to share our writing with peers, give peer feedback and also set our own writing targets. Our targets are always discussed with Miss McIver so we know what we need to do to progress.

Outdoor Learning – Litter picking, muddy movers and autumn nature hunt. 

Linking to our mini plastic pollution topic we went on a litter pick to and took a note of what litter we could find in our playground. We found lots of plastic bottles, crisp packets, sweet wrappers, yoghurt pots and more. This led us to finding out about the word ‘biodegrade’ and how long different materials will take to completely break down to nothing. We were shocked to learn that plastic bottles can take up to 450 years to biodegrade!

We had fun with our peers exploring at muddy movers again and we will be going out the first Thursday of each month. A gentle reminder that it is our responsibility to look after our own water proofs and welly boots.

We went on an autumn nature hunt to find different types of leaves, birds, bugs, flowers, etc that we could find in our playground.

Scottish Farming Topic

We have been learning about arable, pastoral and dairy farming. We started by learning about arable farming and potatoes. We discovered that in the past the October Break was so that children could be off school to help pick all the potatoes from the farm! After that we found out about pastoral farming and the journey of an egg. We created a comic to showcase what we had learned about the journey of a potato or egg.

Then we spoke about dairy farming and worked in groups to name different dairy products. We already knew products like milk, cheese, cream, butter and ice cream. We watched a video on how we could make butter easily in the class – it was the perfect time to show off our note taking skills.

Once we were happy we knew the steps to successfully make butter we thought we would give it a go! Here we are having a dance party to motivate us to keep shaking the cream until it turned into butter:

After a quick look and a lot of shaking – we could see it had started to look like butter!

P.E – Basketball

In P.E we have been practising our dribbling, bounce pass, chest pass and shooting skills.

Team work

Some pictures of us working as a team to complete a jigsaw, drawing pictures or making origami foxes.

P3 have been learning about nutrition, and his lead us into food and how hygiene is importnat when making/ eating food.
we learnt about germs and washing our hands.

P3 had a fantastic time in the taster session last week. They learnt a lot of techniques and how to keep safe.

Last week we read the book ‘Friends beyond measure’ by Lalena Fisher. It had lots of ideas linked to directions and data handling.
First we learned about how to give directions using the words turn right, turn left and forwards. We practised using a few games before heading outside with a partner who we pretended was our robot that we had to give directions to:
Then we headed back inside to create our own town map. We created a character to move around the map and give directions to:

Next we learned about tally marks and pictographs. We created our own surveys and collected the data before presenting it in a table or pictograph:

After that, we took inspiration from the artist Sonia Delaunay. We created our own shape art using different sizes of circles. We decided to stick our art work on the window to brightness up the classroom:

Lots of our learning last month linked to our science topic – food chains!

We started by learning about animals in Antarctica. We loved watching parts of blue planet to discover what animals live there and who eats who! We made a cover page of Antarctica in our jotters and worked together to build some food chains:

Next we created some art work of Antarctica and learned a little bit about the Southern lights. For the Southern lights,  we smudged oil pastels onto black paper:

For the mountains in Antarctica, we learned about value and how we can mix a colour with black to create a shade or mix a colour with white to create a tint:

After that, we learned how to use google drawing to create a digital picture of a penguin:

Our writing topic at the moment is instructions. We have been learning lots about bossy verbs, adverbs and time connectives. We worked with a partner to create a silly 5 sentence story:

Also, we have made posters to help us remember some important vocabulary:

 

We have settled into our new class in Primary 3. Our Flat Stanley mini topic has linked to lots of our learning so far.

In literacy we have been learning to track character emotion  and to identify cause and effect.
In writing we are learning to write a report. We are currently coming up with our own news report ideas linked to Flat Stanley.

In Social Studies we have been discussing our rights and responsibilities. We are currently creating our class charter to show how we are going to access our right to education, to play, to privacy and to share our views.

In health and well-being we have been discussing jealousy, it’s ok to be different and showing respect. We have enjoyed role playing different scenarios and emotions through drama.