Month: November 2019

This week, we had two arty afternoons where we were learning how to use line and tone to add shade to our drawings. We used a painting of a city as inspiration to create these lovely buildings with onion-shaped domes and tall towers.

We’ve had a few interesting PE lessons this week. On Wednesday we had the parachute out playing some team games, including a game where we had to score points by getting a tennis ball off the opposite end of the parachute and another where we had to run underneath to swap places with someone on the other side. This resulted in lots of lovely action shots like this one.

In our outdoor PE session this week, we were playing games with Miss McNair where we had to pretend what kinds of animals we were being and the other team had to guess what we were.

This week was our final week for this round of Skills Academy. Warren has really enjoyed his time in Digital Technologies. This week they were continuing with their Scratch animations by making their characters talk and adding more detail to the back ground.

Lexi also enjoyed her last session of Learning for Sustainability. We managed to finish off all of our recycled pencil cases and they all looked great.

In our assembly today we were talking about advent and Mrs Slorach was asking us to come up with different ideas for a whole-school advent calendar based on the school values. Each day will focus on one of the different school values so that we can remind ourselves how important they are by being honest, fair, kind, friendly and by showing respect. We had a discussion about it after assembly and came up with lots of great ideas. I look forward to seeing the advent calendar when it’s made up.

Enjoy the weekend!

In R.M.E. we were building Mosques with different materials.  We were using straws, card, Lego, match sticks, cubes, plastic shapes and cups and we worked in groups of 4.  Every Mosque was different but most groups included the Minaret (which is like a tower) and the dome.  We made the Minaret out of stacked cups and other groups made it from connecting shapes or cubes.  Some groups added detail to the inside of their Mosque with prayer mats and Lego characters praying as well as the Imam.  At the end we all got the opportunity to look at each group’s masterpieces.

Some photos of our Mosques will soon follow…

This week in P4a we continued with our new topic on budgeting where each of the pupils were given a job title and weekly wage and had to work out how much they could afford to spend on household things each week. We were given the option of different houses, cars and food, as well as different clothes and luxury items. It was great to see how engaged they were with the task and who was willing to sacrifice a nice, warm place to live for a fancy car!

We are nearly finished our block of gymnastics in PE and this week we were practicing balances in pairs and building up a sequence of some of the different skills we have learned over the last few weeks.

Here are some of the inventive balances that we came up with!

During our second PE lesson on Thursday, we were taking part in some races using some of the gym equipment. We had some races where we had to balance a tennis ball on a racket, run through a ladder and another where we had to put a hula hoop over our heads.

In our writing this week, we have been learning how to use different openers in our sentences to make our writing more interesting for our readers. We had some great ideas in our discussion before the writing started and we produced some great stories!

We have also been learning how to improve our handwriting this week and started joined up writing, beginning with the first join between i and n.

Enjoy the weekend!

In Science, we were making Reebops.  Reebops are aliens and we used different characteristics to make a mum and a dad. We used different letters to show the genes for example: BB or Bb for the dominant body shape which was square and bb for the recessive gene for the body which was circular.

We used pipe cleaners, large fluffy fake snowballs, lollipop sticks, clay, match sticks with the ends broken off, Plasticine, rubber bands, art straws, straws and coloured card/ paper.  Next week, we are going to cross the genes from the mum and the dad to make the baby reebop.  It was a very fun experience for all of us and everyone had a good time but it was a wee bit tricky sometimes too.  We rate the experience 10/10.

This week in PE we have been continuing with our block of gymnastics lessons and this week, I have actually remembered to take the camera out, so we have had some fantastic photos taken by Euan and Molly to show you what we got up to.

We began practicing some donkey kicks, trying to keep our legs as straight as possible…

And then used these same skills to have a go at cartwheels using a bench to support us…

But sometimes, our first attempts didn’t go as well as planned!

In maths, the Rectangles and Circles have been having lots of practice of vertical multiplication and they’ve all been doing really well. We were also learning about a different way of setting out our calculations called the grid method; some of us found that it helped our understanding, though others prefer the vertical method.

The Triangles have been using lots of concrete materials to help them in their work on adding hundreds, tens and units and they’ve done a great job as we’re moving really quickly through this topic.

Today we introduced our new topic for the rest of the term; budgeting. Our task for today was to work out how much money they would have left to spend on food on a cinema trip with a budget of £25. It was lovely to see how engaged they all were with this talking about the cost of all the items on offer.

In our writing this week, we were focusing on our sentence openers and onomatopoeia in a piece about a dangerous journey on a sled in the Arctic. There were lots of great ideas discussed before we started writing, sharing ideas and helping each other with inspiration for our stories, and the writing that was produced was brilliant. I’m looking forward to see what they produce next week!

Enjoy the weekend!

We have been learning about Guru Nanak.  Guru Nanak grew up with a Hindu family and one day had a dip in the river and he didn’t come back like he usually did.  After a while Guru Nanak’s family thought he had drowned and 3 days later he came back and said he was with the Gods.  He went on a journey around the world with his friend Mardana. He started to preach Sikhism and he said that it doesn’t matter if you’re different, you can still make friends and play with others.  He also invited people of all wealth to the town hall and they ate altogether to show that everyone is equal.

On Tuesday we were starting to make Guru Nanak birthday invitations because it was Guru Nanak’s 550^th birthday.  Some people drew Guru Nanak on their invitation.  All of our invitations looked different and had slightly different information about where the party was taking place and the date. Take a look at a few examples below…

 

D.Y.W.

There are 4 D.Y.W. groups.  There is Learning for Sustainability, Life Skills, Digital Technologies and Design and Manufacture.

The Learning for Sustainability group were designing plastic bottle pencil cases before we make them next week.

Life skills group were learning how to sew with needles and it was very tricky but we succeeded!

The Digital Technologies group were learning about Scratch which is similar to the Spheros and is on the computer.

The Design and Manufacture group were painting boxes and started making a little town by turning the boxes inside out and next week we will decide on our town names as well.

We can’t wait for next week!

This week in our PE lessons we have carried on with our gymnastics and have been practicing some of our balances. With the help of some excellent demonstrations from some superb gymnasts in our class we managed to do some bridge balances using 2, 3 and 4 points of contact; the frog pose and even some head stands by the end of the lesson. I was very impressed by how well everyone worked in their groups to support and look after their classmates to keep everyone safe while they were balancing.

Molly also says that she really enjoyed our warm up game for PE this week; gymnastics tag. During this game, if you get tagged you have to make one of the poses that we have been learning until someone copies your pose to set you free.

In maths this week we have all been doing vertical calculations for multiplication and addition. The rectangles have been practicing their 6 times table, the circles have been using their 4 times table and the triangles have been adding tens and units together. Everyone has been working very hard.

Continuing with our writing this week, we have been practicing with our onomatopoeia and alliteration in a piece of writing about a giant who has been asleep for a thousand years. I was very impressed with everyone’s work and loved reading all the descriptions of the giants!

Enjoy the weekend!

Post from 11th October has been updated.

P4b’s photos of their shoebox dioramas have been added.  Scroll down to have a look!

In literacy we have been looking at a Humpty Dumpty crime scene where Humpty Dumpty got pushed off the wall.  We wrote police reports about who we thought pushed Humpty Dumpty off the wall.  We were doing this to practise writing summaries.  We all tried really hard to work out who did the crime but only one person out of 29 managed to work out who the prime suspect was, who committed the crime.

Some of our suspects were Hansel and Gretel, the Queen, the Guards, the Horses and Little Red Riding Hood.  Hansel was a suspect because Humpty Dumpty didn’t listen to Gretel when she advised him to be careful and Gretel was also angry with him for not listening and she showed this by snatching the skipping ropes off of Humpty.  The Queen’s motive may have been due to Humpty Dumpty climbing on her palace wall.  The Guards could have done the crime because they scowled at Humpty when he climbed on the wall and Humpty Dumpty shrugged his shoulders and didn’t listen.  The horses might have committed the crime because they could have ran up the stairs and pushed him off the wall.  We thought it could have been Little Red Riding Hood because there was something silver at the crime scene and we thought that might have been Little Red Riding Hood’s mushrooms that she picked that day and also there was something red at the crime scene which we thought was Little Red Riding Hood’s hood.

After a lot of working out and also creating WANTED posters, the 2 suspects who actually did it were revealed…it was…Hansel and Gretel.  The evidence from the text was that Hansel and Gretel were angry with Humpty at the start of the story and there was a sweetie wrapper at the scene.  The story also revealed that 4 footprints were seen in the egg yolk.  We were very surprised that they were our criminals.

     

Lots more examples of our work will be making its way to our corridor wall display very soon.  Keep an eye out!

This week, one of our focuses in literacy has been onomatopoeia. We had fun looking through some beano magazines to find as many examples of this as we could, before making our own examples of onomatopoeia pop art, like we saw in the magazines. Here’s a picture showing you how great they look!

We also had a go of using onomatopoeia in an acrostic poem about bonfire night. Here are two of them that I really liked!

We’ve been learning about inheritance in science. Eleanor says that “inheritance is something you are born with, like hair colour or eye colour, and learned is things you can practice like the alphabet or playing the piano.

The class had the opportunity to enter a Road Safety Competition this week to design a poster to encourage people to act safely when out on the road. Their designs were great, and some of the slogans that they came up with were brilliant! Here are some of the girls designing their posters.

We’ve all been practicing our mental maths skills this week, using some games and strategies to help us with our number bonds and knowledge. We’re going to keep practicing these throughout the whole year!

Our skills academy classes carried on this week, with each group doing something exciting which they were all excited to tell me about when they came back to class.

The Learning for Sustainability group were making planters out of recycled materials. We have planted Thyme and Basil seeds in recycled plastic bottles and punched holes out of the sides, so that they could be hung up somewhere sunny. It’s important to make sure these are covered with cling film and get enough water and hopefully we’ll see something growing in a week or two.

The Digital Technologies group were practicing their coding skills with the Spheros, which they discovered could be coded to light up different colours and to move directions using the Chromebooks. Ayyan preferred to use the WASD keys to tell the Sphero where to go.

The Life Skills group were learning more about healthy eating and made up a pita pocket using fresh vegetables like peppers, carrots, tomatoes and cucumber. They looked lovely!

The last group, Design and Manufacturing, had to test their design skills by building a house out of match sticks that had to be no bigger than 20 cm. It sounds like they all did really well!

Enjoy the weekend!