Hi there and welcome to the first IDL Blog of this year. It’s Mrs Dougall here, as you may know, I have a different role this year and I am now responsible for Inquiry Based Learning across P2, P3 and P4.  This means that I complete Learning Journeys with the children, starting with a problem/question and working towards them finding a solution using teacher and child led learning across different aspects of the Curriculum for Excellence.   I now teach P3a for 3 periods each week and it is so lovely to be part of their continuing Learning Journeys.

We started this year investigating how plants and animals depend on each other for food. We learned about food chains, developing this learning into food webs and then focused on environmental changes across the Great Barrier Reef.

We then began to focus on seasonality and the challenges of growing and planting in winter in Scotland. We created terrariums (mini greenhouses) and carefully monitored the temperature in them while watching what happened to our plants growing inside the jars.

We have also fitted in two short blocks of learning about Meta Skills, these are the skills that we use everyday in our learning and our Meta Skills Lessons help us to investigate the skills, apply them in practical situations and recognise the importance of them in our daily learning. These Meta Skills will help equip the children  for the World of Work.

Our first Meta Skills focus was on Creativity and Curiosity and we are currently focusing on Communicating and Collaborating.  The class teachers work with us to apply these skills in all of our learning.

I am sure the children will be as excited about their new learning journey as I am – they will be able to tell you all about it over the coming weeks.

Mrs Dougall

Hello everyone and welcome to our blog!

In P3a this week we  started our new IDL topic  –  Human V Robot. We have been learning how robots are used in everyday life. We have looked at different types of robots and what they can be used for.

We have also been learning about coding, memory boards and programming.

Out Primary 7 Digital Leaders came into our class and showed us how to programme Micorbits.

“They were fun to play with but a little hard to programme. I was able to decide the pattern of lights on the Microbit – it came to life” (Hugo).

“The Micorbits were amazing because it could do what I wanted it to do.”( Olivia Y)

“I programmed it to make cool pictures ” (James)

In writing we are learning about poetry. We read various poems and focussed on rhyming words and the rhythm these.  We  spent time working in groups to worked in groups to create rhyming words that we could add to help us create a poem about winter. We enjoyed looking at lots of Julia Donalsdon books for inspiration.

“I read Monkey Puzzle and it helped my get my own ideas for my own poem and how to make it rhyme.”( Ryan)

“I liked reading lots of different poems by the same person.  They were all very different and gave me my own ideas to create my own poem.” (Ruaridh)

In maths we did some revision on Data and we learned about the key when interpreting pictograms.

We have also been working hard on learning our two times table.

We had lots of problem solving activities too. We have been very busy!

“The number pyramids teased my brain quite a lot.” (Penelope)

“I liked adding the numbers, it was a clever way to add.” (Oscar).

In PE we have been outside in the MUGA developing our tennis skills.

“I loved tennis and it was amazing to learn our forehand swing and volley hit.” (Isla)

“I liked the overhead serve.” (Jura)

Have a wonderful weekend.

Mrs McKim and P3a

Welcome to our weekly blog.

Another wonderful week in P3a.

In Maths this week we were learning  about weight. We learned that  we use grams and kilograms to weigh items. We estimated the weight of lots of items and then weighed them to find the actual weight.  We also held lots of different weights  – the Kg was quite heavy! We challenged ourselves to find lots of different ways that we could make 1Kg using lots of lighter weights. We used the scales to weigh items and to see if it weighed more or less than 500g or 1000g.

“We figured out how to weigh using scales . We held different weights and tried to find things that weighed the same” ( Ruaridh)

“I liked using different weights to make an amount”. (Olivia W)

We worked hard to create a recount based on the fairy tale The Three Little Pigs.  We used past tense and third person as well as writing our recount in the correct order.

“I liked writing a recount about a fairy tale as I love reading fairy tales. It was so interesting and exciting to write a recount about it”. (Jura)

In Art we  continued our Art Study and we learned about Pop Art. We were so excited to design our own Pop Art. We were so creative and the results were  fantastic and colourful!

“My pop art was pretty good. I loved using lots of colours and how it stood out”. (Isla)

Have a wonderful weekend.

P3a and Mrs McKim

Hello everyone and welcome to our blog. We have been very busy in P3a for the past couple of weeks .

In Art we have been comparing Traditional and Modern Art and using our feelings to create our own pieces. We were keen to share our art work and talk about our creations . We discussed the lines, colours and materials that we used.

“I liked my art. I used shapes and colours to show I am happy” (Talhah)

In Health and Wellbeing we have been learning about Friendship and what this means. We discussed our own personal qualities and how to be a good friend. We create the Five Fingers of Friendship and learned that our actions and words can impact others.

“I loved learning about warm fuzzies and cold prickles.” (Isla)

We are in discussion as a class to come up with a new topic that will start in January. We have lots of ideas and will decided what we would like to learn next week during Circle Time .

In maths we have been learning to measure  – ask us all about it we are masters of measure.

“I know ow to measure length and what unit of measurement to use.” (Elay)

We have now moved onto Recount writing, just in time to write a recount about our recent class trip to Vikingar. This was a wonderful day trip and reinforced all that we had learned in class about the Vikings.

“I really loved seeing an actual Viking longhouse.” (James)

“I liked being on the stage and dressing up as a Viking

and performing.” (Ryan)

We are looking forward to another busy week of learning next week!

P3a and Mrs McKim

Hello and welcome to our weekly blog.

Another busy week of learning in P3a!

We have completed our Viking topic and created a compare and contrast poster based on our life and the life of a Viking child. We compared diets, foods that are available, hobbies, learning , transport, technology and travel. We were confident  discussing the differences between them. We also researched Viking gods and created a fact file based on our favourite.

In French, we have been learning about the weather and played weather matching games. We found some of the words difficult to translate and pronounce but we are going to keep trying. We definitely have a positive growth mindset!

In writing we are learning  to write instructions and we had fun describing how to make a sandwich. We forgot to say we needed a knife to spread the jam  – it caused quite  a mess and very sticky fingers!

We are looking forward to  our class trip next week  and we cannot wait to share this with you .

Here are some of the wonderful quotes from our class this week –

“We know all the powers of the Viking gods” (Ruairdh)

“We made instructions for a friend potion. I remembered to use time openers”. (Jura)

“I know Vikings eat healthy foods and this would have given them lots of energy”. (Talhah)

“Learning the correct words for the weather in French was hard but good fun”! (Hugo)

“In our French lesson it was fun to learn about the weather and play weather bingo in our group.” (James)

Have a wonderful weekend

Mrs McKim and P3a

Hello everyone and welcome to our blog.

This week in P3a we have continued to develop our skills in Data Analysis. We have created Bar Charts and Venn Diagrams and extracted information from various data.  We challenged ourselves to create  our own bar charts – it was fun to use the data from our fitness lessons. We also explored how to read  data interpret data from a given source.

In writing we have moved onto Functional Writing and we are learning to write instructions. This was very active in the class as we looked at recipe books and completed lots of sequencing activities. We made a paper airplane and then we worked hard to write instructions. We used time openers very well.

We completed our Viking Shields this week and they look wonderful! We cannot wait for you to see them at Parents Night!

Have a lovely weekend

Mrs McKim

Hello everyone and welcome to our blog.

We have had a busy week in P3a.

In P.E we played hockey and took part in team games. We were excellent team mates and worked together perfectly.

“I played a hockey match  – it was great working in a team.” (Oscar)

In Literacy we have been learning all about nouns and we have been working hard to improve our spelling. In writing we continued to explore characterisation and the children wrote wonderful character profiles based on their favourite characters. This included Paddington Bear, Harry Potter and even some characters the children invented themselves!

“I liked writing about my very own character.” (Talhah)

“Characterisation was good – I liked drawing my character and writing about them” (Hugo)

In Art we have been learning about drawing with a focus on line and shape using the context of Vikings. We designed our Viking Shields and included specific criteria. We then used cardboard to cut out a shield shape and we are looking forward to using paint to paint our shields using our original designs.

” I enjoyed designing and making our Viking Shield” (Aaron)

“We used cardboard to cut out our shields – we are going to paint our designs soon.” (Ryan)

We all had a focus on number this week in maths and took part in mental maths activities and challenges.

“I liked learning about different numbers in maths.” (Harry)

We are looking forward to continuing this next week!

Have a wonderful weekend!

P3a and Mrs McKim

Welcome to our weekly blog.

This week in P3 we have been very busy.

In P.E we have decided to track our fitness levels by recording various exercises. We have  30 seconds to complete various tasks and we are hopeful we can increase the number of repetitions by the end of our 4 week block. We are recording our results and hope to see an improvement in our fitness. We are then going to turn our results into some exciting data.

We took part in Problem Solving this week and worked well in groups to find the solution. We looked at all the problem solving strategies we could use and decided the ones best suited to the problem. Some groups decided to draw it and other decided to act it out.  It was a great way to show off our maths skills. and successfully find the solution!

In Health and Wellbeing we continued to learn about children’s rights. This week we made lists  of things that we thought were very important, quite important and not important to have in our lives. It was interesting to compare our group results and to see the similarities.

Have a lovely weekend

P3a and Mrs McKim

Hello everyone and welcome to our weekly blog. We have worked so hard this week and have enjoyed  learning across various curricular areas.

In Literacy we have been using our senses to add description to our extended pieces of writing . It makes our writing very interesting.

“I used lots of adjectives in my writing this week to help describe a snowy scene” (Penelope).

“I worked hard in my writing this week.”( Talhah)

In Health and Wellbeing we completed our Class Charter by deciding the Articles we would like to include. We worked hard to figure out the ones most relevant to us and our school life.

“I have liked making our class charter and deciding the rights we want to use for our charter.” (Ryan)

“It was good to decide the rights for our class charter”. (Elay) 

We continued learning about the Vikings through ICT research and also through design.

“I have enjoyed learning more about the Vikings”. (Isla) 

“It was great fun designing and building the long boat using Kapla”. (Eva)  

“I really enjoyed working with the Kapla and working in a group to design and build our long ship”. (Hugo)

“We used the Chromebooks to find out more about Viking life – it was fun!” (Christopher)

In Numeracy we continue to develop various numeracy skills

“I have liked becoming more confident when adding and subtracting”. (James)

“I have worked very hard this week in numeracy”. (Olivia W)

Have a wonderful week!

P3a and Mrs McKim

Hello everyone

We hope you have enjoyed your week. We certainly have.

In addition to our Maths and Literacy activities we have been learning about The Rights of the Child through the UNCRC. We have spent lots of time  talking about our rights and understanding what they mean.  We worked together in small groups to decide the most important ones.  We then  spent time going around the class and comparing each group. It was interesting to see the similarities and differences. This led to an excellent discussion.

In PE we continue to develop our fitness levels. We loved racing and sprinting this week and playing a variety of team games that required us to use our maths problem solving skills.

We were thankful that the weather was kind to us on Thursday  and we were able to go outside for PE.  We were learning to hold and use a hockey stick correctly and how to connect with ball and keep possession of it. It was tricky to hold the stick correctly.

We took some time on Thursday to talk about what we are thankful for and to pass the kindness comment. It was lovely to hear so many positive comments from the class.

Have a wonderful weekend.

P3a and Mrs McKim