What a quick week we have had in P4b! We can’t quite believe it is now November!

Thank you as always for taking the time to read our blog!

Just a reminder that take home folders went home today- please have a look at your child’s wonderful work and return the folder and all jotters only on Monday 8th November.

I am really looking forward to sharing the pupil’s hard work and achievements so far at Parents Evening next week!

 

This week in Literacy we were looking at speech marks! We put these into sentences using the correct punctuation. We used pasta to represent the speech marks and thought of lots of different and exciting ways to say ‘said!’ Hopefully we can now start to include speech in our writing!

In Writing we have continued to work on Newspaper articles. Miss McCaig helped us to write an exciting historical article about Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot! We are really excelling at being interesting Journalists!

We then acted our news stories in Drama acting as presenters and interviewees. We could choose to present about Cop26 or Bonfire Night.

 

In Numeracy we have been working on quarter past and quarter to times. We also tried a tricky problem solving job looking at airport timetables and working out what time planes, cars and buses would leave.

The Octagons have thoroughly enjoyed working with Miss Faull to learn the adding 9 trick.

The Diamonds have been thinking carefully about before and after with Mrs McGarvey and have been using Numicon and gems to practise number bonds.

We have enjoyed playing Buzz and Around the World to keep practising our times tables and are getting better and better at the 6 times table!

 

In Woodland we created rock and log pile habitats to provide a safe and warm place for bugs and small animals now that the winter weather is creeping in!

 

We learned lots about Diawli- the Festival of Lights, on Thursday. Aarohi kindly shared her Diawli traditions and some amazing pictures with us and we created rangoli patterns using quilled paper. We then made these into fireworks!

 

We made leaf promises for COP26, pledging every day changes we can make to help the planet. We also created promises we hope the World Leaders will make at the conference this week.

 

  

This week we started to play football in PE. We have been learning to dribble and pass the ball to each other. Sometimes people will come out to the front to demonstrate a skill to the class. We are enjoying playing football.

As it is Halloween this week we have been doing some pumpkin art. We were inspired by a Japanese artist who made a giant pumpkin with polka dots. We used lots of coloured pens to create our beautiful pumpkins. We also drew haunted houses using different shapes, it was a lot of fun.

We made our gratitude trees this week. They show what we are really thankful for in life. Some examples of what we are thankful for are: our family, having clean water and that we have somewhere safe to live.

Yesterday we were learning to write newspaper articles. We wrote about COP26 and the leaders of the different countries involved. We had to include a headline and we were focusing on the 5Ws – what, where, when, why and who!

Some of us have been learning about time this week. We have been learning all about quarter to and quarter past the hour. We are starting to get the hang of how to tell the time but we are going to keep working on it to build our confidence.

We have been doing the daily 10 in numeracy. We are asked ten questions and we have to try and answer them before the timer runs out.

We have been very lucky this week as Miss McCaig has come to work with us for six weeks. We have been getting to know each other by playing some fun games and creating bunting about ourselves.

As we have been working so hard we managed to earn enough tickets to have a cosy party. It was awesome!

 

The last 2 weeks in P4b have been exceptionally busy!

We had visitors in for our Collaborative Improvement Visit and the children displayed their outstanding knowledge of Climate by conducting a rising sea level experiment!

In Literacy, we have been writing Diary entries based on the characters from our novel George’s Marvellous Medicine. We have now finished the novel- it went down a storm!

‘I was reading out my story to the whole class. It was a diary from Grandma in George’s Marvellous Medicine.  You need to write in first person.’- Leo

We have been trying different finger exercises to use when writing. They are great for our motor skills and for a brain break to think over our work!

We have also been trying joins and working on our cursive handwriting throughout the week!

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In French, we learned the vocabulary for some of our classroom objects. We made labels and stuck them around the round to help us learn the names and use them frequently.

‘I was sticking a sign from French that means Library onto the library with my partner. It was La Bibliotheque.’ Japleen

In woodland, we designed and created our own Tree Faces from clay! We looked at the tree and generated adjectives to describe it’s character. Then we named it and made a face for it from clay.

‘We were making the face on the tree and we used a berry for it’s nose which made it look a bit like a mouse.’- Zariya

‘We were making tree cartoon characters and ours was based on Leaves and Ross chose the name. We said it was fun making it because you had to pick all the stuff and put it on.’

‘We reused the clay from our experiment that was nice.’- Orla

In Numeracy we have been focusing on multiplcation, division and time.

We have been identifying numbers and words within word problems to provide some extra challenge, figuring out which type of calculation to do!

‘We were doing division word problems and we were solving them with our partners after we finished our work. It was really fun.’ Retal

 

Play

 

 

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We have lots of opportunities throughout the week to demonstrated our Literacy, Numeracy and Creativity skills through play! I have been so impressed with how much everyones imagination and problem skills have progressed since P2!

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P4b have continued to show excellent focus, enthusiasm and teamwork this week!

In Literacy, we have looked at Setting through our class novel. We explored the features of a diary entry and wrote a diary pretending to be George from the book!

I was very impressed with the imagination and vocabulary used by everyone , lots of people have chosen to display their brilliant work on the personal displays in the classroom.

 

We have been focusing on Number in Numeracy and thinking about the link between halving, doubling, multiplying and counting in groups.

We have enjoyed daily ERIC time and meditation to focus on our wellbeing.  We learned about The Dip and created our own personal steps for working through tricky work and becoming unstuck!

In woodland , we tried the Japanese printing art of Hapa Zome where we print natural materials onto cloth to make symmetrical patterns.

Our hockey skills are developing quickly! This week we practised passing and stopping the ball and dribbling without the ball running away!

 

In IDL we learned about the difference between weather and climate. We explored the climate zones and have started to focus on the Polar Region. Next week we will research and conduct experiments to explore the effects of climate change on the Polar Climates!

The pupils were very passionate about making positive changes towards slowing Climate Change after looking at a graphic of the average Earth temperature from 1884 until now.

 

Everyone has settled into P4 so well- I am very proud of everyone’s hard work and responsible attitudes so far. We have had a great time getting to know each other and getting back into the swing of things!

For your information our PE days will be a Tuesday (with Mr McMillan) and Friday (MUGA with Mrs McGarvey) and our Woodland day will be a Wednesday.

We hope you enjoy the snapshot of our first couple of weeks back below!

 

  

‘We were deciding which chairs the children would sit on.’ – Japleen

‘We got name labels and put them on and we moved the tables to make a pentagon. ‘ Gaby

‘We had to draw a picture and act it out.’- Ben

‘ Ross shared his summer holiday pictures with us and told us where he went and what he did with his family. It was good.’- Orla

 

‘I really like our new classroom. My favourite part is the library because you can sit and read and I like the detail.’ – Katie

‘I like the loose parts because you can make glasses with them.’- Euan

‘You use your imagination to make things.’- Amelia

‘ I have been enjoying ERIC time because you get to read under desks. I am reading The Ice Monster by David Walliams.’- Kyler

‘We made our Class Charter to think of some class rules. I think the right to Learn is important.’- Leo

‘If we follow the rules we will get good things and prizes.’- Alia

We will start our class reward system with raffle tickets and individual, group and class rewards next week!

We had a quick look at our new Outdoor Area at the Style Academy. We are excited to go there soon!

    

‘We looked at Rosie’s Glasses and then we did some Art from it.’- Sophie

‘We had a negative and a positive side and we drew the same thing but from a positive perspective.’- Aarohi

‘ It taught us that at least one thing every day is always positive. We should focus on this.’- Ross H

 

 

‘It is a fish eating a fish eating a fish.’- Calvin