Here are some of our highlights from this year……..

I am most proud of how I have developed my art skills. I really enjoyed making clay models to look at the fine details of bird’s feet and how they are used in landing and take-off.

I liked exploring the new woodland area during outdoor learning.

I learned lots of new things about microbits. I had to programme it to make tunes, words and signs.

In P.E I was able to create my own movements and dance sequences. I had to use the space around to create a piece to music.

I love writing. I am much better at writing and I have learned lots about rhyming poems. I am very proud of the poems I wrote this year.

I now have a better understanding of fractions. I can simplify them and make equivalent fractions.

I learned all about Titanic and all the things that led to the tragedy.  I learned about how the ship was designed and built and all the different people involved.

I enjoyed learning about black history through the Heartstone project. I have learned more about influential people and historic figures such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.

I have learned all about decimals. I now know how many tenths equal one whole and how to recognise and write decimals.

Here are some photo highlights from the past few weeks………

We are so proud of you all and all you have learned and achieved this school year. We hope you have the most fantastic summer break and wish you all the very best for P6.

Mrs O’Meara and Miss Bishop

Outdoor Challenge

We had to work together in teams with limited equipment to  complete our outdoor challenge this week. We showed some great team working and problem solving skills to get our whole team from the path to the fence without touching the grass.

Maths

In maths we have been learning about volume and were estimating and measuring the capacity of a wide range of containers. Our estimations got more accurate with greater practice and we were able to convert measurements from millilitres to litres and vice versa.

Literacy

In literacy we have been looking at ways to develop our sentences using adverbs and adjectives to improve and up level our sentences.

Global Festival

As part of Crookfur’s Global festival we looked at the different languages spoken in our classroom and some pupils shared their languages with others showing us how to say and write a range of different things . We also enjoyed some Bollywood dancing and looked at different playground games from around the world.

P.E

In P.E we had great fun completing some house really races and challenges and earned lots of points that will all go towards the end of year house cup points totals. We also created our own games using a range of different equipment.

Bike Ability

We had a great time working on our movement and coordination skills as part of our bike ability lessons. We worked hard to ride with balance and control and were able to steer round objects and coordinate braking and pedalling both quickly and slowly in a wide range of fun games and activities.

Outdoor Learning

This week we worked together in small groups to look at building and creating a habitat for birds. We looked at different features and materials such as insulation to keep birds warm and materials that would protect the eggs and keep the structure together.

Some groups explored different features such as the use of a roof to provide shade and shelter from different weather. We also thought about food supplies particularity for the young birds. Some nests were buried in a hole to provided protection and stop it being blown away.

Numeracy and Mathematics

In Maths we have been using calendars to sort, organise and find information. Some of us have also been continuing to work on equivalent fractions and have learned how to simplify fractions. We have also been continuing work on estimating and rounding and exploring chance and probability.

Literacy

In literacy we have been looking further at persuasion in both reading and writing. We were able to identify a range of features such as word choice, questions and other opinions that are used to try to encourage or convince us to do something or think a certain way. We explored the use of rhetorical questions and quotes within film posters and book blurbs.

Health and Wellbeing

We have been working hard to create our own food product using all that we have learned about what foods are made up of to come up with something tasty and attractive to others. We used what we have learned about persuasion to create adverts to convince others to buy our products.

P.E

In P.E we have been exploring different positions in hockey such as goal keeper, defender and forwards and have developed our game to look at positioning on the pitch and working together as a team.

Health and Wellbeing

This week we have been learning some British sign language to look at the different signs for ordering foods.

We also spent some time examining food labels to look at how we can use the information contained in them to help us make healthier choices. We compared the fat and sugar content of different foods to find out which foods were better for us.

In Maths

We have been continuing to work on using information in timetables, looking at converting different units of time to solve problems. We have also been calculating durations of time looking at counting on in hours and minutes to look at how long activities, T.V programmes and events last for.

In Writing

We have been looking at the great caterpillar cake debate between Cuthbert the Caterpillar and Colin the Caterpillar. We looked at persuasive language and how it can be used to encourage us to buy one product over another. We enjoyed creating our own slogans to persuade people to buy the product we were in favour of.

IDL Topic flight

We have been learning more about birds in flight and how different feathers on a bird’s wings serve different purposes. Some play an important role in flight, some help the bird to keep warm and stay dry and others help them to show off or blend in. We did some observational drawings to look at the colour, shape, pattern and texture of a range of different feathers and experimented with layering of oil pastels to create a realistic image and study the detail within each design.

Outdoor Learning

As part of our study into birds and flight we enjoyed creating bird feeders outdoors to help attract in more birds to our school environment to observe and study.

This week we started a new topic on fight, looking at the question how is flight possible. We shared what we already know and came up with some really good areas to research further. We enjoyed creating and testing the paper aeroplanes we had designed to investigate aerodynamics and streamlining. We also investigated how we could make a paper spinner fly better and go further looking at height, weight and force.

In P.E we enjoyed using the skills we have been developing in small games of hockey, where we focused on passing, marking and scoring.

In Literacy we explored adjectives by creating an adjective A – Z. We looked at adjectives for describing size, qualities, colour and mood and identified different parts of speech in sentences and passages. In reading we have been continuing to look at finding evidence in a text to explain and support our answers and using key words within questions to skim and scan.

In Health and Well-being we have been looking at healthy eating and different factors that influence food practices and preferences such as culture and religion

In Maths we have been learning about the 24 hour clock and had fun collecting clues and solving our 24 hour time challenge where we had to convert times in a range of different formats to 24 hour times to solve the puzzle.

We are delighted to be back in school and working together again. We had great fun both indoors and outside this week!

In literacy we enjoyed some active grammar lessons where we chose the correct word class by running to the correct corner. We defined noun, verbs, adjectives and adverbs and gave some fantastic examples of how we can use them. We also practised our skills in letter writing, clarifying, finding key words and answering different types of questions.

In maths we have started a new block of teaching on time. We looked at what we already know, how we use time in our everyday lives and expressing times in different formats. We created our own analogue clocks to explore the relationship between minutes past and minutes to the hour and had great fun solving the clues to a units of time scavenger hunt to reveal the secret message. We also spent some time focusing on place value, multiplication and subtraction with exchange.

In P.E we have moved on to a new block of learning in hockey. We looked at controlling the ball using dribbling, passing and trapping, working as a team and some of the other rules of the game.

In Health and Wellbeing we have been creating our own tree of life. We started by looking at what makes us unique and our own blend of abilities and talents. We looked at ways we can care for and respect ourselves and others. We talked about the special people in our lives who can help us and what our hopes and dreams for the future are.

In music we have been looking at pitch using the glockenspiels. We also looked at call and response and copied and created patterns of long and short sounds.

Within our topic we have been learning more about the problems plastic pollution is causing in our world and how global warming is affecting animal habitats.

In maths we have been using Microsoft Excel to create bar graphs. We have focused on scale and labelling graphs correctly. We also collected a range of items outdoors and used them to create tables and graphs so we could compare amounts. We have also been looking at function machines, division and a range of mental maths strategies.

In literacy we have been working on writer’s craft, where we have to continue a story using the characters and events given. This has really helped us to focus on the 5 elements of characterisation – speech, thoughts, effect on others, actions and looks (STEAL) and look at writer’s techniques and style.

We had a visit from PC Waters who spoke about anti bullying and the importance of speaking to an adult if we see or hear something that is not kind.  We explored and identified a range of bulling behaviour and discussed the impact that unkind words and actions can have on others.

Book Week

As part of book week Scotland this week, we watched an Authors Live event from Pamela Butchart.  She discussed her book where pupils at a school suspect that one of their teachers is a werewolf. We read excerpts from the book which gave us clues that the teacher might be a werewolf, considering the character’s speech, thought, effect on others, actions and looks we then drew our own characters, – aliens, werewolves and other creature that were pretending to be a human.

We had to label the drawing to show the features that might give us some clues as to what they actually were like abnormally sharp teeth or fingernails. We had great fun guessing each other’s.

We also looked at the importance of a good blurb and how they are used to hook the reader in and encourage them to want to read the story. We had a go at creating our own blurbs for books we had read or stories we would like to write and looked at effective language and how humor or tension can be used to engage a reader.

We also enjoyed reading for enjoyment, listening to stories over the tannoy and taking part in the Mad Hatter’s Tea party.

Writing

In writing we used the pirate characters we had created the previous week to write a story about 3 pirates that were shipwrecked on a desert island. We looked at what problems they might encounter such as lack of food or dangerous animals living on the island and how they would overcome these problems. We explored the 5 elements of character within our writing looking at speech, thought, effect on others, actions and looks.

Our Planet

We have started our new topic called Our Planet and came up with a list of things we would like to find out more about. We have been looking at the effect of humans on the planet and some of the problems that have been created such as pollution, waste and endangered species. We have undertaken some independent research and shared some of our findings in class. We have also been looking into the problem with plastic and what we can do to reduce our use of plastics and recycle more. We designed posters to encourage others to do the same.

P.E

In P.E we have been developing our tennis skills further looking at small games, marking out small courts and looking at how to score points.

Well done to everyone who took part in our mini mudder challenge today and thank you for all the money you have raised.

Woodland

We had fun programming our “Human Robots” down at the woodland using the commands and directions we have been learning in maths. We had to lead our robots to the treasure using commands such as FD 4, LT 90, F6, RT 90, FD 10. We had to edit our directions after trying them out and looked at how this is similar to the skills programmers use. This linked to the work we did in ICT this week using Kudo to program our digital robots.

Music with Mrs Hutchison. This week we discussed the music we like to listen to at home and took part in games and activities to help us identify  pitch, pulse, tempo, rhythm and timbre. We were able to identify and create long and short rhythms and had to listen carefully  to work out different timbres.

In Maths we have been working on fractions, we created our own fraction walls and looked at fractions of different shapes. We explored equivalent fractions and how we can identify any fraction by looking at the denominator and the numerator. We enjoyed games where we had to match fractions and  sort and shade different parts of shapes.

In literacy we have further developed our knowledge of how to use inverted commas and speech marks. We also looked at inference and how to use clues within a text to find answers. We enjoyed sharing the Halloween and Bonfire Night  poems we created with each other. We used a range of vocabulary to create atmosphere and mood and a variety of different sentence openers. We also further explored the use of onomatepia, simile and rhyme within our poems.

In P.E we have been working on Tennis and looking at rallies and different tpyse of shots such as backhand and forehand shots.