Quentin Blake Illustrations

We joined a BBC Teach event on Tuesday morning where we looked at the illustrator Quentin Blake’s style and created our own characters for the ‘Zagazoo’ story.  The story shows a baby growing up and how the child changes into lots of different animals as it grows up.  We practised making different facial expressions for different emotions to help us with our illustrations.

I really enjoyed the fun video we watched to do this.  I loved my ‘Zagazoo’ elephant I drew. Leiyaa

Escape Room Maths

We worked in pairs or small groups to solve the maths problems to release the reindeer from their stable.  We worked well as teams and we were all able to find the correct number code for stable padlock. Phew!

Grow Your £5

This week we evaluated how we worked as teams in our different companies.  We recorded our evaluations using the app Chatterpix.

We have made a profit of £280.  We have decided as a class to donate all of the money to charity.  We will split the money between the UNICEF and Cancer Research charities.

We learnt how to take pictures of a Virgin Money or Richard Branson picture with the iPad and drew a mouth on it.  We could them record our evaluations in order to make it look like the picture was talking.  It was fun!  Menaal

The Snowman

We watched ‘The Snowman’ and considered how the music represented the emotions of the little boys in the story.  We then created our own snowmen pictures using pastels.  We used shading to show perspective in our pictures.

While we were doing art, the hardest part was blending it all together.  It was quite fun, but very messy!  Jack J

PE

Due to the wet weather, we done some Christmas themed Zumba.  We all got in the Christmas spirit and had a lot of fun.

Music

We did music with a twist this week.  We learnt how to play the rhythm of the ‘Sleigh Ride’ song with cups.  It took a lot of concentration, but we mastered it!  We then did a boys v girls competition to see who could follow the rhythm and keep in time with the music; it was a tie!

It was very hard and fun at the same time.  Noelle

I liked all of our Christmassy activities this week. Emily

Christmas Fayre

Selling at the Christmas Fayre was lots of fun as I was one of the people who got to sell our products. Our group was very happy about the amount of money we made. – Annie

I wasn’t meant to be helping my group sell our products at the Christmas Fayre, but I popped in and out and helped my team.  As a bonus, we sold out.  It was great fun and we made lots of money. – Michael

Christmas Jumper Day

We were first in the Present Room today, so we go the first choices and best presents.  The turkey and trimmings for Christmas lunch was very nice. – Jack J

Christmas Maths

We did lots of different maths tasks today including Christmas problem solving, online games and making clocks with minutes to and past the hour.

P5 Christmas Show

I enjoyed doing the ‘Run, Run, Rudolph’ dance at the P5 Christmas Show.  It was exciting and I loved our songs.  It was also my birthday which made it extra  special. – Connie

The Christmas show was exciting.  I liked everything about it and I’d love to do another show. – Emily

Bumble Bear

Bear came to visit P5a this week.  Annie and Finlay go to the same Brownies and are in the same six.  Every member of their six gets the opportunity to take bear on adventures for a week, then get to feed back to their six what they have done through pictures and notes in a diary.

This week I go t to take home the bear and I’ve planned lots of fun things we can do and take pictures of.  I like Bumble Bear more that the owls we had at our old Brownies.  Annie

At our old Brownies we had a big owl called Mr Brownie and a little owl called Chocolate Chip.  I think I prefer Bumble Bear.  Finlay

Grow Your £5

Our product production lines have been in full swing this week.

My group made marshmallow snowmen and we put them in little bags.  It was easy to draw the faces and buttons on them, but it was a bit tricky to put them in the bags.  Ephraim

Literacy

In literacy this week, we worked in our ‘Grow Your £5’ teams to write instructions as to how to make our products.  We worked as a team to generate clear instructions using time connectives, adverbs and connectives to give reason for some of our instructions.  The end result has been fabulous.

Frosty PE

PE was freezing, but very fun.  Snatch the bib was my favourite activity.  We played one game in small teams, but came in early because it was so cold. Jack J

Sikhism

We were looking at countries around the world where the Sikh religion is found.  Me and Finlay found it fun and entertaining.  It was a bit of a challenge to find the countries around the world, but we worked as a team to help each other.-Annie

Science Centre 

My favourite part of the Science Centre trip was making the batteries in ‘The Lab.’ It was good fun!  Aaniyah

It was amazing when Jack and I made a circuit!  When we made a circuit, the tube was colourful.  We passed electricity through our bodies to complete the circuit. Beau

Grow Your £5

On Thursday we started making sample products to show to the class.  Some groups are still waiting on all their products to arrive, but we will carry on making them next week.  Some of us have made lots, but some of us have only made a few.  Jack J

My group managed to make lots of cany candy cane reindeer.   We found it quite hard to keep the candy canes in the right position whilst we wrapped the pipe cleaners around them.  It was tricky to stick the nose and eyes on too.  Ava

Digital Leaders

We now have seven members of the class who have achieved their Bronze Digital Leader award who will now take responsibility for organising our Chromebooks and iPads when we use them in class.  They will also use their knowledge and skills to support their peers where appropriate.

PE

We have continued to learn a new dance routine to ‘I’ve Got a Feeling,’ by the Black Eyed Peas.  We had great fun learning to keep in time to the music and recalling the sequence of the moves.

In netball we participated in lots of different skills practises to improve our, passing, pivoting and team work skills.  We then played a game of netball where we introduced the positions of goal shooter, goal attack and goal defence.  Next week we will continue to work on using the whole court to create space to pass to our team mates.

 Grow Your £5

We have now moved onto creating our company logo’s for our ‘Grow Your £5’ businesses.  We have also finalised our shopping lists ensuring we have kept within our budgets.  Our next step will be to make our products once all our resources arrive.

Maths Problem Solving/Games

We used the strategy of ‘Guess, Check and Improve’ to create as many shapes as possible using four isosceles triangles.  We had to ensure sides of equal length touched which really got us thinking.

We also learnt three new maths games this week that will become part of our maths rotations.  We learnt how to play 101, Magic 6 and Guess my Calculation.  We learnt that many of us are very competitive, but we were all good sports about winning and losing.

We have internet!

Halloween

Yesterday we did some Halloween art.  We used pastels to create our mummy eyes, then tore strips of paper to create the bandages.

I thought it was fun! – Connie

I thought it was entertaining and the eyes were very majestic.  I really liked how we used the chalk for the eyes.  I thought it was a really good idea. – Theo

We discovered that if we rubbed the pastels, they blended in for a better effect. – Achintya

I thought using the pastels was cool even though our hands looked liked rainbows. – Farouk

Netball

Last week we started learning Netball skills in PE.  We started with some team games to develop our team work and ball handling skills.

We then learnt about chest passes and pivoting.  This week we added in defenders and attackers to small games.

I love netball because we get to do lots of different things like passing, defending and shooting. – Anna W

We went into mini groups and did mini matches. I loved it. – Ava

Dance

Last week we started our dance block.  We learnt how to sequence the moves to the Wolverine and Deadpool dance using a Zumba Dance YouTube video.  We learnt about the importance of timing and to add some attitude and pop to our moves to make them more distinctive.  As we had no internet this week, we learnt the ‘Gay Gordons,’ but we will learn a few more modern dances before returning to Scottish country dancing towards the end of November.

I really like dancing. – Isla

I really like dancing  because I think moves stand out. – Ewan

I liked the ‘Gay Gordon’s because we got to learn tricky, but fun steps. – Anna O

I quite like the dancing. – Menaal

I am looking forward to moving onto the traditional Scottish dancing in a few weeks.  – Ephraim

Grow Your £5

Last week we started learning about our ‘Grow Your £5’ topic.  We learnt about the importance of different personal qualities and the impact they have in contributing to a strong team, which can run a business.  We used this knowledge to form our ‘Grow Your £5’ business teams.  This week we considered products we would like to make and how much it would cost to make them.  We then considered how much we could sell items for and how much profit we may be able to make.

We got into groups and sorted out different jobs and from there we started thinking about products we could make from the jobs we have. – Cameron

Our groups were bigger than expected, but this means they have more money to spend.  Some groups have 8 people, so they have £40 to spend. – Farouk

I think it was really fun, although there were a few problems/calamities forming the teams. – Michael

Football

This week we had our last football session.  We have enjoyed learning lots of new team games and new skill practises that helped us with our teamwork and football skills.  We enjoyed playing mini tournaments and full pitch matches.

Fitness

This was also our last week of fitness.  We have learnt how to check our pulse.  We have learnt that over the last few weeks we have been able to do more of the activities in the same length of time, and that our heart has gotten stronger as a result.

Art

We combined our knowledge of fractions and problem solving to create hearts.  We then used our knowledge of tinting to paint the background that our hearts would get  stuck onto.

Sustainability

With Mr Atkinson we have been working on designing a sustainable city.  We could only include renewable energy sources in our design such as water dams and wind turbines.  We worked in table groups to create the best design possible, with the challenge to be more creative than P5b.  Once we were finished, we shared our design with the rest of the class.

Harry Potter

Last week we worked in groups to use our chronological order skills to establish the order in which the Harry Potter books were published and when the films were released.  We even started creating a timeline of events in J.K Rowling’s life too.

When we were researching the movies or books, we had to take notes on when they were published or released. – Farouk

H

Maths Problem Solving

Today we were finding out ways to create shapes on a peg board with a specific design criteria.  We had to create a table to see if we could find a pattern or relationship between the number of pegs and the area they covered.  It was really fun and tricky. – Michael

(Sorry, we forgot to take pictures!)

Harry Potter

This week we began making our magical schools or castles out of carboard using our Make Do kits.  We then programmed Micro-Bits to give our structure a name, logo or light up feature.

I liked learning how to use the screws and cut our the cardboard using the Make Do tools. – Anna O

We built our ‘Wings of Fire Academy’ using the different tools and and we worked as a team doing different jobs. – Isla

I loved using the Make Do kits because we got to shape the cardboard in lots of different ways. I’m happy with my final school. – Anna W

Renewable/Non- Renewable Energy Sources

It was fun doing the debate about renewable energy with Mr Atkinson this week.  We had to come up with arguments for and against renewable energy use.  – Theo

We were all given different energy sources and we had say why ours was the best as part of the debate. – Emily

With Mr Atkinson were given a template of Scotland and we put down four places where solar, wind or hydro power can be found. – Cameron

PE

In PE this week we played cups and saucers and the chain game as a warm up before practising our football skills.

This week in football, we were practising passing drills then we played a wee tournament with different teams.  – Ava

Fitness

This was week 4 of our fitness block.

I found the push ups and the hula hoop jumps hard this week. – Oliver

My favourite thing in fitness this week was the ladders. – Menaal

Maths Problem Solving

We looked at ‘Reasoning Logically’ in maths this week.  We had to find the total of either 5 or 7 sides of dice, calculating all the possible solutions and totals.

It was fun and challenging. – Michael

We found it quite difficult as we discovered there were more solutions when you turned the dice. – Farouk

Art 

We have been learning how to tint colour; add colour into white paint.  We created a background for our magical setting in our imaginative writing.  Then we cut out a silhouette in black paper.

It was really fun to do tinting. – Arwa

We did a practise strip first, then we painted our background. – Ava

I liked this art because we discovered how to make different colours we could use. – Anna

Symmetry

Today we were looking at symmetry.  Some of us were making symmetrical pictures, whilst some of us were finding lines of symmetry in a range of pictures and shapes.

Our computer activities we fun and loved playing all the different types of symmetry games. – Millie

Different Types of Joins

We investigated different types of cardboard joins which will help us construct our ‘Magical Schools’ or ‘Magical Castles’ next week.

Topics of Interest

It was interesting to hear about ‘Wings of Fire’ books.  Finlay and Annie sang us a ‘Wings of Fire’ song and showed us lots of books.  Noelle

It is really impressive that Lana and Millie have learnt how to sew a bag.  Connie

PE

We have been learning football skills for the last few weeks.  We were doing dribbling and passing skills this week.  We did the numbers games, high five passes and attacking and defending games.  The best bit is playing small games.  Jack J

Maths Problem Solving

We used lots of different kinds of maths problem solving strategies to find the answer to the problems.  Farouk

Sustainability

On Tuesday we were putting renewable energy sources into categories and discussing advantages and disadvantages of the different sources.  We then made fact files about all the different types of renewable energies.  I think it is quite interesting.  Emily

Technology   Design Brief

Yesterday we were designing magical schools or castles which we can build out of cardboard.  We were thinking about how we could use a Micro-bit to enhance our design within our group.   Isla