P5b 23-24

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

We had a fantastic end to the week with the Colour Run! The pupils all had a great time and enjoyed cheering on the other classes as they passed by.

Literacy and English

In our Writing lesson we created a persuasive letter to the council discussing the issue of littering in our local community and what we can do to stop it. Some of the skills we used to make compelling arguments included;  persuasive sentence starters, facts and statistics to support our opinions.

Numeracy and Maths

Some of us had a great time using a variety of measuring jugs to help become more confident with reading scales and making estimations. We have also been learning how to multiply 3 digits numbers by a single digit, identify different coins and solve puzzles involving square and triangular numbers.

Health and Wellbeing

For our first athletics lesson we all took part in races!

This week we explored our feelings and identified which feelings are comfortable or make us feel uncomfortable. We shared how we react when we experience a certain emotion and we listed people who can help us cope with the more challenging feelings. Afterwards, we used some of the strategies that we had discussed to resolve scenarios.

IDL – Olympics and Euros 2024

We have been researching a venue of our choice that will be used either in the Olympics or Euros. We recorded some key information such as their design, what they will be used for and what they are made from. Then we constructed models of the venues with Kapla and applied our knowledge of the Microbits to programme floodlights to go inside our stadiums!

Science and Outdoor Learning

To help us further understand habitats and our surrounding environments we have been learning about food chains. We discovered that animals adapt to their environments and what carnivores, herbivores and omnivores, consumers and producers are. We then went out to the woodland area to see if we could identify a food chain that we could draw and label in class.

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

Finally, some sunny weather has arrived! I would like to thank everyone for supporting the pupils with creating their Solo-Talks, I found them so interesting! Some of our pupils have also had a busy week attending their committees.

Literacy and English

This week we all finished our Solo-Talks and Mr Atkinson gave us some feedback about how we presented. Below are some photos of us in action!

Our Writing lesson was so much fun this week! Mr Atkinson said that we could bring in any item from home to create a persuasive description for. We were encouraged to use WOW words and our new persuasive phrases to convince our audience to purchase the items.

To support with our writing, we looked at different persuasive texts and answered comprehension questions based on them.

We have just started a new series of lessons on philosophy to help us develop our talking and listening skills.

Numeracy and Maths

In Maths some of us have been converting ml and l and using this knowledge to help solve adding and subtracting calculations. We also been working on how to find the missing angle in complementary and supplementary angles and using our understanding to help write directions involving maps. We are also getting quicker with determining the rules for function machines and we have begun to use concrete materials to help with exchanging in 3-digit calculations.

Health and Wellbeing

In our tennis lessons we have been developing our backhand shots by hitting balls over the net to our partners and we have been serving into our target hoops to help improve our aim.

We spent time exploring friendship by discussing the desirable qualities we want in friends, how to maintain a friendship and how we should interact safely online with friends.

RME

During our RME lesson we discussed the differences between inspirational people and Saints. Some of us shared what the equivalent of a Saint is in their religion and then we used the Chromebooks to create a slide on someone who is a role model in our lives. We made sure that if we used a celebrity or family member that we carefully thought about how they inspire us to do good deeds.

Science

With Mrs Scoular we have started learning about which rocks are natural or human made.

 

 

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

Welcome back to our blog, I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday! It has been a busy start to the new term with the pupils participating in Culture week and Eid festival.

Literacy and English

We have now started a new writing series focusing on persuasive writing. We discussed how we are persuaded to do things in our lives and then we looked at how WOW words and descriptive language can be used to make something appealing. We also learned how to use exclamation marks to emphasis key points. With this new knowledge we created adverts to some of our favourite locations and illustrated them.

In our comprehension lesson we explored different points of views in texts. We had to carefully look at the wording in sentences to help us understand the differing opinions.

Numeracy and Maths

We have been learning how to identify different angles and we also discussed how to round to the nearest 10 and 100 which led to us debating the accuracy of using rounding in calculations to reach an answer.

Outdoor Learning

We went back to where we had placed our bird feeders and discovered they had all been eaten!

Culture Week Activities

On Monday Uksa visited our class and taught us how to paint a sunset background using watercolours. Afterwards, we created mosques out of black paper which we stuck onto the sunset background.

We had a great time with Mrs Scoular listening to the story Under the Hijab and taking part in the Blooket quiz!

We also researched and created information posters about how eating utensils are used differently in some cultures.

Some of us got Henna and we used this as inspiration to create our very own patterns and designs on sketches and traces of our hands.

On Friday we had an amazing time making Vegetable Samosa and Mango Lassi with help from parents.

 

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a great holiday and on behalf of myself and the class I would also like to thank Miss Campbell for everything that she has done as she finishes with us this week. This was the last week of homework due but I will continue to inform the pupils in class of their upcoming focus in their Writing lessons in case they would like to discuss this at home.

Literacy and English

For our final instructional writing lesson we created instructions for how to build the Victorian era toy, cup and ball, that we have made a couple of weeks ago. To make sure our instructions were clear we applied all our knowledge from this series of lessons by using adverbs, imperative verbs, time openers and we illustrated our steps.

Numeracy and Maths

With Miss Campbell, some of us surveyed another class, recorded the results using tally marks and then created bar charts using Google Sheets. We have also learned how to subtract involving exchanging and been completing our own timetables to help plan events.

Health and Wellbeing

This week we finished our Substance Misuse topics by discussing different types of medicine, what they are used for, how to safely take them and what happens if you misuse them. We also learned about what vaping is and made fact posters about it.

The stage has been up this week for some school shows so we took part in dance competitions in class instead – we all had a lot of fun!

Technology

For our final Micro:bit lesson of the term we tested ourselves against the devices! We coded the Micro:bits to play a game of rock, paper scissors and Mr Atkinson gave us some time to apply everything we have learned by programming anything that we wanted.

IDL – Victorians 

We have been learning about what the differences are between primary and secondary sources. We discussed that they can be used for different purposes and that depending on who wrote or made the source their point of view may impact its usefulness. We then looked at Victorian advertisements from the time and assessed who their target audience was, what was their purpose and how did they persuade people. Some of us noticed the importance of including engaging wording and appealing pictures in adverts to grab the attention of readers!

Solo-Talks

We have started listening to some wonderful presentations on different types of Victorian era inventions and we can’t wait to hear the rest when we come back from the holidays!

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

This is the last week of homework being issued and I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you for supporting with this over the year. I am also vey much looking forward to the Solo-Talks next week which the pupils have been preparing. Jonathan Hull also visited us to teach the class about some new ways to use the accessibility features on the Chromebooks and iPads to support Literacy learning.

Literacy and English

For our second instructional writing lesson we created a list of steps for how to build a habitat or den for an animal or creature of our choosing. To help us achieve this we discussed how we built shelters and bugs hotels  in our outdoor session a couple of weeks ago. To improve our instructions we used more time openers, wrote the quantities of some items and also included imperative verbs and some adverbs.

Numeracy and Maths

We have explored and learned about lots of concepts this week! We have discovered how to draw shapes with specific areas and perimeters and with Miss Campbell we worked on accurately creating bar graphs. We also discussed which devices and unit of measurements are needed for different types of quantities and learned how to read train timetables and calendars. Mr Atkinson has also been teaching us different Mental Maths strategies to help us to reach an answer more quickly.

Health and Wellbeing

As part of Neurodiversity Week some of us took part in presenting to other classes and we also learned about the different types of neurodiversity by researching facts about them and playing a dice game to share our new knowledge with each other.

In our Substance Misuse lesson we discussed how smoking can harm and damage the body. Afterwards we labelled parts of body and wrote about the impact smoking has on key organs. We also  discovered what cigarettes are made from which helped us to understanding how harmful they can be. We also looked at how the packaging is used to warn people of the dangers and then we tried creating our own packets.

We also completed our gymnastic series of lessons by performing with background music playing a sequence of jumps, rolls and balances to the entire class!

Outdoor Learning

We created bird feeders by putting cereal onto a piece of string and tying to form a ring. Then we went outside a placed them around the woodland area and next week we are going to go back and check them.

IDL – Victorians

Having worked so hard to learn how to write scripts when we recreated the story of Alice in Wonderland, we thought it would be a good idea to apply these skills to create a performance about the life of a Victorian child. First we wrote a script and stage directions by using our knowledge of the Victorian era and then we acted out the scene in front of the class. It was brilliant to watch what it was like for a child attending school, working in a mine or being a chimney sweep!

 

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

Well done to all the pupils involved in the recent assemblies, I have been so impressed with their presenting skills!

Literacy and English

This week we started our new series of instructional writing. We each created a set of instructions for an activity that we are going to teach and share with our classmates in our P.E. lessons. We discussed the importance of writing a title and description as well as listing all the equipment and chronologically ordering our instructions to make them easy to follow.

We have been exploring different types of instructions by answering comprehension questions on some procedural texts and we also used instructions in our digital and technology activities by programming Micro:bits and coding Spheros to travel around a course.

Numeracy and Maths

It has been another busy week in  Maths! Some of us have created our own symmetrical patterns and have been learning how to find the area of shapes. We have also discussed how to determine time durations and we used different phrases that mean subtracting and adding in some calculations.

Health and Wellbeing

On Friday we learned about alcohol laws and how too much of it can impact our senses. One of us brought in goggles that is meant to show you what it is like when you have had too much alcohol and we all tried them on.

Expressive Art – Drama

Over the course of the week our groups performed our versions of Alice in Wonderland using our scripts in front of the class! We tried to apply the skills of tone, gesturing, movement and expression to help create an engaging performance.

IDL – Victorians

It was really interesting learning about some of the different toys Victorian era children played with. We even created our own cup and ball game which was popular back then!

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

This week at assembly P5 were awarded Year Group of the Week for lining up quickly and quietly and as a result will receive some extra minutes at a playtime – well done everyone! I know parents and carers as well as the pupils are eager to see the STEM video that was recorded last week, this can be viewed here: https://x.com/EastRenCouncil/status/1765331934421348708?s=20

Literacy and English

This week we celebrated World Book Day by taking part in lots of great activities. We started the week with Mr Atkinson putting us into reading groups and to focus on learning more about a particular Roald Dahl novel. We also worked in pairs to draw and label a diagram of a new reading area. Some of us swapped with P4/5 pupils so that we could read and share our Midnight Fair stories that we had been creating in our imaginative  writing lessons with Miss Campbell. Throughout the week the P5 Reading Buddies also spent some time reading books with their P2 buddies and we all visited the Eco-committee’s Book Swap which was very exciting! Later in the week we researched and learned about Roald Dahl and we created a massive timeline with all these facts, including the dates when his books were published. Once we were finished our Roald Dahl book we created a character wheel which required us to identify the main characters, summarise key information about them and draw a picture of them. We then combined our sections together and colour-coded them to create large circles.  On Thursday we joined the online World Book Day: Footy & Booky Quiz 2024 with Ben Lyttleton, Kit Brown and some very special guests. We had a great time taking part in the quiz! At the end of the week some of us shared what we had done at the upper school assembly.

Numeracy and Maths

Some of the us have been learning how mirrors can be used to help with identifying symmetrical patterns and how to covert 12 and 24 hour times. We have also been answering questions involving  kg and g and solving calculations by adding or subtracting 100s.

Health and Wellbeing

We started our new topic Substance Misuse by discussing the difference between medicine and substances that can be harmful to your body such as alcohol and smoking.

Expressive Art – Drama

Mr Atkinson shared with us the key techniques that we need to think about when performing our Alice in Wonderland drama scripts that we started to write a couple of weeks ago.  Some of these skills included how we use our voice, body, movement, gesturing and facial expressions when we are delivering our lines.

Outdoor Learning

As part of our LEAF project we have started to learn about different types of habitats, what types of animals live in them and how they have adapted to survive. Afterwards, we went to woodland and were challenged to build our very own habitats that would support the wildlife in the area. When we gathering materials we had to make sure we were choosing materials that could be a food source or provide shelter and warmth.

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

It has been a very busy week for P5B! We welcomed a special guest on Friday afternoon who recorded a video of the class engaging in different STEM activities! I will share a link to the video in a future blog when we are given it. It was also great to meet with parents and guardians this week at the Parents Evening sessions and share the progress of the pupils.

Literacy and English

In our Writing session we were encouraged to replace the word said and some of us wrote endings to our Midnight Fair stories!

This week most of the groups finished creating our Alice in Wonderland drama scripts after summarising the main events from the storybooks. We worked together to decide which characters we would need and then we each chose parts. When we were writing the scripts we included stage directions to help us when we perform next week!

Our new comprehension focus is answering different types of questions on instructions.

Numeracy and Maths

In Maths some of us have discussed how to divide and multiply 4-5 digit numbers and how to convert kg and g. We have also been working on becoming more confident with using calculators to help solve word problems. Later in the week we learned some new strategies such as how to find factors and multiples, the best method to add ten to different numbers  and what steps to follow when adding and subtracting 3 digit figures.

STEM

On Friday we had a special visitor come to our class to record us in action at our STEM stations! We were all very excited about this and were eager to share our knowledge of energy.  At one of our stations we had to create a dam experiment and measure which hole in the milk container would best place to help generate energy in real life. We used a stopwatch to help us to accurately track the times of when we needed to measure the length of the water stream coming from each hole. We achieved this by using a measuring tape and recording our results in cms. At the other stations we used Tinkercad to design a sustainable town, created working wind turbines out of K’NEX and programmed the micro:bits to become an automatic light system that turned on when placed in our dark LEGO houses. It was so interesting taking part in all these different activities!

 

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

On Friday the pupils brought home a sample of their work which I hope you enjoy looking at and I have also suggested that the children could share their favourite learning experiences with you that they have been involved in. I look forward to seeing everyone at the upcoming Parents Evenings next week.

Literacy and English

This week in Writing with Miss Campbell we continued our imaginative stories by writing the middle section of our plot. We were asked to further develop our characters, use descriptive vocabulary to create vivid settings and check that our new parts to the story logically followed on from the beginning paragraphs that we wrote last week.

Later in the week we designed front covers for our imaginative stories. We included features like the title of the story, who it was written by and some of us even included the price of our book and a logo of our own publishing company.  We then wrote a blurb about our plot by using our summarising skills and a couple of us wrote reviews to encourage people to read our stories.

Numeracy and Maths

Over the course of this week some of us have been learning about 3D shapes and were challenged to locate and name some around the classroom. We have also looked at how to divide and multiply by 10, continuing to improve our confidence with answering problem solving questions that have exchanging and carrying in  them and we discussed different Mental Maths strategies.

Health and Wellbeing

In our final Growth Mindset lesson we applied all of our knowledge to  create cereals that helps make people become successful learners. Some of the ingredients we included were a spoonful of determination, learning from mistakes, effort and determination.

IDL – Victorians

After feeling inspired from the Open Afternoon we all wanted to have another attempt at building famous Victorian constructions using K’NEX which we were all successful at this time!  We also started a log whereby we took notes and inserted pictures on Google Slides showing the differences between Victorian clothing to current styles, past and present jobs,  the different types of meals and how toys have changed.

Outdoor Learning

For our outdoor session this week we cleared and removed all the fallen leaves and twigs that were in the courtyard and moved them to the Woodland area. We piled them in a sheltered area and we are going to regularly check to see if it becomes a new habitat for insects.

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

If you were able to attend the open afternoons last week I hope you enjoyed visiting the class and having an opportunity to see what we have been learning about this term. Last Wednesday myself and the Crookfur team attended the Regional STEM the Flow Exhibition Event at the Riverside Museum. The pupils presented with confidence to the judges and all their efforts were recognised with them winning a second award – the Most Innovative Solution! You can read more about the our involvement in STEM the Flow by clicking on these links.

https://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/climate-action-schools/upstream-battle/stem-the-flow/2023-24/

https://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/news/2024/jan/national-stem-the-flow-competition-winners-announced/

https://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/news/2024/february/young-peoples-stem-the-flow-creativity-celebrated-at-riverside-museum/

Thank you for your support throughout this project!

Literacy and English

With Miss Campbell we have started our imaginative writing series of lessons. As part of our Talk Homework we have been asked to look at pictures involving a fair and animals  and begin to create a story using these images as our inspiration. Last week we focused on introducing our main characters and creating a beginning part to our plot.

In our grammar lessons we have discussed when to use speech marks which we will be trying to include in our story writing and after revising proper nouns we thought of some of our own.

Numeracy and Maths

We have been exploring lots different concepts over the last two weeks! We have been making links between degrees, different types of angles and compass points. Some of us have been learning how to recognise symmetry, solve 3 and 4 digit calculations involving exchanging and carrying,  revising rounding to the nearest 10, writing numbers in the word format and how to estimate and measure the length of an object.

Health and Wellbeing

In gymnastics we have started using the apparatus which is so much fun! Our tennis lesson this week had a bit of a twist to it, we played rounders with a racket but we could only hit the ball with either a forehand or backhand shot.

In our Growth Mindset lessons we have discussed what words and phrases are linked to a Growth or Fixed mindset. Using this knowledge to create top trump cards of characters from a book but their qualities had to be linked to Growth Mindset, for example determination or effort. We also explored how a rubber band is like our brains as learning and making mistakes stretches the brain helping to make it grow!

Some of the digital leaders came to our class and showed us a presentation and then we watched a video which had more information about technology.

IDL – Victorians: Open Afternoons

Our open afternoons had a Victorian theme and we had different stations that we went around over the two days. Having learned about life at a Victorian school we used Tinkercad to create our very own Victorian classrooms. Using our knowledge of Victorian jobs we wrote diary entries of a poor child that had to work and we created job adverts for the worst jobs which we later voted on! Over the last couple of weeks Mr Atkinson has been reading a modern version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and we compared the illustrations between our copy and the original artwork. At this station we then tried drawing some of scenes in both the modern and original style. We also used K’NEX to build famous Victorian constructions such as Forth Bridge and we drew Victorian houses.