Month: February 2024

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. 

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

We are all excited about the open afternoons next week which will have a Victorian theme! Miss Campbell will be hosting Wednesday’s session as I will be attending the STEM the Flow Exhibition Event at the Riverside Museum where our P5B team will be sharing their project with the public. I look forward to meeting parents and guardians on Thursday. The pupils also enjoyed having the opportunity to prefect this week whilst the P6 pupils were away on their trip!

Literacy and English

As this was our final week of exploring poems we applied all of our knowledge to help us identify the different features of the poems such as the rhyming patterns and then we answered questions on what they themes were and the messages within the poems.

Numeracy and Maths

This week in Maths we have covered the concepts of adding 3-digit numbers involving carrying, drawing shapes with the same areas but different perimeters, using our knowledge of converting CM and M to help solve calculations and categorising information into Venn and Carroll diagrams.

Health and Wellbeing

In our indoor P.E. session we created a gymnastic obstacle course which challenged us to perform rolls on mats, jump distances and balance across beams. In the MUGA we learned and further improved tennis skills such as how to volley and do a drop shot.

RME

With Miss Campbell we created some storyboards from different religions.

IDL – Victorians

Mr Atkinson read the popular story of Alice in Wonderland which was written in the Victorian era and was supposedly loved by Queen Victoria!

We have also started learning about different types of Victorian architecture that was used when designing buildings in Britain.

We also spent some time researching major events that occurred in the Victorian period which we  summarised to help us create an illustrated timeline that we ordered chronologically.