Category: Uncategorized

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

Despite the weather I hope everyone enjoyed Sports Day for those who could attend! Next week I will sending home some work which you can keep at home. Thank you for the cardboard donation, we will be using it next week to help with constructing country landmarks. The pupils also had a great time taking part in the ‘Beat the Staff Goalie’ with 18 scoring goals into myself!

Literacy and English

We finished editing our P1 Buddies letters and we are planning to decorate them when Mr Atkinson prints them off.

We have started to plan for our final writing lesson which will be creating an imaginative story from the perspective of either a football player in the Euros or an athlete competing in the Olympics. To organise our ideas and notes we used mind maps and drew storyboards.

Numeracy and Maths

Some of us have been learning how to order fractions, find a fraction of a number and how to multiply by 2. We have also been revising adding and subtracting up to four digits using exchanging and carrying. We have also become more confident with converting times into both 12 and 24 hour time.

Health and Wellbeing & Sports Day

Even though it rained a little we had a great Sports Day and enjoyed watching the adult and class races! A basketball coach also visited our school and delivered a session to us that involved different ways of dribbling around cones.

In P.E. we worked in groups to plan our entries for the East Renfrewshire Active Schools Keepy Uppy Challenge! We had to be very creative and use our Growth Mindset when performing our ideas.

IDL – Olympics and Euros 2024

As part of Sports Week we have been taking part in Euro themed lessons with a focus on Italy as this is the country were were allocated! First we learned how to perform some traditional dances such as ceilidh dancing and the Italian Tarantella. We also tried speaking in Italian and we created rainbows and labelled them with colours written Italian. We also designed new Scotland football strips by looking at past examples and we researched information about Italy which we used to design bunting that has been placed around the school.

 

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

If possible can pupils please bring spare cardboard to class next week to allow them to construct a variety of tourist attractions from different cities as part of their Euros 2024 & Paris Olympic Games topic. I have also asked the children to get permission from adults at home for bringing in a small toy figurine to class that they can use in their Stop Motion activities. Please do not worry if they do not have one, we will accommodate this.  Pupils also had a great time on Friday at the Celebration of Achievement assembly in Eastwood High School. With Sports Week coming up please read the Weekly Round Up for information about uniform.

Literacy and English

Mrs Jamieson visited us this week and explained the role of the P1 Buddies and what to expect. We discussed about the importance of being a role model and showing the school values. Mr Jamieson also reassured us that sometimes our Buddies will want to play with their friends which is also okay. After her visit, we drafted and typed our P1 Buddies letter which had to include some information about ourselves, a description of Crookfur and a memory of our time in P1. Mr Atkinson also took our photograph and has uploaded it onto our Google Docs which he will print off.

In our Grammar lesson we discussed and learned how nouns can act as adjectives and what compound words are.

Numeracy and Maths

Some of us have been revising what fractions look like and how to simplify and make them equivalent. We have also been recording times to the nearest minute using to and past as well as writing numbers up to 10,000.

Health and Wellbeing

On Monday during P.E. we competed in our very own Olympics! We took part in a range of stations such as shot put, javelin and discus throwing as well as relay racing and jumping over hurdles.

In the MUGA some of the primary two pupils joined us. Our classed helped to familiarise the younger children with some of the potential Sports Day activities. We all had a brilliant time modelling and managing each station and hope to use these skills next year as a P1 Buddy!

IDL – Olympics and Euros 2024

We carefully looked at medals from previous Euros and and Olympics and then drew and coloured our own.

Science

With Mrs Scoular we had a fantastic time making volcanoes and then exploding them!

Outdoor Learning

Building on our knowledge of habitats, we researched how land is impacted by humans and climate. We then sketched how habitats change over time and listed the reasons as to why this can happen.

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

Next week we will be discussing the P1 buddy system so I have asked for the pupils to reflect on their early memories of Crookfur so that they can include these in the letters to their buddies.

Literacy and English

In our comprehension activities have been answering a range of questions on characters feelings and exploring stories from around the world.

In our Writing lesson we created a plot based on a dragon! This was challenging as were encouraged to write in first person and in the present tense. To help achieve this, we took breaks to read our stories to our partner to help us check that we had written the sentences in the correct tense.

Numeracy and Maths

Some of us have been using our knowledge of cm and m in calculations, revising how to subtract 3 digit numbers involving exchanging, applying our understanding of seconds when timing each other to complete tasks with stopwatches and learning new Mental Maths strategies by using factors.

Philosophy

In our philosophy lesson we discussed if stories can be wrong and if numbers in our heads are real, both questions led to interesting debates.

RME

We discussed several religious stories and then researched examples of individuals who have either performed miracles or good deeds using religious texts such as the Bible.

Science

With Mr Atkinson we have been investigating which animals are either extinct, endangered or thriving. We discovered that the red squirrel population in Scotland has been decreasing over the years and one of the reasons for this is that it is in competition for food sources with the grey squirrels.

With Mrs Scoular we have started learning about earthquakes and tsunamis.

Spanish 

Mrs Scoular has been teaching us about countries that speak Spanish and we also listened to some Spanish music.

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

I hope everyone enjoys the upcoming long weekend!

Literacy and English

We have now started exploring a different genre of writing, imaginative! Mr Atkinson shared a video with us a story about a child and his robot but he only showed us the beginning and ending. We then had to write the climax and resolution of the plot to fill in the missing events. In our paragraphs we were encouraged to use skills we had learned about earlier in the year such as; similes, descriptive language related to the senses, connectives and correct punctuation.

Numeracy and Maths

Some of us have been learning how to recognise quarter to and quarter past on clock faces, exploring the process of multiplying and dividing numbers by 10, determining start and end times by using our knowledge of the bridging method, and converting cm and m which helped us with measuring objects.

Health and Wellbeing

In our Athletics lesson we have been honing our throwing skills by using the javelins. We have also been continuing to improve our shot put technique by aiming at targets which were worth a certain amount of points.

We have also been discussing who we can share and talk to if we have worries.

IDL – Olympics and Euros 2024

We have been listening to national anthems and watching video clips of Olympic medal ceremonies and opening international football matches. Feeling inspired we tried creating Flower of Scotland using GarageBand and then we developed our very own Crookfur Primary anthem! As a class we also successfully recreated a popular Harry Potter theme using the app.

Working in groups we researched and designed information posters with facts about how sports have changed due to technology and presented these to the class.

Outdoor Learning

The pupils had a fantastic time seeing some of their P2 buddies in the Woodland this week! The class also created their very own clay faces using natural materials and placed them on different trees to decorate the area.

Mr Atkinson’s comment:

I have been very impressed with the dedication and enthusiasm the pupils have displayed in their role as Friday Prefects. They will be undertaking this job one more time before the end of term and it is a great opportunity to help prepare them for the additional responsibility when they go into primary 6!

Literacy and English

One of our recent favourite Writing lessons has definitely been writing a persuasive letter as the Head of the Scotland bidding team. We were challenged by Mr Atkinson to present compelling arguments as to why Scotland or Glasgow should host the future Euros or Olympics. To achieve this we created a detailed structure by inputting all of the information we had learned in our Euros/Olympics lessons into an online planning map. This helped us to organise our paragraphs and order our arguments logically. We also applied some of the persuasive techniques we have been focusing on including; persuasive sentences openers, facts and statistics, emotive language/WOW words and rhetorical questions. In our Writing lesson starter tasks we had to use some of these methods to sell Silverburn Shopping Centre, Flip Out Glasgow and a garden full of rubbish. We also listened to examples of real life toy descriptions and discussed if they were persuasive enough to appeal to children.

Our comprehension activities have also reinforced our understanding of persuasion as we have discussed how some texts that are written for a purpose and how they try to appeal to a targeted audience.

The group reading books have also been very useful as some have explored the Olympics, Paralympic Games and persuasive articles.

Numeracy and Maths

We have been learning about the importance of following the order of operations in calculations, how to add and subtract involving money, discussing why some data is not always accurate and how to improve bar graphs and building our confidence with dividing using remainders.

Health and Wellbeing

In P.E. we divided the MUGA into two sections. On one side we played a football match and on the other side we were trying to establish a rally in Tennis with Mr Atkinson. The purpose of both of these activities were to encourage us to apply all the skills we have been developing on the course of this year such as controlled dribbling, awareness of positioning on the pitch and the correct swings.

In our Athletic lessons we have been taking part in races, honing our shot put and long jump techniques.

IDL – Olympics and Euros 2024

Over the last two weeks we have been working very hard in our Euros and Olympics topic. In groups we have been discovering how Scotland and Glasgow would meet the criteria to host either of these sporting events. We created information booklets which contain our notes and drawings of popular modes of transport such Glasgow Airport or the Subway, iconic tourist attractions such as Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum or Edinburgh Castle and venues that could be used to host different types of sports such as Hampden Park or Glasgow National Hockey Centre. We plan to use this information in our bidding letters for our Writing lesson.

After looking at past Euros and Olympics logos we then constructed our own Scottish themed logos using Tinkercad.

Science and Outdoor Learning

After learning about food chains we have started exploring food webs are food chains that are linked. After discussing this we started to create some of our own on Jamboard!

 

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!