We worked together on the blog as a class. These are the highlights from the week that we wanted to share!

The most exciting news of the week is, of course, The Grinch has made a visit to Busby Primary and made a big mess of our classroom! He wrapped our tree and our board in Christmas paper, upturned our chairs and flung loo roll over all of our lovely Christmas lights.

This is the mess I encountered when I opened the classroom door this morning!! Thankfully Jingle, our Elf, was left un-Grinched!

Working as a team, we managed to get the classroom back to all of it’s festive glory! You can see our finalised door design below.

We have now finished our topic on ‘The Oceans’. Over the last few weeks we have been exploring the Arctic Ocean and have been learning about how animals stay warm in sub-zero temperatures. Last week, we conducted a science experiment investigating different insulating materials along with a blubber substitute (coconut oil) to work out how blubber helps to keep animals warm in an arctic environment (A basin with ice in it).

This week, we have been continuing with quantitative and qualitative adverbs. We played a drama game where we had to guess the adverb from the children’s actions and decide whether it was a ‘how, where, when, how much or how often’ kind of adverb. We were also sorting adverbs using actions to help us identify them within different festive-themed sentences.

In reading skills, we have been identifying the main idea of a text by examining an unseen piece of writing about planting trees. We have also been practising how to decode an unfamiliar word by looking for clues within a sentence.

In art, we have been making some paper craft wreaths for our front doors and decorating the classroom with wonderful 3D snowflakes! We have also started an abstract Arctic oil-pastel drawing, which we will complete next week. With Mrs Houston, we painted some lovely festive snow scenes using different techniques to depict light.

We have spent time creating our lovely, ‘Busby Shines Bright’ lanterns to place on our doorsteps tomorrow night and light up the streets of Busby! We used a layered tissue paper effect to give the impression of a stained-glass window.

In French, we have now finished our topic on introductions and have been practising different key phrases and questions we can use to introduce ourselves with! We have been practising answering questions using hot-seating games and  we were even able to write a whole paragraph completely in French, introducing ourselves!

We have spoken together as a class about what we would like to include into the blog this week. This is what the children have come up with!

We have been making penguins for our Christmas door display. This is a competition with the rest of the school, which we are sure we are going to do very well in! You will have to wait until next week to see the full effect as the  Busby Elf is due to make a visit this weekend to create some Christmas sparkle in the classroom!

In grammar, have been looking at quantitative adverbs. We learned that a quantitative adverb describes how much or how often something is done.  We now also understand that adverbs don’t have to only describe a verb, they can also describe adjectives and other adverbs.

In writing we have been learning about news articles and have created our own about a toy or character. For example, some children wrote an article about Baby Yoda crashing landing on Earth! We have been learning about how a news articles are laid out and the important features that we should include.

In P.E., we are learning skills in hockey and have been playing games against other children within the class.

In maths, the Circles have been learning about equivalent fractions and learning to simplify. The Squares have been finishing a topic on co-ordinates and grid-references. We have also been looking at rounding and place value. In the Triangles, we have been looking at 3D shapes, weight and measurement after finishing a topic on place value and rounding.

We have been coding in I.C.T.; providing instructions for cool dance moves on dance party.

In topic we have started to learn about the animals and landscape of the Arctic Ocean. We have also been exploring some of the challenges faced by the animals in the arctic due to the ice melting and global warming. We created some informational posters about what is happening to the environment and the animals in the Arctic ocean because of this.

We have finished our section on the ocean layers and created some super cool artwork which the children are very proud of!

Lat week, we spent some time conducting a ‘values reset’, having a look at the core values within the school and creating a fresh ‘class charter’ that we can follow within our classroom to ensure we can keep our classroom a welcoming, effective learning environment for everyone!

We have had a very interesting week in p4b.

We have been paying special attention to finding ways to ‘boost our mood’ this week. We all have days where we wake up on the wrong side of the bed but it is important to have some tricks up your sleeve to help you feel better. I have posted a video on GC of some of the ideas that we had to help boost our mood when we’re feeling glum.

We have also been creating mood rocks to help others in the class to boost their mood. Everyone was assigned a partner to whom they were to gift their stone. Each child was encouraged to decorate their stone in bright, happy colours and write a good mood that would help your partner in particular. We ended up with some very thoughtful stones that are bound to be perfect to boost any mood!

In reading skills this week, we have been looking at features of a non-fiction text as well as exploring cause and effect. We played cause and effect charades in teams where the rest of the class had to guess what scenario each group was acting out.

You can check out a couple of groups here. See if you can guess the cause and effect each group is acting out!

IMG_4918   IMG_4913

Here we are matching up cause with cause and effect.

It has been a productive week in P4b. It was lovely to have the opportunity to talk to parents about all the wonderful things we have been getting up to so far.

This week in Maths, the circles have finished their topic on direction and have moved onto time with calendars. The squares have finished division and are moving onto fractions and the triangles have finished data handling and are moving onto symmetry.

In literacy, we have been exploring setting descriptions; gaining an understanding of how to create a certain atmosphere in your writing through use of sensory words and the 5 W’s. (Where, When, What, Who, Why).

We have also been exploring the difference between a simile and a metaphor, and writing our own similes to describe the features of an owl.

In Art we made our own owl pictures to complement the spooky similes that we have written. The children also created some fantastic 3D haunted houses with Mrs Houston.

In Health and Well-being, we are still looking at friendships and empathy. Today we were gaining a better understanding of feeling intensity, constructing a sliding scale and exploring scenarios in which we may experience some of these feelings.

In topic, we have been exploring the different levels of the ocean and the difference we see in environment and wildlife as we move further down into the depths. We used iPads to  research animals within the ‘sunlight zone’ in more detail this week and have now embarked into the ‘twilight zone’.

We have music every second week over ‘google meet’. Last week, we were learning about writing beats. We learned a new beat which is ‘ti-ri-te’, which we can now clap along to and recognise by sight and sound.

We have been finishing our learning on ocean pollution before moving onto another area of the topic.

We decided to make a classroom installation out of the types of plastic that make their way into our oceans. We worked as a whole-class team with everyone contributing to every aspect of the project.

At this station, the children were creating colourful fish to swim in and out of our installation.

Here, we were writing facts about the effects ocean pollution has upon the ocean environment and eco-system.

We used all of the bottle tops that everyone brought in to create a wave for our display.

We spent some time as a class on Thursday, creating the tentacles for our installation by stringing pieces of plastic onto strips of plastic bag.

For the main body of our installation, we painted an old umbrella and decorated it with strips of plastic bag to look like tentacles.

Our finished product. Great job, team!

It may have only been a four day week but we have managed to squeeze in a whole lot of work!

In Grammar, we have been looking at past, present and future tense verbs. Today we made our own tense time machines and travelled forward and backwards in time to explore the tenses in more detail. We can also tell the distance between regular and irregular past tense verbs!

In French this week, we have been learning how to introduce ourselves; asking and answering simple questions such as ‘what is your name?’, ‘How old are you’ and ‘how are you?’

It was ‘Maths Week’ this week, and the children were tasked to create their own board game for a competition. The winner will have their design painted on the school playground for the whole school community to enjoy!

Our groups are still working on multiplication (circles and squares) and capacity (triangles).

In topic we have been exploring ocean pollution and the effect it has on the natural environment and the animals who live there.

We decided to do our bit by going out into the playground to pick up any rubbish that was left lying on the ground. We learned that if rubbish isn’t disposed of properly, the wind will blow it away and it will inevitably end up in the ocean.  We investigated the way plastic breaks down once it reaches the ocean and how micro-plastics can impact the whole ecosystem, creating ‘dead zones’.

We did a marvellous job picking up all of the playground trash and undoubtedly saved more than one life in the process!

In reading, Our Rubies are just about finishing their first novel of the year. They have been conducting comprehension activities on it throughout the book which is culminating in them creating their very own mystery story using techniques learned from the book to create an element of suspense and intrigue.

Our Emeralds are also just finishing their book ‘Flat Stanley’ and have been using their sequencing and summarising skills to prepare a short film, capturing the main elements of the story using puppets!

The Amethysts and the Sapphires have been continuing with their Project X books, working on fluency and reading with expression. This week, the Amethysts were tasked to write a letter to one of the characters in the book as another character; recalling key elements of the book and using effective language to set the correct tone of the letter.

The Sapphires have been recalling key elements of their story in a fun way by recalling and visualising a map of the scene and inputting information of what happened in each place.

We have had a great couple of weeks in p4b!

Maths and Numeracy 

Triangles

The triangles have finished their work on ‘time’ and have moved onto the topic of ‘measurement and capacity’. Here, we were learning about ml and l and how to read measurements from different containers. We are predicting which jug has the most water in it and testing our predictions to see whether we were correct!

Circles and Squares

We have now completed our topic on area and have moved onto multiplication. The Squares are also moving on to multiplication and have been exploring different concrete and pictorial strategies.

With Mrs Houston, the children have been making fabulous pieces of art using interesting adjectives to describe themselves!

Science

We have been finishing off our topic on inheritance. This week were were learning about genetic disorders and hearing stories from children who were born with different genetic conditions.

We competed the topic by working together in our tables to create a poster all about genes and inheritance. Each group then presented their poster and the children were encouraged to provide feedback in the form of two stars and a wish.

Social Studies

We have discussed as a class what we would like to learn for our next topic. After exploring the options and generating some great ideas, we have all decided on ‘The Oceans’ as our new Social Studies topic.

We have been busy bees in p4b this week!

Marvellous maths!

The squares have finished their topic on data handling. They had great fun today using excel on the iPads to make bar charts of their class survey.

The squares have also been learning about pictographs this week and have created some super examples, recording some inherited traits in the class.

The triangles have been focusing on time, converting from 12hr digital to and analogue. We have been exploring half past and quarter to and past. Today we were delving into am and pm as well.

The circles have been continuing with area this week. We have been looking at how to set out our area sum correctly and today we were exploring shapes which looked different but had equivalent areas. The children have also been creating a floor plan for their dream house and finding the area of each room.

Super Science.

In science this week, we have been looking at genetics and how we pass down our traits from parent to child in our DNA.

To explore this further, we conducted an experiment using three generations of gingerbread men with different coloured gumdrop buttons as an example. We explored how traits are passed down from our grandparents to our parents and then down to their children using coloured sticks to represent genes and DNA.

We were questioning why it is that siblings have the same parents but exhibit different inherited traits.

We learned that there is enough DNA in the human body to travel from the earth to the Sun and back 100 times!

Wonderful Writing.

In writing with Mrs Houston, we have been looking at paragraphing and describing words. We have written some fabulous pieces of work, describing our special person and how to identify a witch.

It has been an exciting few  weeks in the p4b classroom!

We have chosen ‘Inheritance’ as our new science topic. So far we have been learning about variation and adaption; exploring why birds adapt to have varying beak shapes in different environments. We conducted a science experiment using a range of ‘picking up’ tools to see how easy or hard it is for specific beak shapes to grab food of different sizes.

This week we have been learning more about variation in lizards and how they adapt to their environment; evolving over time. We split into two groups and drew the generation before, choosing one lizard in each group we believed had the most beneficial traits when confronted with a predator. We were all surprised at how different each groups’ lizards turned out!

So far in grammar have been recapping our verbs, adjectives, nouns and adverbs. We now know that an adverb describes a verb and can use them to make our writing more interesting! Today’s activity was to sort different word-types in pairs.

We have been writing about our special person, why they are our special person and using adjectives to describe what makes them wonderful!

We have also been reading ‘The Witches’ as our class novel and have made these spooky ‘Wanted’ posters using adjectives to describe how to spot a Witch.

In art, we have been drawing and painting birds with different beak shapes. Our classroom is starting to look very colourful with our cheeky birds and paper-chain vines and flowers!

In maths, we have finished our topics on fractions (Triangles), tessellation (Squares) and division with remainders (Circles).  We are now moving on to time, area and data handling.

In HWB be have been celebrating our individual traits with colourful hand prints, encouraging the children to think about Inherited vs acquired traits. We have also been looking forward into our year and setting goals for the future.

Welcome to our Class Blog!