Cracking spell of weather as we write this, makes all the difference. Long may it continue! The time since Easter has gone like a flash and we only really have 3 weeks really to go until the summer holidays with P6 (yes, Primary 6!) beckoning. We’ve been working hard as usual, Fractions, Decimals, poetry, ‘Narnia’, Mandarin, apostrophes, and so on, but we’ve also got quite a few different things to tell you about with plenty of pictures.

When we came back from Easter we had a 2 week Science focus, for us it was all about chemical reactions. It was interesting to think about where we just see changes of state and where we see an actual chemical reaction with new materials being formed. We performed a fun experiment in class with a surgical glove! Continuing on the STEAM theme we grabbed some cardboard and had a rare time building some imaginative creations with ‘Makedo’ tools. We also did some ‘SCRATCH’ coding and had a play about with some SPHEROS. We really enjoy this sort of thing and it’s amazing how you can learn by just diving in and having a go.

We then started our new mini-Expedition, ‘What Matters to Me’. Same idea as the last one where we take control. We’ve come up with topics such as family, religion, our future, the planet, being healthy and so on. We’re still going with all of that. Connected with these topics, we also celebrated Earth Day by considering the challenges our planet faces. We sent off our Lenten ‘Do Without Day’ contributions to SCIAF and said a Rosary decade a day for specific intentions throughout the month of May using our rosary beads. Sarah, Ezinne and Oscar also helped Miss Hillhouse with the Rosary club. The school’s had the communions and confirmation too, where some of us went along to support our families.

Heading outside, we’ve had a go at building some cairns (Burnsy’s lost the pics), undertook another community litter pick, concentrating heavily on the immediate area surrounding the school (some difference we made and it’s not school litter), built some dwellings for our favourite cuddly toys and also hijacked a crashmat during PE!

The St Cadoc’s Cup has been and gone, Declan made the final and we all enjoyed going round the classes each morning with the fixture sheet. Mr Burns gets his lunchtimes back now, we’re happy, less grumpy in the afternoon now hopefully. We also had the Spring Disco (so loud!), again Mr Burns couldn’t get his iPad working for photos and videos. We enjoyed our mini-World of Work week, just in our own class, where we talked about different jobs, interviewed people at home, considered the difference between skills and qualities and what ones we had and what ones we would like. Thanks to Sarah’s dad and Ryan’s mum for managing to come in and talk to us about their jobs.

That’s about it, a quick-fire stop of the variety of school. We also welcomed Zach to the class in the last week or so.

A whirlwind 3 weeks or so to come and then we’re all yours for 7 weeks! Are you excited? We are!

Bye for now

P5B boys and girls

p.s. we mentioned the Stations of the Cross on the last blog – some photos in here from there.

 

Recent signs of a change in the weather, can at least now justify having the heating off folks. Just a quick update this month as, quite frankly, the holidays are calling and we’re exhausted from being so busy and working so hard. Hope you have some good times planned for us over the holidays???

Our Life Beyond Land Expedition has been a major focus for us since our last blog, resulting in it being a huge success. Our classroom has never looked so good, even our wall display outside. Mr Burns has said that he can’t remember any of his classrooms over the years looking so good and so full of varied pupil work. We’ve had lots of nice comments from other people too in the last few days. Well done us! We’ll not labour what we’ve been up to on here as we’ve got a bit of homework to do with you on the subject – but enjoy the photos. Oh that’s right we even got a play put on for us in the gym hall which was certainly different! Maya the Whale it was called – guest starring Umair D as Maya!

Being Lent, we’ve continued well with our Do Without Wednesdays for SCIAF. We don’t have a total yet as some people will hopefully continue during Holy Week (next week) and bring the money in after the Easter holidays, but we’ll let you know – been bringing in our home Wee Boxes too. We’ve also being doing a bit of Mission Mile, running / walking a mile a day in recognition of those that have to travel quite a distance each day just to get an education. We’ve been talking about forgiveness, the need to be nice to each other, the need to love each other, the Passion of Christ, Easter itself and we’re all set up to do Stations of the Cross outside (like last year) with Canon Eddie today. We’re set up for the Easter celebration in just over a week’s time! Eid too, with some fasting going on in here during Ramadan. Good for you.

We also recognised a couple of other charities in March – it was Down Syndrome Day on the 21st March and Sarah delivered a wee presentation so that we could learn a wee bit more about it. Some us wore odd socks to mark the occasion. We also had an input from Eczema Outreach Support which raised our awareness of the challenges young people with eczema face.

Venturing outside, we got involved in more litter collecting having watched a Keep Scotland Beautiful series of online lessons – hate litter. We also did a bit of Road Safety, going out and about investigating Pelican Crossings, Zebra Crossings and even Puffin Crossings! Quite a few representatives in the school cross country team too (Michael, Ryan, Lola and Maria), well done to them.

Ok, must dash, Mr Burns has got his coat on. Happy Easter to all is what he’s saying

P5B boys and girls

 

 

 

Hello again. Start off with a quick update on the Eurovision contest that we mentioned last time – we didn’t win! However, we did have a lot of fun and we were proud that we did it on our own (and in our own way), just our class together, and that we sang the whole song in Spanish. Mr Burns has put the video on Google Classroom for us to show you. Another highlight was the Science Centre trip, and not just because we got to lose Burnsy for the first couple of hours (and got Mrs Burns instead!), but we’ve not had too many trips (Covid etc) so that was good and the Science Centre itself was great fun, dare we say educational and interesting too. We never lost anyone either which was good, if not surprising.

Lent has started and you know that some of us are trying to do ‘Do Without Wednesdays’ – basically do without a snack at first break on the Wednesdays (fasting) and also where possible to give the money the snack would have cost to our class SCIAF Wee Box (almsgiving). We’re trying to say even more prayers during Lent, praying being the third focus, and of course we have our own Lenten promises which we are trying just to keep to ourselves. We had Ashes in school on Ash Wednesday whilst watching P4 and P6 at church with Canon Eddie and the congregation.

We’ve been Outdoors three times since last speaking, there are pictures from 2 of them as the weather wasn’t fantastic one week – Mr Burns was too busy hiding under a tree. We had a go at estimating then measuring and seeing how our estimates matched up, both length and weight. Then the next week we had a go at bigger distances with the trundle wheel, we even talked about speed as a result of our discussions. Just the other day we got Gabriel & Co’s bath toys out (rubber ducks) and made some bird nests. They worked out very well as you can see – didn’t quite realise that there are so many different types of bird nest styles. Rugby during P.E. currently, can’t wait (neither can Mr Burns by the sounds of things) for the full contact week that he keeps talking about……………

We mentioned our Learning Expedition last time as well and that is going well, we’ve changed a few things as we’ve gone along which is good – adapting to the situation. We don‘t want to give too much away as we’ll be filling you in more on it all at the end of March just before the Easter holidays. Other notable things in class is that during Maths we have been focusing on all aspects of Time whilst also being involved in a set of lesson on Financial Skills provided by Barclays – we’re halfway through that and it’s good talking about real life and the sort of decisions that will be coming our way. We’ve also been practising our diary writing skills over the last few weeks, focusing on a more informal style, whilst still being technically correct and entertaining. One of the diary entries was ‘Our First Day at School’ which invited all these excellent photographic contributions which Mr Burns has put together and put up in our classroom.

That’s about it in terms of being newsworthy other than having some major league thinkers on World Thinking Day and also wearing yellow in support of Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week.

Feel free to leave a wee comment as usual.

P5B

Thank goodness for that, not huge fans of January. February’s a shorty as well, with a holiday in there, so before you know it we’ll be in March! We’re longing for longer days, the warmer climes, the hope of better things to come …….. Been busy at school, as ever, just getting the head down and working hard. Couple of things hanging over from Christmas to tell you about though….

We were pleased to send off the £75 raised through our Missio Christmas Baubles, we’ll be back on the fundraising path for SCIAF for Lent – it’s not that far away. It was also cool to complete Sarah’s Advent calendar over the course of December. Our Glee Club participants did us proud, we were delighted to see them all perform during the last week – they were super. We had some fun doing some Nativity Drama the first week back. We were supposed to take our performances to Outdoor Learning but the weather beat us – we headed over to the Learning Lodge instead. We all did very well with our World Cup project and congratulations to Umair Z who won ‘the sweep’. A few of us took part in a Maths Challenge, which we did well in too, something a wee bit different.

The major thing of note in January has been this ‘Learning Expedition’ thing that you may have heard about. Basically all classes in the school have been given the topic, ‘Life Beyond Land’. A wide topic indeed with lots of different possibilities. The idea is that we, the pupils (in each class), decide where to take it, follow our own interests, our questions. At the same time, and presumably under the direction of him, show off different skills, different tasks, cover different areas of the curriculum. It’s early days and the first time we’ve done it but it’s quite exciting. We’ve come up with 4 Big Questions that we’re going to investigate before Easter, the first one being: ‘What are some of the traits / characteristics / workings / features of the living things found in our waters?’ We then came up with about fifty little questions that we were going to answer in our small groups. These might lead to new questions and so on…… At the same time we’ve come up with all these different tasks, involving the different curricular areas, that we could complete to show the learning taking place. A new way of working at certain times during the week, but initial thoughts are that we like it.

Not a huge amount else to report in the 3 weeks or so that we’ve been back. We are currently in the middle of Languages Week where we’ve tried out a French tongue twister (and Lily’s mum and dad taught her a couple in Mandarin). We’ve also been practising hard for this coming Friday’s ‘St Cadoc’s does Eurovision’ contest. Mr Burns wanted us to learn some sort of Gypsy Kings song, Bamboleo??? From 1988?!? We said no and opted for Un Poco Loco from Coco. We’ve had a laugh, and should be a laugh on Friday, and tried hard so that’s the main thing. We’ve had an interesting few weeks during Writing where we did three Persuasive Letters – the first one was with Mr Burns – a letter to Andy Robertson to try and get him to come and coach us. The second one, Mr Burns was involved a bit, but we had homework research to do on the cost of living crisis and then write to Nicola Sturgeon to do something about it. We wrote most of that ourselves having been told what a persuasive letter should contain the previous time. Then the third letter was entirely our own choice – further practise at the persuasive skills learned. So, watch out mum and dad! Here I come for that puppy I want, fully armed with a host of persuasive techniques. Did you know that you are the best parents in the world and I love you dearly? We also took part in an online lesson, carrying on from our litter collection week, about an organisation based on picking up litter whilst out walking dogs. Quite a simple idea but an inspirational lady. We managed some raft building at Outdoor Learning and whilst, as you can see from the photo of the girls, we do P.E. in all weathers, we were confined to barracks once and got involved in some crazy dancing. That’s about it for now, nice to catch up!

P5B

Lots to report since our last blog and lots of pictures to share. Thanks for the comments to the blog last time too!

During November the school had a focus on Health and Wellbeing where we came up with some Big Questions and tried to answer them, it was interesting for instance, although a bit complicated, to learn how ibuprofen works in our body – we got the gist though. There was also a Daily Mile at 8.30am on a Wednesday and Friday, lots of us managed that – even Old Man Burns made it out every time! Seriously though, Mr Burns said he was proud of us because we were by far the class with the most people taking part on a regular basis. It’s actually a really good way to start the day and we know that we can have a wee jog in the morning without it being officially organised. There was also a ‘Move it Monday’ exercise class with Miss Ionta in the MUGA with the rest of P5 and P6 which was fun and again a great start to the week – I think that’s why Mr Burns has P.E. on a Monday morning, to get the week going. Obviously the best bit though, about Health Month, was the Ninja Challenge! What a great way to learn, wish we could do that every day. I’m sure we’ve told you about it already and the multitude of pictures speak for themselves so we’ll move on.

It was our turn a couple of weeks again to try and do a community litter pick, as part of being a Laudato Si school – being more aware of our stewardship of our planet. We’re used to taking a turn at litter picking at school (unfortunately it’s still needed at times) but we hadn’t been out and about before with the class. So, with the help of Sarah’s mum, we headed up to Fairweather Park. It was a bit sad because there was so much litter in parts, but there’s no point in being sad, you just have to roll up your sleeves and do something about it and then hopefully being a role model will educate and rub off on people. We managed outside 4 times out of 5 that week and again it felt good, and extremely worthwhile, to do something for others, our school and community.

Catholic Education Week (well fortnight) was from 16^th November, the feast of St Margaret of Scotland, until St Andrew’s feast on 30^th November. Some of us kick-started it on the evening of the 15^th November with the St Ninian’s Cluster Mass at St Joseph’s church. Mr Burns had never been before to that particular celebration, but he’s now saying that he would try and never miss it in the future because it was so good, lots of St Ninian’s pupils (ex-St Cadoc’s) were there, and all the other feeder schools too, the St Ninian’s music department, Isobel Mair, you name it! He was getting all emotional again, as he does, saying that it was good to be part of something bigger and that it was also good sometimes just to step back from your daily life tunnel vision and have a look around. He kept going, but we switched off…….. There was also a St Cadoc’s Sunday mass in the middle of the fortnight which was well attended too. In class we made invites to this mass, we also made little churches, and other places of worship, out of envelopes and lollipop sticks – they were quite cute. We got a visit from Stephen of AGAP, Archdiocese of Glasgow Arts Project, inviting us to become the next superhero! We signed off CEW with some St Andrew’s celebrations in school thanks to our resident piper Mr McLaughlin. Oh, we also remembered every day in November all the Holy Souls and, in particular, those on the class November List.

This leads us nicely to our Advent preparations. We had the crib up nice and early, we’ve done well with the school Advent collections and also Mr Burns’ class does a Missio Bauble appeal – we’re nearly there with that too, one last push. Mr Burns has got some extra money to put to that from the staff World Cup Sweep. We did a sweep in class too, minus the money of course, which has made the World Cup even more exciting. We’ll see who wins the prize very soon! (Argentina v France – Umair Z v Menaal). We have been trying to concentrate just on preparing for Christmas but sometimes you just can’t help getting right in there! The Christmas Fair, Beat the Goalie and all, has been and we made Christmas springy things which were cool! We’ve also had Christmas / Cosy Jumper Day, Christmas Lunch and the Panto too! – can’t believe there’s still another week to go!!!!! Aaaaarrrrgggghhhh!

Talking about the World Cup we had a bit of fun, not to mention setting aside normal homework for 2 weeks, doing some tasks of our own choosing. We’ll have more to say and show next time. Obviously, we’ve been squeezing lots of schoolwork in as well. In Maths, between us we’ve covered some Data Handling, Weight (especially estimating everyday items), Area and Perimeter, Multiplication and Division, Symmetry, Function Machines and Basic Equations, Compass Points and Angles and a bit of Place Value, not to mention working on our Problem Solving and mental strategies every day. In Language, our Reading Books have given us a wee opportunity at non-fiction and we’ve also been practising our Reading Strategies, in particular predicting and identifying similarities and differences. In Writing we’ve done some non-chronological reports and instructions, it was good to do a second one each time based on what we wanted to write about. We signed up for a Biodiversity live lesson in Science, we’ve played a bit of netball during P.E. and our RRS Ambassadors also ventured around the school with an Anti-Bullying message. Lots of other stuff but here’s a flavour – hope you enjoy!

Merry Christmas!

p.s. Mr Burns says thank you very much for his gift

p.p.s. we also welcomed 3 new pupils to the class but they didn’t hang around

Where does the time go? Maybe there is something in, ‘time flies when you’re enjoying yourself’, however we do think that ‘enjoying’, in the context of school, is a little bit too much! Lots of us managed to get away for the October Week, some even to foreign shores, which helped to recharge the batteries for the next couple of months ahead.

After our last blog, telling of all our routines etc. that we’d put in place, we’ve noticed being a lot busier. With school work it has to be said, but that can be fun too as we’ve found out – fill you in on that later. However, there’s also been many other things happening as well (we do know we’re learning then too though! But definitely more fun!). We enjoyed St Cadoc’s feast day which remember has moved to September from January! A nice prayer service in class and then a fun Talent Show in the gym hall was how we celebrated. We held our auditions in the classroom and lots of people got involved – our class certainly has talent. We also enjoyed Maths Week Scotland, where we were lucky to be visited by Sarah’s mum (and Adam’s) – that was great fun, as well as really interesting, as you can see. That week we also did a few Maths Art activities and explored 2D and 3D shape. Much of our Outdoor Learning this year has been centred on Maths and in particular symmetry. We’ve also had Crazy Hair Day, the Danceathon (raising money for the school, for us really) and the Halloween Disco – like we said, busy busy with lots of variety too. It’s good to get these ‘normal’ things back Mr Burns says after the last few years.

In terms of ‘humdrum’ school life in Maths some of us have been practising our Multiplication and Division whilst others have been exploring Length – drawing, estimating, measuring and converting. Perimeter and Area following on from this. There’s some weight, data analysis and angles coming our way we’ve been told. In Language we’ve been doing some poetry, parts of speech in grammar, some punctuation and sentence practising (we know Mr Burns mentioned that to quite a few of you during the parents’ nights) and a focus on handwriting and general good presentation of all our jotters. Sounds like Mr Burns is not going to let that go so we better just do as he says. We’ve also been doing our usual comprehension / reading strategies with a focus on inference. We understand what Mr Burns is going on about with inference, but it can be tricky at times to write down examples of it when we’re reading. We’ll keep talking about it. In French we’re aiming to build up to basic conversations so watch this space – fluent in no time. October has been the month of the Rosary so we managed to say both the Joyful and Sorrowful Mysteries and each time one of us got to pick (randomly) for the particular intention of that decade – from memory we had Grandparents, siblings, family as a whole, climate change, Ukraine, World Peace, the faithful departed and the homeless. Umair brought in his prayer beads too which was a good reminder of the similarities between different faiths. We’ve also observed some feast days, such as St Francis (Mr Burns’ favourite for some reason – weird because he doesn’t seem to be an animal lover) and St Jude – the patron saint of Hopeless Cases (another one of Mr Burns’ favourites, useful he says to call upon from time to time). We’re off to St Cadoc’s Church on Tuesday for All Saints so we’re looking forward to that. Diwali has been also so we shared that major Festival with each other. Our Scottish Inventions homework was great, some excellent displays created in school and we enjoyed listening to those that prepared a presentation. We’ve moved onto some Scottish myths and legends now – we thought that the best one (or most unbelievable one) was that Mr Burns was a good teacher…………. In Science we’ve been talking about Classification, mammals, reptiles, amphibians etc and in P.E, a bit of netball / basket ball coupled with fitness games.

That’s about it for now, but before we go a well done to our RRS Ambassadors, Abdurrehman says, “Hi!” and have a go on Sarah’s swing when next passing the MUGA.  Speak again next month. Having fun here and learning. Enjoy the pictures of much of what we’ve mentioned, Mickey too! Thanks.

Yours

 

Time has flown – it’s been a month now since we’ve been back. Well, at least, some of us have  been back a month, Mr Burns decided that the seven weeks during summer wasn’t enough and took another week off – I suppose he’s not getting any younger and needs the rest. He’ll certainly need more of it by the time we’re finished with him, not to mention his domestic situation. Anyway, although we know each other pretty well already from over the last few years we spent a bit of time at the start making sure that everyone was comfortable with their new class through some games and activities. We’ve also been getting to know Mr Burns, Gabriel, Florence and Genevieve too, and his ways. (He keeps mentioning that his wife Mrs Burns works at the school too but we don’t remember her, someone had a vague recollection from over three years ago but that was it). We like the Peak of the Week treasure chest, which is now based on the presentation of our jotters (he goes on and on about that, but we know he just wants us to be proud of what we produce), his Friday raffle and his birthday routine especially. We’ve had quite a few birthdays already, including Our Lady’s, and it was especially interesting to hear from Mr Burns where he gets his £1 coins from………….

We’ve also spent a bit of time of setting up the classroom and routines. We have an Achievement Wall (which can be light-hearted) which is designed to celebrate achievements in school and at home. Our Class Charter has been made and agreed and our Google Classroom for homework is up and running.

In terms of work, we’re right back into the swing of things. We’ve written a couple of personal stories (favourite gift, best holiday), a friendship poem and now we’ve moved on to some imaginative writing. We’ve also been practising our reading strategies – understanding words, finding information and identifying the main idea. The focus in grammar has been nouns, adjectives and the different verb tenses and the different ways of saying these. In Maths we all spent some time at the start doing calculations surrounding the four operations. Then some of us focused a wee bit more on adding and subtracting (including thousands), some of us on multiplication calculations and others on basic equations and BODMAS. We all listen to everything and we all spend quite a lot of time practising our mention and problem solving strategies. Mr Burns has set a challenge for us all to improve our multiplication tables. In R.E. we’ve talked about being a Laudato Si school, the need for vocations, Our Lady’s birthday (as mentioned), learned Mr Burns’ morning prayer and listed the twelve apostles whilst talking about the difference between a disciple and an apostle. Our topic has been chosen based on Scottish history – we came up with a hit list on what we would like to learn about. We started with famous Scottish inventions, quite cool what Scotland has come up with, major inventions like the television and telephone – the first flushing toilet too! In P.E. our focus is Fitness for now, but we’ve managed to incorporate that into some games. Outdoor Learning has started too and on the very first day of that we headed to the Muddy Movers area which was great fun.

Lots of hard work to come now Mr Burns says, but in a fun way too we’re sure. He wants us to do our best, give the best account of ourselves. We will.

Speak soon.

P5b girls and boys

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