Introduction

In this latest blog post, we will be recalling what has occurred over the past two months in Primary 7D. Let us begin with April…

April

In April, we did loads of intriguing things like the SNSA maths assessment, writing pieces, and comprehension tests on chrome books. We also started doing  Mandarin lessons, studying WWII with Mrs Morton (a student teacher who came to our class for 2 months) and we also started a new focus in PE which was gymnastics. We focused on stretching, used crash mats, developed our skills by participating at different stations and we also practiced our handstands, cartwheels, bridges and balancing skills. We also practiced for our Confirmation during this time, which was really important.

May

 At the start of may, the librarian and one of the English teachers from St. Ninian’s came to visit us and talked to us about the library and the English department. We received our free book that we chose at the beginning of the year! We also did stations with Mrs Morton to learn about electrons, and went over to the learning lodge to make closed circuits by using equipment that Ms Collins provided us with. Later on that week, the S1 year head from St. Ninian’s, Mrs Wilson, came and introduced herself to us. She answered lots of questions we had. The next week the campus police officer came to talk to us about social media and what he had done in the past in his job; this was interesting! Then, we had our induction days at the high school. Over the course of the two days, we did a bunch of things; these where the most memorable things we did: French, PSHE, English, PE, Science, and Mass. We also we had a tour round the school to become more familiar with the building.

Conclusion

Over the last two months, we have had an amazing time! We are looking forward to going off to high school in August and Lockerbie next week. We hope you enjoyed  reading our P7D blog.

– Written by Amber, Sai, Kirsty & Piper 😀

Welcome back everyone!

We are loving this new Spring-like weather, albeit still a little chilly!

This month, in Literacy, we have been focusing on punctuation, direct speech, confusing words and auxiliary verbs, in Grammar.

In Writing, our focus has been on story writing, using a narrative voice, to carefully and coherently communicate our imaginative ideas to tell a story. We also progressed to develop characters, using the 5 points of characterisation – physical appearance, inner thoughts, actions, reactions & speech – delving deeper than what may appear on the surface. This was fairly tricky at first but we worked extremely hard & have described some brilliant characters! This week, we will be tasked with writing another story, inspired by an unexplained image, which we will bring to life by incorporating another character description. This morning, as our grammar task, we took some more time to use a thesaurus effectively to locate synonyms to describe a character we had sketched, from head to toe!

In Maths, the Cones have made brilliant progress in their learning of data-handling, interpreting and drawing a range of charts and graphs, as well as collecting their own data to display. The Pyramids learnt about a range of shapes and their properties, as well as number patterns, and also touched upon pie charts recently. The Triangular Prisms have shown perseverance when focusing on a tricky new topic – mixed and improper fractions.

This week, we will be making our pitches to persuade our audience that our products are unbeatable! We are going to use persuasive language, visually engaging aids, as well as our presentation skills to communicate this. We have a classroom sensory experience, a safety detection watch, a pet home, amongst other innovative ideas on offer!

Last week, we had an impromptu debate in class focused on – ‘Which is more important: the heart or the brain?’ This was a tricky one as we presented convincing and valid points on both sides. It also linked in nicely with our Science learning about the vital organs. We then viewed the dissection of an animal heart, to see the arteries and vessels. This also led to a discussion about heart attacks, cardiovascular issues, how to keep our hearts healthy, and we even learnt how to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre, as well as CPR!

This week, as we have now finished our reading of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, we are going to watch the film together as a class; this will give us an opportunity to draw comparisons with the book. We have also been working on our Book Reviews, which we will share at the end of this week!

Finally, we are really looking forward to sharing our Expedition PowerPoint presentation with you this week! Keep an eye on Google Classroom for this!

Can you believe that is Term 2 almost over? We can’t believe it is the Easter holidays already. We hope everyone enjoys a wonderful, restful & well-deserved break when it comes!

🥚🐰🌼

Welcome back to our P7D blog for February’s update!

We are enjoying the lighter, brighter weather although it is very cold. This afternoon, we enjoyed some team games outside for P.E. and practised our ball skills, playing basketball.

We have had a busy February. We began another Engineering project, inspired by James Dyson, this time looking at various engineering disciplines, such as design, mechanical & civil types. We then analysed Dyson technology within certain products – the hair wrap & the Animal vacuum.  We even took apart one of its parts to look at it more closely & put it back together,  using effective team-working skills – this allowed us to see just how much goes into the creation of each and every piece developed. We then moved on to sketch our own products, adhering to our specific design brief and think about the materials, dimensions and costs involved in its production. Today, we calculated our profit margin, by researching manufacturing costs and came up with a suitable selling price, based on our competitors’ existing products. Many of us felt that our higher price points were justified, as our products have so much to offer! We are at the early stages of design and build – we will continue this tomorrow. We understand that the design/build process is iterative and constantly evolving. We also designated a ‘lead’ engineer to delegate responsibilities to ensure effective working in the time given.

Through this project, we are developing many of our meta-skills and are now more able to articulate these. For instance, we have been collaborating incredibly well, yet focusing and making sense of things on our own when this is required. We are becoming far more skilled at making judgements and taking initiative. Our communication with one another is also improving through these kinds of tasks and also our Expedition work, which has seen us create models, Canva presentations, a rap and videos. We are looking forward to sharing this learning with you at the end of March!

We thoroughly enjoyed our first visit as a class to St. Ninian’s yesterday. We all behaved exceptionally well and loved doing different activities in Design & Tech, Business etc… It was great to experience a ‘day-in-the-life’ experience of high school, as it’s only a few more months until we’ll be there full-time!

That’s all for now. We hope you enjoyed reading about what we’ve been up to. Speak to you soon!

Primary 7D & Mrs Fraser 🙂

Hello everyone!

Welcome back to another Primary 7D update! Here are a few of our highlights…

We have been reading The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, to explore the themes of innocence, ignorance, war, boundaries, family, friendship, complicity, and many more! We are looking forward to studying World War Two towards the end of the term as we have many questions we’d like to answer and issues we’d like to explore. For now, we are embarking on our learning expedition – Life Beyond Land – which will address our Big & Little Questions. We are really looking forward to this opportunity to lead our learning & apply many of our existing skills within different contexts, whilst also acquiring new knowledge and understanding. This will prepare us for high school, in terms of managing our time, resources, and following through processes to completion.

We have focused on the use of persuasive techniques within Writing lessons, using rhetorical questions, anecdotes, personal stories, facts/statistics, and supporting our assertions/opinions with reasons. Our Research Lab has come in handy here, as many of us often pop up to the back of the classroom to find out more to enhance our pieces. A couple of weeks ago, we wrote impressive pieces titled ‘If I Could Change the World’ – these focused on animal testing, discrimination i.e. racism, gender equality, climate awareness etc. We made many connections with the Sustainable Development Goals.

In Maths, we have been consolidating our understanding of a range of topics, including mean/mode/median/range, negative numbers, the four operations, patterns/sequences, shape, data-handling, word problems, compass points, and co-ordinates. The Triangular Prisms have been focusing on chance & uncertainty, whilst the Pyramids have been learning about Square/Triangular numbers and Fibonacci Sequences. The Cones have been using a formula to calculate the volume of cuboids.

We have been training hard with the Bikeability instructors to refresh our skills as it has been a while since we last practised, and prepare for our on-road sessions next week. Friday was an extremely busy day as we then followed this up with our trip to St. Ninian’s to participate in the Cluster Ceilidh event! This was lots of fun – please check out the photographs on Twitter.

We have also been rehearsing with Primary 7C for the Eurovision Contest this coming Friday, as we will be performing ‘This is Me’ in British Sign Language, French, English, Kannada, Hindi, Polish, Spanish & Italian! Mrs Fraser & Ms Clark have been BLOWN AWAY by the dedication and talent shown by both classes during these sessions. We can’t wait for the performance. Miss Ionta even popped her head in for a listen as she was passing by and was brought to tears!

Thank you for taking the time to read our post.

Primary 7D & Mrs Fraser😊

Hello everyone!

We have been working very hard in Primary 7D over the past month or so since we last updated you! Read on to find out exactly what we’ve been up to…

In Writing, we have been using fantastic persuasive techniques and emotive language to engage our reading, as we have produced adverts about our products & also Glasgow’s Southside, to attract tourists to the area! We have heard lots of brilliant examples of alliterative phrases, rhetorical questions, customer reviews, anecdotes and many more skills have been put to use! We first researched what our local area has to offer – finding information about local initiatives, cafes, art exhibitions, schools, accommodation & transport links to nearby areas. Next week, we will be writing a captivating Newspaper Report, focused on wildfires – watch this space!

Maths – The Triangular Prisms have been learning about bearings, scale, angles, negative numbers & money (the benefits, risks and features of debit/credit cards, as well as calculations of profit/loss); the Pyramids are focusing on working with larger numbers up to 1 million, having just spent time on converting in Length & Weight. The Cones are now learning about how to calculate time durations, having revised the format of analogue and digital clocks.

We have made excellent progress in Reading; we are now very skilled in creating literal, inferential & evaluative questions based on various texts we read.

Science – We are learning about the Water Cycle and will be doing an experiment to monitor these different processes over a period of time.

In PE, we have been practising various Scottish country dances in preparation for our Ceilidh in the Summer term; we have 8 dances to learn, so thought we had better start now! This has been lots of fun & difficult at times, but we are certainly getting there.

We are also looking forward to lots of Art activities in the remaining time before the holidays, as we are a very creative bunch.

As we move towards the end of term & further into the festive period, we would like to wish you all a VERY Merry Christmas indeed & the best wishes for the New Year. We are looking forward to spending some cosy, quality time with our loved ones during our time off & also coming back in 2023 to enjoy our last couple of months of primary school.

P.S. Thank you to all of you who attended our Advent Service on Friday morning – we are very proud of ourselves and hope you enjoyed! A great deal of rehearsing and attention to detail contributed to our performance; our teachers are extremely proud of us!

Primary 7D & Mrs Fraser 🎅🎄

Hello!

Welcome back to Primary 7D’s class blog for another update!

This past month, we have been learning about a host of different topics and acquiring brand new skills as well as developing existing skills. We took some time together to reflect on these past few weeks. Below are the key aspects that we have focused on although there is much, much more that we could share!

In the words of Humna, we have been ‘working very hard’ whilst exploring our novel – ‘The Boy at the Back of the Class’ – thinking deeply and making real-life connections. Ruary & Kaps – we have also been answering a range of different questions to develop our comprehension and also creating our own question literal, inferential and evaluative questions. We are doing a really brilliant job of this!

In Writing, our focus has been on developing our skills in imaginative & personal. Specifically, we have worked on describing and creating coherent stories. We are now moving on to Functional pieces & Poetry.

Eric – in Maths, the Triangular Prisms have been learning about time intervals and reading timetables to answer a range of questions. Kirsty –  the Pyramids have been working hard on fractions, decimals and percentages. Abeer – the Cones have practised the four operations,  rounding, and have now moved on to learn about multiples. As a class,  we have been creating calculations through ‘Noggle’, participating in Number Talks with the aim of improving our mental agility, and also solving a range of tricky problems.

Our IDL focuses on connections and differences between societies so we have been exploring Asia & Scotland in order to make these connections. Mrs Fraser can’t wait to hear all about our in-depth Asian country research through our projects!

Piper – we learned lots about different religions and saints through our Confirmation/Faith presentations. These were fantastic – well done to everyone who prepared so brilliantly!

Unnabh reminded us of our focus in Science, as we have been learning about the function of fertilisers. As part of our investigation, we have been monitoring the growth of our mini conifers within class to determine the effect of chemical, organic and a lack of fertiliser; a couple of our trees have an interesting name!

Aleezah – Up-levelling our sentences has been a real priority, to make them more interesting; we are now able to easily include similes, metaphors, personification and more sophisticated punctuation.

Hafsa – We completed our Art pieces focused on the use of Zentangle patterns and the One Point Perspective technique. It was a tricky process but we created some incredibly impressive pieces!

Nihal – We are learning about the role of a Design Engineer by looking closely at the development of Dyson products, and will be participating in a design project in the coming weeks; we are looking forward to this.

We are heading for the road in Bikeability next week – wish us luck!

Have a lovely weekend everyone,

Primary 7D 🙂

Hello everyone!

Welcome back to our P7D blog…

We have had a fantastic first couple of weeks back in school following the Summer holidays; we are thoroughly enjoying the new challenges and opportunities that come along with being a Primary 7!

The beginning of this year has focused on the consolidation of our understanding in Literacy and Maths. We have been practising up-levelling sentences using sophisticated punctuation, a variety of openers, connectives, and ambitious vocabulary; we have transferred this to our Writing pieces, as we have now written a brilliant reflective piece and also an imaginative story, where we used plenty of descriptive language to help our reader to visualise our ideas. Quite a few of us were awarded Star Writer for our effort! We will continue to develop our skills in Imaginative writing in the coming weeks. We have also explored the effectiveness of metaphors, similes and personification as techniques to enhance what we write. Our descriptive Jungle writing was outstanding! Here is a sample of our wonderful descriptive phrases:

‘If you listen closely, you can hear hundreds of birds, all colours of the rainbow, sing their songs as one.’ 

‘…stained my tongue the darkest blue imaginable.’

‘…the varieties of flowers; there’s one that stood out for me – the bird of paradise – green, long stems, orange petals out in fours, sticking out from the blue middle that’s pointing forwards.’ 

We have also been reading ‘The Boy at the Back of the Class’ – our class novel – to understand more about the refugee crisis and society.

In Maths, we have been learning about Place Value up to one million and beyond, playing multiplication BINGO, practising calculations involving the 4 operations, and revisiting a host of other mathematical concepts to make sure we have a strong foundation moving forward this year! We have also practised rounding and estimating numbers; calculating time durations; and many more topics!

In PE, we have been developing our fitness, endurance and ability to pace ourselves. In Science today, we learnt about the importance of variables in ensuring a fair investigation. We also decided that the continent we would like to study this term is Asia; this was put to a vote and it was a close call!

We are looking forward to the St. Cadoc’s Talent Show taking place on the 22nd September…

Thank you for taking the time to read our first blog post. We will report back soon!

Primary 7D 🙂