October 9, 2024
by Mrs Sutherland
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Air Pollution Experiments!

Primary 5 have been learning about air pollution in our science lessons in preparation for our visit to the Science Centre. We have been conducting experiments to see how much pollution there is. In our first experiment we used food colouring to represent nitrogen dioxide, particular matter and sulphur dioxide and add drops of colour to a cup of water to see how polluted the water gets. Today we have made Air Pollution Catchers to see how much pollution we can catch around our school! Some of us have taken them home. It would be lovely to see the results of them on Google Classroom!

We can’t wait to see the results of the school ones tomorrow!

October 3, 2024
by Miss McKay
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Climate Ready Classrooms

Keep Scotland Beautiful organised a full day of events focusing on Climate Change.

We had a variety of activities to prompt discussion, make connections with our real life and develop our knowledge of the causes and effect of Climate Change. The workshops were led by experts through Teams Meeting and follow up activities and experiment was carried out in class.

September 28, 2024
by Mrs Sutherland
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Week 6 Round Up

On Monday we did P.E and we played a game where if we had our hand up we had to find someone else with their hand up then you would have to bring your hand down then you would have to find someone else with their hand down and so on and so on. It is called High Five Low Five!

Then on Tuesday, we drafted our Axolotl writing planning and learned more facts about Axolotls to make our writing really interesting. Mrs Sutherland said our descriptions were wonderful!

Mrs Shaw taught us PE, we created gymnastic routines to music and had great fun showing them off to the class!

In French, we started we learning how to describe our looks in French.

By Mikey and Ruby.

September 28, 2024
by Mrs Sutherland
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Week 7 Round Up and Maths Week Scotland!

P5 have had a busy week this week. In PE on Monday we were continuing to work on our fitness. We spent 1 minute at each station working as hard as we could then repeated the circuit to try to beat our own score. See the video for the HIIT exercises we were doing!

We started our plan to write a description of the animals we found when we were pond dipping! We played mental maths games counting up and down in 100’s to get to the target 4 digit number! We also enjoyed our Maths Week Scotland Activities!

We had a STEAM challenge based on the film ‘Inside Out’ to design and build a way to get the core memories from headquarters to the personality islands! We had great fun thinking about our plan, designing, building and decorating our contraptions!

We loved the ‘Maths in Stories’ tasks too! Playing Place Value Wars with a pack of cards was fun! Ask us how to play it at home!!

Enjoy the long weekend!

September 21, 2024
by Mrs Sutherland
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Week 6 -Pond Dipping Make Your Mark Experience!

On Friday morning, we went to the Dams to Darnley. We took part in pond dipping and also got to do orienteering around the park.
We saw lots of different types of trees with different shaped leaves on the walk and had great fun learning to read a map to find all 10 posts during orienteering. We managed to catch and identify lots different kinds of pond-life creatures such as newts, back swimmers, leeches and freshwater shrimps.
We had a great time.

September 15, 2024
by Mrs Sutherland
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Week 5 Round Up!

In RE, P5a were continuing to learn about traditional Celtic prayers this week. Our focus was on St Patrick’s Breastplate this week. It is a prayer asking God for protection, afterwards the class wrote their own prayers asking God for protection and thanking him for his love and guidance.

As part of our topic ‘Craigie to the Clyde’ and our learning about maps, p5 used the Ipads to explore Google Earth and create a journey along the River Clyde. They dropped pins all along the river from Greenock through the City of Glasgow. We loved seeing the 3D images of iconic landmarks such as the cruise ships in the port, the Riverside Museum and the Hydro.

We finished our Place Value topic in numeracy and Mrs Sutherland was so impressed with their speedy answers during the Topmarks ‘Daily 10’ quizzes. P5 are experts at comparing, ordering, writing and identifying the value of 4 digit numbers! P5 will be continuing to work on formal calculations and moving on to focus on mental calculations.

We took our learning outdoors on Friday searching for living, non-living and never been alive things in our playground. We identified a variety of objects such as feathers, berries, leaves, paper and the wooden play apparatus and had great conversations deciding how to categorise them. Ask the children at home what the 7 characteristics of livings things are! Hint…MRS GREN!

We are looking forward to Pond Dipping on Friday 20th September!

Mrs Sutherland.

September 6, 2024
by Mrs Sutherland
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Week 4 Learning!!

On Monday, we did some maths then we went out to the MUGA for PE then it was break time.

After break we did DLL, during DLL we were reading non-fiction books to tie in with our topic. The books we are reading are called ‘Ocean Alive’, ‘Under Water Treasure’ and ‘Living with Climate Change’.

On Tuesday we were learning about our topic ‘Life Below Water’ and we also learned on Friday that we will be learning about Scottish Landscapes particularly one which is very close to home….the Craigie!

During Outdoor Learning, we took part in a Scavenger Hunt locating the correct orienteering map symbol for features around the playground. We will be learning more about maps and using these new skills during further orienteering experiences.

Primary 5 have spent a lot of time celebrating in prayers with Fr. Joe this week. He visited us in class for confessions on Monday, he came into the school for our stage mass on Tuesday and on Friday we walked to Church for First Friday Mass which was Fr. Joe’s last mass at St John’s. We wish him lots of luck in his new parish in Port Glasgow.

Ruby announced to the whole school during Assembly that the Eco-Committee has a new name, they are now the Stewards of Creation. Ruby will continue to represent p5a in the Stewards of Creation Committee. Sarraa and April represented p5a in St Marks first ever Equalities Committee meeting on Wednesday and Mikey and Arham were successful at their interview to become P5a’s Digital Leaders. Well done to them all!

We’ve had a very busy week.

By Darcie, Zoe and Mrs Sutherland.

August 30, 2024
by Mrs Sutherland
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Week 3

Today for Outdoor Learning the children were challenged to create an orchestra / band with the loose parts!

The photos and videos speak for themselves!!

So much fun and creativity coming from such a musical class!!!

Well done p5!!

love, Mrs Sutherland.

August 23, 2024
by Mrs Sutherland
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23.08.24 End of the first full week of p5!

The boys and girls have settled well into p5 and enjoyed a busy full week in school.

This week they were learning to identify what kind of person they are by identifying their qualities and by helping a friend to identify their own qualities. We used the ‘animal me’ quiz on the My World of Work website. When we have our Google Classroom up and running I will share the quiz there for the children to try at home.

We have lots of kind, helpful, creative and funny children in the class.

The children enjoyed learning a new game to practice their times tables facts called ‘BAM!’ Ask them to explain how you play it!! If you want to make a version at home it involves eating a tube of Pringles and writing calculations on card or paper!!

In numeracy, the children have been revising formal calculations with Mrs Paterson discussing the expected layout and the way to complete these calculations.

The children have been developing their meta skills this week and also their ability to identify and name a time when they were using these skills in class too.
Such as ‘I was adapting when the obstacle course fell down’ (Eliza) ‘I was problem solving when completing a jig saw’ (Jordan) ‘I was being creative when building with Lego’ (Haider) and ‘I was developing my integrity by following the rules playing BAM’ (Darcie).

On Friday afternoon during Outdoor Learning, the children got drenched with a sudden down pour of rain!! Before this we were having great fun using the loose part to create obstacle courses for our friends or completing a scavenger hunt.

Keep up the great work p5a!

Have a great weekend!

Love, Mrs Sutherland.

August 16, 2024
by Mrs Sutherland
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First Week in Primary 5

On the first day of primary 5 we organised our classroom by making name labels with logos for our trays and our pegs. We also set up a STEM Station and have started to create a Calm Corner.

On our second day, we had mass with Father Joe in the hall to celebrate The Assumption of Mary. We had a game of Friendship Bingo to get to know more about Mrs Sutherland and our friends. After that we drew a self portrait.

On the third day, we did some Mental Maths to figure out a bit more about Mrs Sutherland then we created our own Figure Me Out calculations for others to learn more about us. We also finished our self portrait by adding in our hobbies and favourite things to show how we are all unique.

We listened to a story called ‘Soar’ by Hilary Daechar, it is a story about a hummingbird called Ramone who was too scared to fly. In the story his Mum helped him by supporting him and giving him a big hug. He was then feeling braver and able to fly at the end of the story. We learned we need to be resilient and to try everything in p5 and we know that Mrs Sutherland and Mrs Paterson will be there to support us. We set ourselves some personal goals for p5 and created our own unique hummingbirds to remind us of our goals.

We have had a busy and fun week.

by Lucy, Seth and Mrs Sutherland.

P5a 2024/2025

Mrs Paterson and Mrs Sutherland