In literacy we have been learning how to become Thinking Readers by using different strategies to help us before, during and after reading. We’ve been reading a book called Rainforest Calling to help practice these strategies but to work on our prediction skills we watched a short animated clip called Hunted. A hunter caught a small person native to the jungle, but they managed to escape and we had to use clues from the video, as well as think about other stories and shows that the clip reminded us of, to work out what might happen next. ‘Skinny Jimmy’ managed to escape and draw the hunter that looked like a gorilla into his own cage and trap him. The last thing we saw in the clip was the hunter trapped in a cage with lots of native people gathered around him. We used our prediction skills to guess what might have happened next and we don’t think things are looking good for the hunter. 

In writing we’ve been focusing on persuasive essays this month but we also had a chance to write our own sea shanties too. It was good fun listening to some of the old songs and then trying to write our own. Afterwards, we danced along to ‘When I was one’, a sea shanty style song that had us jumping this way, that way, forwards and backwards over the Irish Sea. 

The 19th of May was National Numeracy Day and we celebrated in lots of different ways. We went outside for a numeracy lesson where we did a number of the day task with chalk in the playground. Then we measured the track with all sorts of equipment including metre sticks, tape measures, our feet and even our bodies. We also had a maze challenge where we had to use our directional language to guide a friend with their eyes shut along a winding path. It was really tricky to stay on the line and Ms O’Donnell gave us chalk so we could create our own and play at lunchtime too. 

Sports day was fun but wet, very wet. It was completely pouring down! The hurdle races were one of our favourites because it was like the running race but with an extra challenge. The sack race was fun but the handles were a bit hard to hold onto in the rain. Three people from our class made it into the P5 finals. It was really exciting and we all cheered loudly as they made our class proud. Well done!

In art we have learned about Steven Brown and responded to his colourful acrylic paintings of different animals. We worked hard to create our own drawings using pencils and crayons to make big blocks of colour and took our time to add in lots of detail too.

Today, we had a demonstration of some woodwind instruments. The instructors explained how they work and why they are called woodwind instruments (it’s because most of them use a wooden reed to make the noise). It was really interesting to hear all the different songs that could be played on these instruments, we even heard the theme from Harry Potter on the oboe! Some of us may be lucky enough to learn some of these fantastic instruments next year. Next week, there will be a demonstration of brass instruments which we’re looking forward to and we’ll let you know how that goes in our next blog. 

Thanks for reading our blog!
P5a