Welcome back to our February blog! We can’t wait to share with you all the things that we have been learning this month!

Maths

During maths lessons the Hexagons have been learning about symmetry, the Triangles have been learning about decimals, the Squares were working on converting units of measurement and the Circles have been learning about using scale. We have also been doing lots of work on Financial Education and have been learning about how to budget and save money. During Outdoor Learning lessons we have been learning about angles in the real world and how to use our knowledge of measurement to make estimations.

Literacy

During writing lessons, we have been learning how to write a biography and an autobiography. We loved speaking to someone in our family and learning about their life. We have also been writing evacuee letters linked to our topic.

WW2

We are absolutely loving our new topic World War Two. We have been learning about rationing, evacuations, the Blitz and propaganda. This is also linked to our novel study ‘The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas’. We have been discussing the characters and setting of the story and have been making predictions about each chapter.

Expressive Arts

For art we have been continuing to work on line drawings. We created drawings of eyes focusing on shade and tone. We have also began drama and have been learning how to create a script and have been practising to perform to the class.

Technology 

During design technology lessons we have been creating a new product. We had to think of something unique and research how much materials etc would cost. We used the Chromebooks to research and create logos for our company names and product names. We watched Dragons Den for inspiration and will be presenting our work to the rest of the class.

RE

During RE lessons we have been continuing to prepare for our Confirmation. We have been learning about the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Fruits of the Holy Spirit.

Thank you for taking the time to read our blog! We can’t wait to share everything we have learned with you next month!

Miss Igoe and Primary 7A 🙂

Our new Social Studies topic is World War 2. We each picked a famous leader from World War 2 to research during ICT time and wrote a fact file about them. For example; Joseph Stalin,  Churchill, Neville Chamberlain . We also learned the first bit of the timeline of the World War 2 and used an atlas to locate key areas of Europe on a map.

For Robert Burns  day we drew line drawings of Tea Cakes  and Irn Bru. We also luckily got to do a author livestream with the creators of Hag Storm and Black Water. Mrs Cameron made shortbread with us and then we ate them and they were delicious!! (thank you Mrs Cameron!!!!)

For writing we have been learning how to write a balanced argument and we did a debate about if mobiles phones should be banned for schools, if you had to wear school uniform and if children should be allowed fast food. The judge decided who won each debate.

For outdoor learning we made maps of the forest and made coordinates and followed the map that you and your partner made facing North.

We had our Enrolment Service with Cannon Eddie as we will be making the Sacrament of Confirmation soon and we sang hymns.  Thank you Canon Eddie.

For Science our new topic is the solar system and we made an informative poster about a planet of our choice such as Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, Earth, Saturn, Uranus or  Mercury.

For all World Religions week some of us brought in things to show the class about our religions. We also learnt about Judaism and researched religions around the world.

For maths The Circles used compasses to draw circles with a specific radius and diameter. The Squares did measuring angles with protractors. The Triangles were working with fractions and how to use them. Last but not least The Hexagons were working on multiplication and division and how to solve questions including them.

We hope you have enjoyed reading our January blog and we look forward to posting next month!

Primary 7a 😁

This month has been a very exciting  month for P7A as a lot has been happening.

Yesterday we had our Christmas fun day and the whole school had a great time with the reindeer, bouncy castle, hot chocolate and fun activities in the hall. We also are preparing our Advent assembly which will be available for all of the parents to watch. We also made little Christmas tree decorations to sell at our Christmas fayre. We raised a lot money for the school.

During RE lessons have been working on our Confirmation/Faith Power Points and presenting them to the class, we also are doing our Confirmation/Faith posters. We wrote a letter to Bishop John explaining the reasons for choosing our Saints.

In Maths the Circles and Squares have been working on calculating distance, speed and time. The Triangles have been learning about calculating time and 12/24 hour clock. As always we have been loving active maths and problem solving.

As November is the Month of Remembrance, we had a service from Canon Eddie and remembered all those who we love that we have lost.

In the forest, we had to design and build a raft and then see if it would float down the stream. We loved this task and had so much fun!

We hope you have enjoyed reading our November blog, tune in next time to see what we get up to in December!

Miss Igoe and P7A 🙂

Welcome to our P7A October blog!

This month in Maths, The Circles have been doing data handling. The Squares have been learning about time and The Triangles have been learning about addition and subtraction and data handling.

For PE, we walked to Parklands to take part in a Judo taster session. We learned some Judo moves and Japanese words, we all had so much fun. During PE lessons we have also been learning about how to be a great leader by training to help the Primary 1s during their break time. We have started learning the basic steps on how to be a great leader and we look forward to learning more.

For R.E. we are currently creating Confirmation PowerPoints about our chosen Saints. It is also the Month of Mary (October). We wrote prayers to Mary and learned how to pray the Rosary.

In Health and Well-being, we are doing social media safety posters and leaflets. We also learned what to do in different scenarios, such as if someone got a scam call and if a random person asked to meet up somewhere. We discussed the importance of always speaking to an adult if we are concerned about something we have seen online.

For our Japan topic we wrote tanka poems , they have 5 syllables in the first line and 7 syllables in the second line, the third line has 5 syllables too and the last 2 lines have 7 syllables each.

During story writing we have been trying to improve our use of descriptive language. We created Halloween spooky characters and used figurative language such as similes, metaphors and hyperbole to describe their appearance and personalities. We also drew some scary Halloween pictures.

Thank you for reading our blog, we look forward to sharing more of our learning next month 😁

Miss Igoe and Primary 7a x

Hello everyone,

This month we met our P2 buddies. We had so much fun with them and they have so much energy!!! We can’t wait to help them during their second year of school. We wrote letters to our buddies to introduce ourselves.

We also did the Cycle to India Challenge and all of the laps the school did, amounted to the distance it is from Scotland to India. Our class did 336 laps and we had loads of fun cycling, scooting, walking and running.

We have loved beginning our artist study. We have been learning about Roy Lichtenstein and Pop Art. We know that Pop Art using onomatopoeia words and bright colours. We have some pictures down below.

For Outdoor Learning this month we did a scavenger hunt and we had so much fun doing them 😃. We had to find things in the forest that began with all the letters of the alphabet.

Every Friday we do Science with Mr Morrison and we are learning about liquids , solids and gases. We learnt about what the molecules look like as a liquid , solid or gas. We also learned about the viscosity of liquids. We have fun learning about science!

This week is Maths Week Scotland and we had a visitor from EMTEC Energy to talk about climate change and fossil fuels. It was very interesting to listen to someone so passionate about trying to change the earth. We then made posters about how the world will look when we switch to only using Renewable Energy Sources. We also discussed why Maths is important in the wider world and what jobs use Maths.

We also enjoy our weekly problem solving when we get to work in groups to solve different maths problems.

We can’t wait to share our learning with you next month in October!
Miss Igoe and Primary 7a 😁

Hello everybody !!!

We have loved our first few days of P7A and we have learnt so much already.

We have voted on our new topic…..JAPAN!!!!     We have started on our KWL chart and we will go back and fill in everything that we have learned about Japan at the end of the topic. Everyone is so excited about our new topic. Some of us are excited about learning a new language some of us want to know the history of Japan and some of us are more interested in anime or food.

We are extremely excited for our new buddies because we did not get them last year. We also did some fun art on a brain template when we were learning about having a growth mindset. We are all very excited for our trips throughout the year such as Lockerbie and going to a football match.

We also did some interesting writing called All About Me which showed what we liked to do and what we don’t like , we also wrote about how old we are and when our birthdays are.

We also have a new teacher called Mr Morrison who comes on Fridays and does Science and P.E. with us. He is also really nice and smart. He is like Sherlock Holmes!

We are so looking forward to the year ahead and will share more about our learning next month!

P7A and Miss Igoe 🙂

May Blog

Hello parents and carers of P6a 🙂

The children have been working really hard throughout the month of May and maintained an excellent level of effort during their isolation period earlier in the month. Mrs. Glancey was very impressed with their efforts and delighted with the level of enthusiasm and commitment that the children demonstrated while temporarily learning at home. Well done, everyone!

Numeracy

The children are still enjoying playing Maths games regularly to develop their mental agility. They learned a new game this term called ‘Giants’, in which two children go head to head and the triumphant of the two takes on another classmate. This has been a great addition to other games such as Corners, Killer 11 and Champions Chair.

Over the last four weeks, the children have covered a variety of topics in Maths. The Circles worked specifically with decimal fractions, with a focus on numbers with up to three decimal places. They have developed a number of skills, including: explaining the link between a digit and its place value; converting decimals to fractions; ordering and sequencing decimals; adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing decimals to three decimal places; and using a rule to multiply and divide decimal numbers by 10, 100 or 1000 mentally. The children have only this week moved on to looking at percentages and understanding the link between fractions, decimals and percentages.

The Squares recently completed a block on algebra, during which they were challenged on how to solve algebraic equations with one variable. They now understand that letters and symbols can represent numbers and can explain the process that must be followed to simplify algebraic expressions. We drew comparisons between algebra being similar to function machines and that sometimes, we have to work out way backwards through a problem to solve it. They did some really excellent work, so well done, boys and girls! The Squares have moved onto studying angle, symmetry and formation, looking specifically at co-ordinates and how to locate and plot these on a grid.

The Triangles have just completed a block on number processes, carrying out revision of the four operations using large numbers up to ten thousands. They worked really hard on this and demonstrated that they have made excellent progress in this area over the course of the year. The children will now be moving on to looking at time, starting with 12 hour and moving onto both 12 and 24 hour notation. Other skills that they will develop will be converting between 12 and 24 hour time, calculating durations and reading timetables.

Literacy

The children have been enjoying their new school reading books and have kept up with their reading even during our time in self-isolation. The Comets are almost finished a book called ‘Space Holidays and Other Freaky Futures’, learning about some interesting inventions and predictions for the future. The Cores have been reading a book called ‘Animal Conflicts’, which looks closely at different animals and ways in which they protect themselves against predators. Even Mrs. Glancey has learned some new fun facts! The Satellites have been reading a book called ‘Stage Fright’, which is all about performing. We have still been going to the library each week and the children have been enjoying selecting texts of their choice for private reading.

For writing, the children have been working on a mixture of reflective, creative, personal and informative pieces of writing. One week, they were given a stimulus and asked to create their own imaginative stories, which Mrs. Glancey really enjoyed reading. Another week, the children completed diary entries from the perspective of a child survivor from the Chernobyl disaster. We learned a little bit about Chernobyl as part of our study on sustainability and so this was a popular lesson. The children came up with some excellent ideas! Another task that the children completed was information posters about a non-violent resistance activist to tie in with their focus on Rights Respecting Schools this term. They could choose between Malala Yousafzai, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi or Greta Thunberg. There were some really wonderful pieces of work generated from this task!

RE

We have now finished our study of Counsel, the sixth gift of the Holy Spirit that features within our Pope Francis Faith Award and focuses on knowing the difference between right and wrong. Throughout Primary 6 so far, the children have also reflected upon Knowledge, Piety, Wisdom, Fortitude and Fear of the Lord, identifying ways that they have used these gifts in scenarios at home, school or their place of worship. Before the end of term, we will be moving on to the last of the gifts, which is Understanding. In addition to the Pope Francis Faith Award, we have been learning about the Feast of Pentecost this week.

PE

In PE, we have continued our block of tennis, practising skills like forehand, backhand, agility, balance and co-ordination. We have also been developing our team work skills by playing rounders once a week and have come to realise the importance of communication in team sports!

The children also thoroughly enjoyed taking part in Sports Day and brought their best competitive spirit! They took part in a sprint race, hurdles, sack race and egg and spoon. The sack race certainly gave Mrs. Glancey a good giggle!

Art

As part of Art & Design, the children have been working in groups to paint scenes from around Glasgow using watercolour. This task ties in with The Heartstone Odyssey and Sailvoyage’s journey to the UK from India.

Outdoor Learning

The children took on a challenge to create a mini-beast hotel in groups at Muddy Movers and produced some amazing ideas! Have a look for yourself:

Topic

The class have been learning about some influential figures from around the world who campaign for peace. They have been particularly interested in young activists, seeing the impact that a person can make regardless of their age. The next focus will be on sustainable cities.

We look forward to bringing you more updates next month with what we’ve been getting up to in our final term. Thank you for your ongoing support! Have a lovely bank holiday weekend with your families…fingers crossed we see some sunshine! 🙂

Mrs. Glancey and P6a

April Blog

Hello parents and carers of P6a!

It has been wonderful to have the children back together in the classroom since mid-March. Some of them definitely gained a few inches in height during the nine weeks of remote learning…it won’t be long until Mrs. Glancey is looking up at a few of them! We have been very busy since we returned to school before the Easter break and have hit the ground running since we returned, refreshed and full of Easter eggs!

Numeracy

Before the holidays, each Maths groups completed the unit that they were focusing on, which was time for the Circles, 2D shape for the Squares and area/perimeter for the Triangles. The children completed some excellent work in each of these areas and have moved on to studying new concepts since their return from the Easter break. The Circles have been using protractors to measure and draw angles, the Squares have been converting between different units of length and the Triangles have been looking at different types of angles and how to identify them. The next topics they will be moving on to looking at will be decimals (thousandths) for the Circles, algebra for the Squares and number processes for the Triangles. Towards the end of this month, the class took part in the East Renfrewshire Sumdog competition and did a smashing job. At one point, they were not only first place within St. Cadoc’s, but the leading class within the whole authority, which was an amazing achievement!

Literacy

Having finished reading The Heartstone Odyssey, which will be mentioned in more detail later, the children are now back to reading in smaller groups each week. They have been enjoying their reading slot on Monday mornings with Mrs. Glancey and have been reading some interesting books this month. The Comets have been reading about fears and phobias, the Cores have been reading about different types of defence mechanisms and the Satellites have been reading about different breeds of sharks. In addition to our group reading, the children have been visiting the school library each Friday morning, taking some time to browse through the selection of texts, and selecting a book to check out for private reading. A big thanks to our class librarians who have ensured that this process goes smoothly! 🙂

For writing, the children have completed some excellent pieces of work in the past few weeks. One such piece was a fact file on Florence Nightingale before Easter and they wrote persuasive letters to either Aldi or Marks & Spencers on the subject of ‘#FreeCuthbert’, the legal battle concerning the famous chocolate caterpillar cakes! They looked at balancing both sides of an argument and up with some really interesting points of view!

To develop their talking and listening skills, the children participated in communication games as part of Outdoor Learning, which was very well received. We played Chinese Whispers (only managing to get one word or phrase correct out of six that we passed around the circle) and Bumpity-ump-bump-bump (a game that tested their reactions and also got a lot of laughs!) They also had to work in teams to imagine the scenario of being stranded on a desert island and had to come up with five items they would like to take, explaining their reasons in detail. Mrs. Glancey was impressed with some of their innovative suggestions!

The Heartstone Odyssey

We have now finished our novel study of The Heartstone Odyssey and the children have learned some very important lessons as a result of exploring some of the themes within the book. They have approached all discussions on tolerance and diversity with maturity and respect, sharing different points of view and discussing why it is important to embrace people of all different religions, racial backgrounds and different walks of life. The children created a Heartstone Charter, making important links to their rights, which is now displayed in the P5-7 open area, close to our scjool library. They should all be very proud of themselves for the work they put into this project. Well done, boys and girls!

RE

We have moved on to learning about Counsel, the sixth gift of the Holy Spirit that features within our Pope Francis Faith Award and focuses on knowing the difference between right and wrong. Throughout Primary 6 so far, the children have also reflected upon Knowledge, Piety, Wisdom, Fortitude and Fear of the Lord, identifying ways that they have used these gifts in scenarios at home, school or their place of worship. Recently, the children were asked to write a prayer to thank God for something beautiful they have seen and the standard across the whole class was phenomenal. Mrs. Glancey was blown away by some of the work the children completed. We have also been learning about Ramadan, an important time within Islam, and some of our girls delivered a very interesting presentation to their classmates, answering any questions very articulately. Well done, girls! 🙂

PE

In PE, we have moved our focus from basketball to tennis, practising skills like forehand, backhand, agility, balance and co-ordination.

Art

As part of Art & Design, the class designed their own pieces of art based on the works of Antoni Gaudí. The children enjoyed learning about his life and seeing some of his most famous designs. The Sagrada Familia in particular was a big hit. The children designed their own sea turtles and applied Gaudí’s mosaic pattern to emulate his work, adding colour using oil pastels. The finished articles look great!

Outdoor Learning

The class missed their Outdoor Learning sessions during remote learning, particularly our Forest Fridays! The good news is that from Friday 30th April, we will be back to visiting the forest on a fortnightly basis. This week, we will be completing some of the tasks from the Pope Francis Faith award journal, including showing respect for nature and choosing natural objects to sketch.

Topic

We have now concluded our Victorians topic and the children completed some fantastic work throughout this. This term, the children will be focusing on Rights, with the first theme being ‘The Power Of Peace’. So far, we have discussed peace symbols from around the world, as well as looking at images that highlight the idea of peace and discussing them as a class. Next, the class will learn a bit more about some influential figures around the world who campaign for peace and conduct some personal research on an individual of their choosing.

We look forward to bringing you more updates next month with what we’ve been getting up to in our final term. Thank you for your ongoing support!

Mrs. Glancey and P6a

December Blog

As always, December has been a very busy month for us. One of our highlights this month has been recording our Christmas video to ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’ by Slade! We hope that you enjoyed watching it as much as we enjoyed filming it! We also recorded a video of us reciting a poem that we created together about the year 2020. You can read it below:

So long, 2020,
Haven’t you been a strange old year?
We have faced uncertain times,
when it’s been hard to find some cheer.
‘Coronavirus’ was it’s name,
For it’s arrival, we weren’t prepared.
As it quickly spread around the globe,
people everywhere despaired.
School closed its doors and went online,
as we were forced to stay at home.
We had to FaceTime relatives
So they didn’t feel alone.
Social distancing became the norm,
and staying 2 metres away.
Worship and prayer went virtual, too,
We never thought we’d see the day.
It became the law in public places,
that we had to wear face masks.
To stop the spread and keep people safe,
even when doing the simplest of tasks.
Each Thursday night at 8pm,
we showed our appreciation.
By clapping and cheering on our doorsteps,
to thank the NHS for helping our nation.
Now 2020 is almost up,
we reflect on the year we have had.
Although life has changed a bit,
we have to admit, it’s not all been bad.
We spent precious time with our families,
baked banana bread a-plenty,
We took walks and bike rides and got outdoors,
in this strange old year, 2020.
We came back to school in August,
were reunited with our friends.
We’ve made some amazing memories,
to cherish as this year comes to an end.
As we look to 2021,
we won’t focus on COVID19.
We hope for better times ahead,
With help from a global vaccine.
Enjoy the holidays with your families,
We hope you have a ball!
We want to wish a Merry Christmas,
and a happy, healthy New Year to all!

We have been missing being able to attend Mass during the season of Advent but were very lucky to experience Mass via YouTube in our very own classroom from Fr. Stephen McGrattan, our classmate Luke’s uncle. This was very special and we were even able to hear a reading from Luke played in the church that Fr. Stephen was celebrating Mass from. You did a great job, Luke. Well done!

We have still been loving our Outdoor Learning sessions, particularly in the Forest. We have loved the freedom of the Upper Forest and having a bit more room to roam around in recent weeks. We really enjoyed playing Capture the Flag, although we’re all a bit too good at hiding things! We couldn’t find where the opposing team had hidden the flag! We had a fantastic time navigating our way through the river and one of our favourite things we have done this month was creating seasonal art from natural materials. It was so fun!

We took part in the Great St. Cadoc’s Tree Planting event during December. We learned all about saplings and how to plant them. It was hard work and we got a bit dirty but that was nothing the good old hose couldn’t solve! We hope the trees grow big and tall and are looking forward to seeing them spell out CADOC!

Our Australia topic has now drawn to a close and we spent some time reflecting on what we have learned. We were shocked to see how much we have actually learned in the last few months. Some of our favourite lessons have been learning about the deadliest species of spiders, the different types of animals that are native to Australia and famous landmarks. It’s been such an interesting topic.

For Maths, we have just finished up our current topics and are looking forward to moving onto something new in January. The Circles did an excellent job of learning how to convert units of measure (mm, cm, m and km), the Squares successfully learned how to multiply numbers by 10, 100 and 1000 mentally (including multiples e.g. 1500 x 3000) and the Triangles worked out how to interpret information from different types of charts!

In writing, we wrote a letter to Mrs. Claus to ask for something special for someone that we love this Christmas. Mrs. Glancey was so impressed with our kindness and the standard of our letters.

We are reading The Hearstone Odyssey every week, exploring important themes and discussing them within a safe environment. We are loving predicting the outcome of what we think will happen next! We also worked in groups to create three freeze frame scenes from the novel so far for Drama and challenged our classmates to guess which scene it was. We certainly had a laugh!

With the approval of a COVID19 vaccine, we enjoyed a Science lesson all about what the vaccine can do to make people better. We learned about some of the challenges that there will be to administer this vaccine around the whole world but are hopeful that it will take effect very soon.

We hope that you have a wonderful, restful Christmas holiday with your families and wish you all the very best for a happy and healthy new year when it comes. Thanks for all your support this term!

Mrs. Glancey and P6a

Maths

The Circles group are working on 2-D shape, the Squares group are working on data analysis and the Triangles group are working on symmetry. The Circles are learning about quadrilaterals and polygons, and different types of triangles, such as scalene, as well as the  interior angles of a triangle. The Squares are learning about how to interpret information from different types of tables and diagrams, such as pie charts and bar graphs. Last but certainly not least drum roll the Triangles have been learning about how to complete another half of a shape by using a line of symmetry.

Science

In Science, we have been learning about plastic pollution and how it effects the environment. We watched various videos about how to gradually prevent plastic pollution and what we can do to play a part in saving our precious planet. We also watched videos about what would happen if plastic pollution continues and what could happen to our world in the future and future generations.

Australia

For our Australian topic, we drew the Sydney Harbour Bridge during our Art lessons. We also did Australia PowerPoint presentations and learned loads of facts based on many subjects that we chose for our presentations such as animals, landmarks, history, sports and much more. Mrs. Glancey asked us to complete 3 slides about our chosen topic, with information from the Internet or books (such as Wikipedia, Google, National Geographic and National Geographic Kids). We also pretended to be news reporters to create a news report about Tasmanian devils. We included some really interesting facts, such as there is a rare, contagious type of cancer that is really dangerous to them and conservationists are trying to introduce them back into the wild. We also used Chromebooks to find out about bushfires. We learned that they need high temperatures to thrive (that is why they are not common here) . They also need strong winds and lots of animals lose their habitat because the trees burn and people have to evacuate their homes. Last but certainly not least drum roll the Great Barrier Reef ! It is 348,700 square kilometres long (1429 miles) and it is roughly 500,000 years old (which is actually pretty young for a reef). It is surprisingly a relative to the jellyfish! The most common fish in the Great Barrier Reef is the Damself fish.

Outdoor Learning

During outdoor learning, we have loved exploring the Upper Forest and trekking through the river! We have played Capture the Flag, which is a very fun team game which everyone enjoyed. It has been a great learning experience :). We were very crafty with our hiding spots! We also were set a challenge called ‘Who’s Been Framed?’ to create a portrait of someone in our class using natural materials and had to guess who each was. It was so funny!

Literacy

For writing, we created some posters on plastic pollution using the knowledge we had gained from our Science lessons.

This was an interesting subject to focus on and VERY FUN to create beautiful and colourful posters about plastic pollution.

Some facts we learned are:

• 20 million water bottles are made every year.
• 50% of plastic created is single use.
• 8 million tonnes of plastic is polluted in the ocean.
• 80%  of plastic comes from land.
• 50% of all plastic sinks (so can be digested by fish).
• More than 40% of all sea birds eat plastic.

 R.E

We have been learning about Islam and Diwali for Interfaith Wee. Here is some more details:

Pope Francis Faith Award

We have now completed the knowledge section of our Pope Francis Faith Award and we have been thinking about what we want to be when we our older. We are all so excited to be continuing with this and cant wait to complete it :D.

INTERFAITH WEEK

Islam

During Inter Faith Week we have been learning about the Five Pillars of Islam. They are:

Shahada-The Word of God

Salah-Prayer

Sawm-During Ramadan

Zakat-Charity

Hajj-Pilgrimage

Hinduism

We have also been learning about the religion Hinduism.

It has been very interesting to learn about other religions and how people worship God. It is a fantastic religion to learn about with some very fascinating facts .We really enjoy hearing about how other people worship and pray.

Written by the children in P6A