7b have settled in well to school and have been working hard and learning lots.  In writing, we have been focusing on imaginative writing and have been learning to engage the reader through setting the scene and making use of descriptive vocabulary.  We have started our novel study, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. All we know so far is that this book is about a nine year old boy called Bruno who is living during World War Two.

In Social Studies this term we have been learning about World War Two The Home Front. So far we have learned about the reasons for the war, significant world leaders at that time, the use of Propaganda and rationing.

In Numeracy we have been learning to convert between units of measure e.g. km to m to cm, calculate volume using the formula length x breadth x height, rounding numbers and calculating time durations in hours and minutes.

In Religious Education we have been focusing on the weekly Gospel and trying live the Gospel values in our daily lives. We enjoyed learning about The Story of Creation and have been thinking about the ways in which we can follow God.

Hello everyone,

We are here to let you know what we’ve been learning across the last week or two, since returning from our well-deserved Easter break! We all seem to have had a wonderful holiday, whether abroad or at home; it was so lovely to hear all of our news and catch up with one another! We are ready and raring to go for Term 3, and have already made a brilliant start.

So, let’s begin! Last week, we took time to reflect on our future and identify what we would like to work towards by creating a ‘Future Me’ mind-map. We also started learning about the Galapagos Islands, by looking at its location within South America, its formation, landscape, climate and wildlife; we are thoroughly enjoying this topic so far. Alongside this, we have been learning new vocabulary, such as ‘archipelago’ and ‘biodiversity’, and facts (Did you know that 13 different islands make up the Galapagos, and around 120 islets?), to deepen our understanding. We were amazed by the vast size of the Galapagos tortoise! Soon, we are going to move on to learn about Charles Darwin, natural selection and evolution. We are beginning to draw comparisons between the South American island landscape and Scottish landscapes that we are more familiar with.

In Numeracy, we have been working hard to develop our level of skill and confidence when solving long multiplication and division calculations; at first, it was tricky to maintain our growth mindsets as we tackled the calculations, but using the strategy consistently and perseverance has really supported us. The Maths concept that we are focusing on at the moment is budgeting and financial education. We have been working with different budgets to select items and plan experiences, whilst determining affordability.

Our Sustainable Development Goal learning has continued this term; we really are shaping up to be highly effective global citizens! We are focusing on SDG 8, – exploring workers’ rights, child labour, and supply chains. Thus far, through our See, Think, Wonder routine, we have been able to make connections and examine what we already know about products, as well as the ways in which people live and make money.

We spent a special morning at  Greenbank Gardens last Friday; what a perfect way to celebrate Earth Day 2022! The gardens were beautiful and we participated in lots of activities with Operation Play Outdoors – group tasks, a craft (Woodland Eyes), and a quiz all about the environment.

We are very excited to be experiencing Mandarin this term with Mrs Cao. So far, we have learned vocabulary to introduce ourselves and our family members. We also practised writing some characters. Please ask us at home to speak a little Mandarin, to share our learning as we go!

Hello! Welcome back…

We are here to share a few of our key learning experiences from across March.

We finished off February by celebrating World Book Day, as we had a go at creating a digital doodle using software, along with illustrator David Litchfield! We also created fantastic alternative front-cover designs for our favourite books. As it was Fairtrade Fortnight, we spent some time hearing from a family running a cocoa farm in West Africa, about their experiences of joining a co-operative.

Many of us have created & presented about a specific Article of the UNCRC – the right to education, to play, to be safe from harm, and many more. It has been interesting hearing about children’s rights around the world & deepening our understanding of the UNCRC. We were delighted to gain the Gold RRS award recently; it’s been great to share our knowledge! We also had a visit from Mark Booker, who works with SCIAF – this inspired many of us to create products to sell; our class raised over £300 for SCIAF! Amazing.

In Maths, we have been developing our mental agility & numerical fluency through Number Talks; we are improving day-by-day. We have also focused on co-ordinates, and revisited perimeter, time, amongst other maths concepts to keep our skills fresh! We have been working hard to solve long multiplication and long division calculations, focusing on perseverance & a growth-mindset. The Triangular Prisms have been focusing on algebra, inequalities & area lately, whereas the Pyramids have been working on triangles, shape and most recently, decimals. Some of us have been working hard on telling the time & interpreting/presenting data effectively.

Our Writing has focused on creating an imaginative piece, using detailed descriptive language and sophisticated vocabulary. We are improving in checking over our pieces, to ensure we have correct punctuation and that our writing is coherent and relevant.

We spent time discussing the importance of staying safe online and created some top tips for how to do this. We then moved on to learn about healthy ways of life, focusing on being self-aware and making conscious, responsible decisions as we grow older.

We really enjoyed listening to different genres and styles of Music, discussing our opinions of the various songs – the Beatles, Bob Marley, Bollywood, to name a few! Many of us have shared suggestions for our next listen & response session.

We learnt about crime & punishment during the Victorian era, such as the use of the ‘crank’ and assessed a variety of crimes to determine appropriate levels of punishment; we also compared with our modern day justice system.

The Taekwondo taster session was fantastic today – we all engaged with James & practised some moves; Miss Mackay observed lots of potential!

Today we also completed our wildly colourful tiger art pieces, which focused on proportion and the use of contrasting oil pastel colours – check these out on Twitter!

We are looking forward to our trip to Greenbank Gardens following the Easter holiday, to spend time in our local community, celebrating Earth Day.

Have a lovely Easter break,

Primary 6B & Miss Mackay 🙂

Good afternoon,

We are here to let you know about a few of our learning experiences & focuses across the month of February!

We finished off January by creating a Burns colourful mosaic by each colouring and designing a portion to bring together the silhouette of Burns. We also wrote fantastic Scottish-inspired poems; each of them was unique and used a range of Scottish words.

Each of us has been working hard to complete our Plastic Projects, as we learnt about the problem of the plastic menace and were keen to transform recyclable plastic items, to create products of our own for a useful purpose! We collaborated with our partner school in India, who also created plastic products and have been studying this problem. We took some time to address the commonalities between the plastic problem in Scotland and the country of India. Miss Mackay was BLOWN AWAY by the creativity shown through completing and presenting these products. Amazing effort! We were also able to give constructive feedback as a class to give suggestions about how our peers can improve their products in the future to meet its intended purpose. Very well done everyone!

As part of this mini sustainability-based topic, we created some beautiful and effective whale art. We focused on sketching the top half of the whale as its body emerged from the water. The bottom half was filled with real-life plastic pieces to symbolise the effect of plastic littering on marine life. The finished result was really impactful!

All of this learning has contributed towards the school’s efforts working to attain our Gold rights-respecting schools award. Miss Mackay, a range of pupils, staff, parents and Mrs McBride shared our hard work and dedication to children’s rights, living sustainably, and learning about the Global Goals. We will find out the outcome in a couple of weeks time, but we can say that our feedback from the UNICEF advisers was very positive indeed!

We have been reading The Street Child by Berlie Doherty, discussing the character of Jim Jarvis and his experiences as a child in the Victorian Era. This has linked in with our topic The Victorians; we have explored workhouses, family structures, housing, and inventions so far. We took time to create fact-files about influential figures who lived during this time, such as Charles Darwin and Mary Seacole. In Writing, we have written a newspaper report about a workhouse runaway, a diary entry from the perspective of workhouse child, and most recently, a persuasive piece arguing that children should experience school.

In Maths, we have been developing our mental agility and numerical fluency through number talks. This involves tackling a range of calculations using a variety of strategies, such as partitioning, chunking or compensation. We have been enjoying this as it is interesting to see how each of our peers thinks and approaches working with numbers differently, but can arrive at the same answer! We are trying to focus on explaining the process behind solving calculations, rather than diving straight into the answer. The Triangular Prisms have been focusing on decimals, triangles and length. Pyramids have been carrying out surveys to collect data, and working hard to present this information clearly by drawing bar graphs, line graphs and pie charts, to develop our understanding of data-handling; we have also been interpreting data by answering questions using a variety of data forms and have identified misleading data. Some of us have also been working hard on the concepts of multiplication & division, as well as learning about 3D objects.

We really enjoyed using the xylophones to practise some tunes and worked hard as a class to play Dance Monkey – this was tricky, but great fun!

With Miss Donaghy, we have been taking part in some Scottish dancing and we also built snowmen within a time limit, to build on our team-working skills & enjoy some time in the snow! Miss Mackay then spent some time in the snow with us, where we used all of our strength to move an almighty human-sized snowball across the playground. We have also been learning about the process of photosynthesis, as part of our mini-topic about brilliant botanics.

Some of our pupils are preparing for the Euro Quiz heat taking place next week, learning about all things Europe! Let’s wish them lots of luck – fingers crossed that all of the hard work & commitment will pay off!

Have a lovely weekend & speak to you soon,

Primary 6B & Miss Mackay 🙂

Hello!

This month’s post will be shorter than usual, as we have several classmates off at the moment; a fair few of us (including Miss Mackay) have been affected by COVID unfortunately.

Nevertheless, we have been working very hard in class & at home – a brilliant start to 2022! Some of our key learning focuses have been:

• Learning about the impact of plastic on our planet, on land and below water. We wrote informative reports to share our understanding. Alongside this, we have been creating plastic products at home, using plastic pieces and other materials!
• We also have learnt about Global Goal 5 – some of the issues surrounding Gender Equality and considered what we could do within our own lives to help to reduce inequalities in society. This linked into our recognition of the Holocaust this week, where we discussed the nature of this terrible event & listened to a Holocaust survivor share his experiences.
• Amazing Scottish-inspired poetry, using lots of traditional Scots words – they are braw! We also learnt about Rabbie Burns.
• In Maths, we have been focusing on decimals, volume, long multiplication, division & fractions.
• We began our new class novel – ‘The Street Child’ – which ties in with our focus on the Victorians this term. We have explored features of the Victorian era and the key events which shaped this period of time.
• In French, we have been doing some revision about Days of the Week, Months of the Year & will be moving on to look at Physical Appearance next week!
• Science with Mrs Donaghy has been all about ‘Brilliant Botanicals’, exploring the uses and beauty of plants.

We are really hoping to see everyone back in class next week! Fingers crossed…

Have a lovely weekend,

P6B & Miss Mackay.

Hello, hello!

Read on to discover what Primary 6b have been up to over the last few weeks.

In Literacy, we have focused on the correct use of punctuation, direct speech, and figurative speech, such as metaphors, similes, personification, alliteration, and onomatopoeia (tricky spelling!). We have worked hard to develop our use of reading strategies – skimming, scanning, summarising, and meta-linguistics (using strategies to decipher the meaning of unfamiliar words). Our class novel ‘Boy at the Back of the Class’ has been very enjoyable and thought-provoking to read so far; we are looking forward to discover what comes next!

We have created lots of fantastic pieces of writing. Our ‘I Have a Dream’ speeches were powerful and inspired by both COP26 and Martin Luther King Jr. We have also focused on the features of story writing by creating a character, setting description, and this week we will bring these aspects together to write our action-packed adventure story! We are waiting for our pen-friends to send us their letters and we are eager to write letters back to them before Christmas to share our own traditions and find out more about Romania at Christmas time.

In Maths, we have started looking at fractions; simplifying and equivalent ones, as well as finding fractions of a whole number, to be precise! We looked at rounding numbers to the nearest 100, 1 000, 10 000. We have also completed lots of arithmetic-based activities and have been developing our mental maths skills through daily practise.

We have continued with the Pope Francis Faith Award. We prepared and delivered engaging presentations to our classmates about our hobbies and also our parents jobs. They were excellent! We also researched Fair-trade and the learnt about the importance of the fair exchange of goods; we have been on the lookout for Fair-trade products on the weekly shop!

Canon Eddie came into school for a Remembrance Service. We also wrote the names of family and friends who have passed away and remembered them in our daily prayers. Moving forward, we are going to ensure that we learn ‘Eternal Rest’ by heart.

We enjoyed creating some spooky Halloween art a couple of weeks ago. We drew a zombie hand emerging from the ground and coloured this using oil pastels to create a dramatic effect! Recently, we sketched and painted autumnal leaves, using watercolour paints; Miss Mackay asked us to bring in some interesting leaves to inspire our artwork.

We learned about climate change and global warming, alongside the COP26 event in Glasgow. We decided to make climate posters and we also researched activists to learn about their contributions to the planet – Greta Thunberg, David Attenborough, and Jane Goodall. Following COP26, we decided as a class to adopt & donate money towards two animals – a Giant Panda (whom we named Felicia) and an Amur Leopard, named Amuro. They have been adventuring to some of our homes, the cinema, and will be heading to the pantomime soon! We took our learning a step further by exploring the specific topic of renewable and non-renewable energy types.

We enjoyed participating in the Play Zone, where we learned how to teach Primary 1 games in PE and how to keep them engaged. For Wellbeing Wednesday, we were lucky enough to meet a runner Ricky Saez runner, who put us through our paces in the MUGA. We have also been thoroughly enjoying our Committee time, contributing our views and taking a hands-on approach to making sure our school is the best it can be!

• The STEAM Committee were discussing ways in which access to technology could be improved in order to support our learning.
• The Fairtrade Committee were learning more about the importance of Fair-trade and how it benefits farmers across the world. The members of this committee will be trying to raise awareness of the benefits of buying Fair-trade products.
• The Pupil Council discussed positive changes that could be made to our school. For example, we would like to provide more fountains for drinking water to avoid big queues in hot weather. We also discussed ways in which to improve storage of first aid supplies, such as ice packs.
• The Road Safety Committee worked together to create a ‘top ten’ list of tips to help children stay safe when out trick-or-treating for Halloween. For example, wearing reflective patches alongside your costume will help make you more visible to motorists.
• The Library Committee discussed some ways in which to improve our school library. For example, we would like to invite people to donate their old books in order to improve our selection.
• The Music Committee were discussing ways to provide learners with opportunities to share their talents within the arts. We suggested hosting more talent shows.
• Our ‘Digital Leaders’ were sharing ways in which we could improve the use of digital technology to enhance our learning. We also received training on updating learner profiles and made arrangements for teaching these skills to other classes.
• The Rights Respecting School Committee were discussing how rights are accessed in our school, and new Rights Ambassadors were given the responsibility of visiting other classes to teach our peers about their rights.

We have worked hard to build miniature reindeer for our Christmas enterprise craft; we used natural materials such as twigs for this, of course! Miss Mackay injured her finger in the process – a testament to our collective effort!

We are very much looking forward to the Christmas Fun Day this coming Thursday – we’re hoping to have some hot chocolate and visit the reindeer!

Next stop… Christmas! Out Secret Santa gift exchange is taking place on the last day of school.

P.S. Thank you for visiting our blog! As always, keep an eye on Twitter for up-to-date news and photos!

Primary 6B x

Hello everyone!

First of all, Miss Mackay was absolutely blown away by the outstanding effort that we all put in when planning and creating our ‘This is Me’ poems recently; each and every one of us went the extra mile to include poetry techniques and personalise our pieces to reflect ourselves.

We have been enjoying the month of October so far in Primary 6b! We quickly settled back in after the October break and have been learning lots of new things. This week, we created eye-catching Aboriginal-inspired artwork using mixed-media and the pointillism technique; we think that we did a really fantastic job. If you haven’t seen any of these yet, please check out Twitter! We selected bright colours to ensure a contrast between the Australian animal and the background. When teachers and other pupils have visited our classroom this week, they’ve been so impressed by our vibrant pieces of Art displayed all over our walls!

This week, we also connected with pupils from Bangalore, India, and communicated with them through a Zoom call. First of all, we researched the country of India and some of us were able to share our knowledge of the languages spoken there. We prepared questions to ask the class and they also asked us quite a few things about our country and culture! This was a fantastic experience and we can’t wait to collaborate with them again soon, to further enhance our global awareness.

We are looking forward to taking part in our first Committee meetings next week, where we will have the opportunity to lead and drive change within our school, using our own ideas and voice; we each selected a Committee to join that focuses on an aspect of school life that we are interested in and will spend next Wednesday afternoon creating our Action Plan for the coming months ahead. We can’t wait to get stuck in and make a difference! Some of us spent time creating a handmade Primary 6 voice box, for the classes in the Lodge to share their views.

Over the next few days, we are going to design our carnival-themed pumpkins to display on our patch outside the school – we are excited to walk around the exhibit and see all of the wonderful designs next Friday, just before Halloween. Miss Mackay also has some spooky Halloween art and writing ideas in mind for next week, so keep your eyes peeled as our learning will be shared on Twitter!

We can’t wait to experience the buzz and excitement around COP26 over the next couple of weeks, in the run up to the Conference! We think it is amazing that this world-renowned event will be taking place just 20-minutes along the motorway. We will be developing our understanding of pollution and the effects on our planet, as well as possible solutions; raising awareness of climate change and potential dangers; creating speeches to persuade others to care for Earth, and researching influential climate activists.

We have included a couple of photos of us for you to see us speaking with the pupils from India today! We really loved it!

Have a lovely weekend everyone & thank you to all of our families for your continued support,

Primary 6B x

Hello,

We have been working so hard over the past few weeks since the beginning of Primary 6; Miss Mackay is so proud of us all.

Yesterday was a special day as we participated in our Pope Francis Faith Award Enrolment Service; Canon Eddie came in to lead us in a special prayer service, where we made clear our dedication to the award, which we will be all be working towards over the next 2 years. We are excited to embark on this journey together!

This week, we kicked things off with our ‘Words of the Week’, such as ‘overwhelm’ as we investigated their meaning and used them in different contexts. Our Comprehension task this week focused on the Australian Outback, where we examined a first-hand experience of living there, and learned the meaning of many new words, using dictionaries. We have been reading and listening to the audiobook ‘Wonder’. Whilst listening, we have been practising the Visualisation technique, by sketching along to see if our imagination matches up with the author’s ideas. We have also been doing some research into Treacher-Collins syndrome, to better understand the experience of the main character Auggie.

For Writing this week, we spent some time reading letters sent to us from our brand new Romanian pen-friends; they were absolutely beautiful and full of lots of great information and questions. We were keen to demonstrate our skills and write back to our new friends, so we wrote them letters, to share information about our lives, answer their questions and ask them what we were wondering; many of us included some Romanian words! We even created our own Success Criteria, which matched Miss Mackay’s ideas almost exactly!

We read the poem ‘Refugees’ by Brian Bilston. At first, we were shocked by the language used by the author. We soon realised the author’s intention and techniques used to show two different perspectives. We used this as inspiration to begin to create our artwork ‘Behind Their Eyes’ to symbolise the recent experience of those fleeing Afghanistan. We are taking our time to add detail by shading and we also used mixed media. Check these out on Twitter!

In Maths, we have been practising Multiplication and Division calculations, using various methods. We have also been focusing on Time, converting 12-hour time to 24-hour, and calculating durations. We have enjoyed playing Place Value Bingo, to enhance our understanding of 5-and-6 digit numbers.

Today has a few exciting surprises in store for us! To celebrate St. Cadocs Feast Day, we went to Mass this morning to receive communion. We are also going to be taking part in a Talent Show to showcase our wonderful talents, meeting Miss Mackay’s dog, and spending some more time with our Primary 1 buddies! We can’t wait to see them again.

Our Australia Projects are taking shape; some of us have been researching animals, history, famous people. We will be presenting our findings and creations during the week of 4th October!

We hope that everyone enjoys a restful long September weekend and we thank you for all of your support over the last few weeks.

Thank you for reading about all we have been up to. Speak to you soon,

Primary 6B

😊

Hola everyone! (we decided on this greeting as a class),

We’ve only been back at school for one week, but we have been working very hard! We are settling in and benefiting from reminders from Miss Mackay to stop chit chatting when we are completing focused tasks! We are getting used to our new zones when playing in the playground at break times and lunch. We are enjoying being able to socialise with the other P6 classes! We have the Adventure Trail and the MUGA to ourselves on a Tuesday at break time. Some of us came together with an idea to create things to share with others in the playground, like bookmarks; they are super colourful!

We spent some time last week thinking about and writing down our Aspirations for the coming year in P6. We created a large colourful tree on the wall to represent our collective aspirations and keep us focused on reaching them!

Along the other side of our classroom wall, we can see a big quote – ‘Dream Big, Work Hard, Stay Kind’ which reminds us, along with our Class Charter, about the importance of respect and kindness, as we move through the coming year. To create our Class Charter and learn about rights, we made little posters to illustrate key rights to remember this year, such as the right to learn, to be healthy, to share our opinions, and be heard.

We really loved playing Would You Rather, as it was a great way for us to get to know each other even better!

Yesterday, as part of our learning in Health, we discussed the meaning of the value ‘Gratitude’, how it can make us happier, and how important it is to be thankful. We enjoyed this lesson as it was meaningful and helped us to reflect.

We have also being doing some Writing this week (a personal piece), all about our fabulous lives. We included punctuation, ambitious vocabulary, and wrote in paragraphs. Each week, we will have a Star Writer!

In Maths, we have been learning about Multiples and Factors; multiples are the answers in each table, given when we multiply together two numbers, whereas factors are those numbers which we can pair together and multiply to produce a larger number.

We have been revising the parts of speech, focusing on nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, pronouns, and prepositions. We played a game where we created a silly sentence by each adding a part of the sentence.

Earlier in the week, Miss Mackay handed us an outline of a deserted island and we designed it according to our own taste! We drew all of the things that we love, including houses, restaurants (some chose McDonalds) to have a food supply, portals, theme parks, a disco floor, vehicles (aeroplanes and all sorts!), trees, volcanoes … the list goes on! We are very creative indeed!

P.S. We are absolutely roasting in this hot weather but we made little paper fans and have been drinking lots of water to cool down!

Too-da-loo! Speak to you next month! (we also decided on this sign off as a class …)

🙂

This month, Primary 5b have been working hard on simplifying fractions and also converting fractions into decimals. We have continued to revise area and perimeter and practised converting time using 24 hour clock. To challenge ourselves, we have been working on more difficult word problems which involve a few mathematical operations before reaching the final answer.

In Literacy, we have been writing newspaper reports about the ‘Scottish Wars of Independence’ and the ‘Ascension’. Our last report was our own choice. Some of us chose to write about ‘Saving the Planet’, ‘An Alien Invasion’ and ‘Inventions’. We tried really hard to include eye witness accounts and ‘eye-catching’ headlines. During our Grammar lessons, we have worked on synonyms and antonyms. This has really helped to develop our vocabulary as we can now incorporate more interesting vocabulary into our story writing.

In Science, we have been learning all about ‘Energy’. We have linked this to RRS and this has helped us to focus on our planet. Some of us have already presented their own PowerPoints to the class. These have included information about ‘Sources of Energy’ and have really helped us to discuss ‘Renewable and Non-Renewable Energy’.

Well done to everyone for taking part in ‘Sports Day’! Although the weather was not great,we has a fantastic morning and completed all the activities. Congratulations to Ellis and Lucien for winning the competitive races. When we returned to school, we talked about ‘Inspirational People’ in the ‘World of Sport’, ‘Mother Teresa’ and ‘Nelson Mandela’.

In I.C.T, we have started to create our own Profiles. It’s just like having our own website! We look forward to sharing these with you and hope to add lots more information next month.

Enjoy the ‘Holiday Weekend’.