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 🙂
