We have had another very busy and productive month in P5c!

During Outdoor Learning with Ms O’Donnell, we have been climbing trees and learning to tie knots, and we have had great fun when playing ‘Hide and Seek’.

As part of our learning about human rights, we have been finding out about the difficult experiences of refugees and, this week, we began writing letters that we will send to people who have just arrived in Scotland. In these letters, we told the reader about some Scottish traditions, including some of our most well-known and delicious food and drink; traditional clothing; our lush, green landscape and other reasons why we love living here!

In Maths, our Cubes have been learning to convert time between 12 and 24-hour format, as well as calculating the duration of events, whilst the Spheres have been practising adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing with decimals and using these skills to solve word problems. When using the Chromebooks, we enjoyed the chance to play games on Education City which help us to develop various mathematical skills.

We celebrated National Numeracy Day in a NUMBER of ways. Firstly, we discussed some preconceptions about Maths and identified whether these were examples of fact or opinion. We also created raps to persuade people of the benefits of Maths, and enjoyed performing these for our classmates.

We have been developing our note-taking skills and practised this when learning about SCIAF’s work to support children in South Sudan living with disabilities. We then used our notes to create a persuasive text, encouraging others to donate to SCIAF and other charities whenever possible.

We have developed debating skills, participating in two fantastic discussions about the advantages and disadvantages of using e-books over printed books and whether or not investment should be placed in local libraries. During these discussions, we listened to one another’s points of view and responded respectfully. We have developed our literacy skills by learning about different features of the English language. For example, we learned this week how to record possessive nouns, using apostrophes correctly and paying careful attention to whether each noun is singular or plural.

As keen readers, we have recently been making excellent use of the school library, visiting and selecting books to read on a weekly basis. When we have noticed a mess building up, we have taken responsibility for organising the books appropriately, so that other children can find them easily. We also suggested lots of improvements for next year that would make our school library even more fantastic!

We are continuing to make our way through our class novel, ‘The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips’ and have enjoyed taking turns to read the story aloud.

Last week, we reflected on characteristics of our personalities and created an ‘inner vs outer’ self-portrait. During this activity, we paid careful attention to our physical features and sketched them accurately using pencil. We also covered half the portrait in images to represent our talents and interests.

In PE, we have developed our cardiovascular fitness and object control skills through activities such as ‘Capture the Flag’, ‘Cat and Mouse’, as well as football, hockey and basketball matches.

We understand the importance of treating each other with kindness and we recognise that paying compliments can positively affect someone’s mood. On Tuesday of this week, we noted down positive comments about classmates and shared them to make each other smile.

 

As part of Health and Wellbeing, we have learned about the five main nutrient groups and have created menus containing an appropriate balance of different foods. We know that each nutrient gives us energy, but we should limit the amount of confectionary we eat as sweets contain a lot of sugar! We have learned about the dangers of smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol and understand the importance of making responsible decisions about our health. We even created some eye-catching anti-smoking posters!

In French, we were learning to say the days of the week and numbers to 20 by watching videos and playing games, like Lotto and 21. We have also been learning to introduce ourselves by saying our names and ages.

One of the highlights has definitely been our Primary 5 Sports Day. Despite the delightful, heavy downpours of rain, we had a great time participating in the sack race, egg and spoon race, sprint and hurdles! We were thrilled when the weather took a turn for the better, just as we headed back to school!

As part of our RE, we learned that Jesus asked all of His followers to love one another just as He loves everyone. We discussed that love within our families is unconditional, and that there are lots of different ways to show someone that you love them. This week, we learned about Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came to the disciples and gave them the ability to speak every language. They used this gift to travel to many different places and spread the word of God. Lots of us celebrated Eid al-Fitr this month and enjoyed sharing with classmates some special traditions of this festival, such as going to Mosque and spending time with family.

We also had a live ‘Google Meet’ session with a music teacher. She and her colleagues showed us different instruments from the woodwind family, such as the oboe, clarinet, saxophone, flute and bassoon, as well as answering our questions about music lessons.

We are all very sad that Mrs Grosart is leaving us to become Acting Head Teacher at St John’s Primary, but we know that the children and staff there are very lucky to have her!

As you can tell, we have worked really hard and learned lots of skills this month. We are looking forward to a relaxing long weekend and can’t wait to find out what the month of June has in store for us!

We hope you have a lovely holiday and hope we see you back here at the end of June. Thank you for reading!