P4a have been awesome as always this month! We have developed many different skills,  both in and out of school.

Many of us have been developing skills in many different sports, such as Taekwando, gymnastics, skiing, dance and swimming.

Amna is proud that she can now do a range of kicks in Taekwando, Heather can do a back bend against a wall whilst Armeen can demonstrate a backward and forward roll.  Callum was proud to achieve success when completing an aerial obstacle course and Kobi showed responsibilty when he looked after his grandparents dog.  He enjoyed walking and feeding Quinn!

Logan felt a sense of achievement and pride when participating in a Remembrance Service with the Boys Brigade and some of us have been thinking about others less fortunate than ourselves by recycling toys and clothes to local charities.

In Science this term we have been developing our knowledge of Vibrations and Sound.

Kobi said ‘Sound happens when something vibrates.’

Lucy went on to explain ‘Sounds can be high or low and Fatima added ‘They can be loud or quiet.’

Musa told us ‘When the vibrations get to your ear it sends a message to our brains.’

We looked at a diagram of our ear and labelled the parts.  We discussed how each part works.

Marcus and Hashim were able to show us that the louder the sound the bigger the vibration using a paper cup and elastic band.  We had fun investigating how to create sound using different household objects!

 

We have also been learning about Weather and Climate in Social Studies and posing lots of different questions to investigate.

Anshi said ‘We discussed how weather is predicted and measured.’ Eleena added ‘We talked about how we could record weather using things we could find in school and at home.’

Ruadhan explained ‘We could make a rainfall gauge by using a plastic bottle with the top cut off.’

Heather said ‘We would need to mark the bottle with ml to record how much rain there was.’

Each group had a Big Question to discuss.  Amna said ‘Our groups question was ‘How does weather change?’ We then broke down the question into simple questions to research like ‘ How does rain change into snow?’

Yousef had an idea. ‘Why don’t we record the temperature outside by using a thermometer?’

 

During Art we have been researching the artist M.C Escher.

Armeen said ‘His work was based on tessellations, squares, triangles and hexagons were the easiest to use.’

Erion explained ‘This is when shapes fit together to make a picture. There shouldn’t be any spaces in between.’

Amelia said ‘We used a lizard template to create a pattern which we then fitted together for a display.’

Sam also said ‘We collected leaves to make a lions mane, discussing the different colours and textures.’

Ella shared ‘I liked when we created landscapes pictures using oil pastels.’ We are also looking at landscapes created by the artist Metzinger.

 

This term our RME focus has been on other World Religions and learning about Shabbat.

Daniel told us, ‘We are learning about Shabbat. It’s a Jewish tradition.’ Sofia added ‘It’s a time for family to come together, say prayers and sing songs.’

Ailey said ‘The mother of the house lights two candles and the grandfather or father blesses the children and on a Saturday morning they go to the synagogue.’

Emma added, “We also spoke about The Ten Commandments.’

We made a scroll using a list of our own rules.

 

We have been learning new ICT skills using Sway.  Calum said ‘Ruadhan and I made a Lego Star Wars presentation.’

Millie and Lucy explained how important Internet Safety was and everyone had the opportunity to create a presentation either on their own or with a partner.

 

We have been developing our fitness this term in P.E and have been continuing with our daily fitness sessions.  For Outdoor P.E we have also been developing our stamina and speed using the Trim Trail.

Logan Lang said ‘I enjoyed the different activities, stepping up and down on the bench and the BEEP test.’

Breac ‘I enjoyed Basketball especially shooting into the net and dribbling to get away from my partner.’

Logan Adam added ‘I like balancing and rolling during Gymnastics.’

 

Literacy and Numeracy

Our learning in these areas will draw upon the contexts listed above but will differ according to the needs of each class / group. Your support with consolidation of core learning through homework activities will be very beneficial to our children.

 

 

Awesome Achievers

This month we have been awesome once more!  Some of us have been trying hard to help at home.  Ailey has been helping to cook dinner and Heather has been learning how to bake a cake with her gran. A few of us have been at skiing lessons, Millie has been successful in moving onto intermediate level.

Article 29: You have the right to education which develops your personality, respect for other’s rights and the environment.

 

 

Since the beginning of Term 1 we have been focussing on improving our fitness during our PE lessons. We started by all taking part in the Beep test, where we had to gradually run faster and faster before the beep caught us out.  We each recorded our level of achievement and will now take part in the test again to see if our PE lessons, along with our daily mile, have helped to improve our fitness levels.  Josh feels he has got faster and healthier throughout this session of work.  Some of us loved doing the beep test and some of us didn’t but we all found it challenging because we all tried our best to keep going until we couldn’t last any longer.

 

We are approaching our Social Studies project on Weather through Big Picture Planning. This is done through joint teacher and pupil planning.  Mrs Backer gave us 2 Experiences and Outcomes about climate and weather and then we discussed in our groups what and how we want to learn.  We have come up with questions we want answered during this work and identified other curricular areas that we can link with.  We have come up with ideas of how to measure the weather in the playground and “we can see clear links to maths, literacy and talking and listening work,” said Millie.  Logan A has been developing his own experiments at home and will be bringing these in to share the data with the class.

 

Rio would like to share that in Music we have been learning new rhythms and songs. We are learning and practising the hand signs on the stave by singing them.  “We can identify and clap out the beats of different songs,” says Eleena.  We enjoy using games to help us improve our understanding of the rhythm.

 

“In Art we have been drawing sunsets and mountain backgrounds using oil pastels,” says Ruadhan. “We have been improving our creativity skills through this,” adds Callum.  We have been investigating the artistic style of MC Escher, whose artwork focusses on tiling patterns.  We have begun to recreate this style in some of our own art patterns.

 

Amna tells us that so far in French we have been revising numbers to 39, months of the year, days of the week and revising what we learnt in Primary 3 such as being able to say how old we are and what our name is. We have been learning how to spell these too and recording this information in our jotters so we can refer back to it.

 

In Science we have been doing some work on classification keys, which helps us to sort and find types of animals, classifying by what animals eat or where they live. We are now extending this learning to find out about food chains.  We now know carnivore, herbivore and omnivore and can identify what they eat and which animals are in that group.  We learned a game about food chains to play at home to help us understand what a consumer and a producer is.

 

At the beginning of the year we focussed on Growth Mindset to follow on from our learning of this in Primary 3. We thought about the power of the word yet and came up with things that we can’t do yet but will work towards.  We have learnt that our brain is similar to a muscle in that it can get stronger by challenging ourselves.  Millie explains how we made our own brain hats and we add links each time we learn something new to show that new pathways have developed as we practise and improve our skills and learning.  We made columns to show the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset shared Daniel.

 

We have shown a great deal of progress in physical abilities recently, with some of us developing skills in doing cartwheels, walkovers, crabs and handstands. Some have been practising riding their bike one-handed, developing dancing routines and improving within their swimming lessons.  While others improved strength by doing one handed press-ups and swinging across the monkey bars.  Many have shown determination in joining the ski club to learn a new skill or cycling all the way around Millport three times!  In the expressive arts we have improved musically, learning how to play the accordion and learning new songs on the piano as well as getting better at drawing.

 

We are still Growing (Y)our Own Potatoes! Anshi investigated our “Under the Soil experiment” potatoes, which let us see what is actually going on in the grow bags. She saw at least four potatoes growing on each plant. Armeen cannot wait for the real potatoes to finish growing so we can all eat them.

Heather can keep the new rhythm she has learnt in Music. It is called Tiri-te. Daniel also really enjoyed composing his own music and then playing it on the glockenspiel.

Amna has been helping to teach the rest of the class about Ramadan in RME. Rhys has also enjoyed learning about the story of Joseph. It has taught him about kindness and not being mean to other people.

Ruadhan has expanded his knowledge about our five senses in Science. Ailey enjoyed smelling different scents to try to identify them. Millie loved exploring the Body Works section of the Science Centre when we went there on our trip.

Our main reason for visiting, though, was to explore the Planetarium. Sofia loved seeing the planets on the dome above our heads. Yousef enjoyed reading the information about each planet that was displayed in the exhibition.

Breac has loved reading Sleeping Beauty in French as he managed to recognise quite a few words (especially ages and number names).

In ICT we have been doing more work on coding. Erion has enjoyed that everyone in class have their own personal login so that they can work through the tasks at their own speed.

We had a great time in Art recently. We studied the work of Arcimboldo, who made portrait collages using household items like fruit, pots and fish.  Morrisons kindly gave us some out of date fruit and vegetables and Mrs Taylor brought in some plants from her garden and we made our own portraits. Amelia worked with Rio and Sofia to make a person with a body from oranges and cauliflower!

Sophie has enjoyed learning about lots of different charities and how they help people. We are going to sell ice lollies at break and give the profit we make to a charity which we will choose soon.

Marcus has loved our focus on poetry. He read a poem about pets to a group of other children and they loved it too. Callum’s favourite poem was called Eating Bananas and Ella loved the poem was The Bird on the Shore, which was about oil pollution.

Out of school, our achievements are as amazing as ever!!!

ACTIVE = Heather completed her swimming lessons and Anshi has moved up to level 4 in swimming. Callum has learnt how to dive.

ACHIEVING = Eleena and Fatima have learnt how to cycle (separately!). Lucy has completed 2 Brownie badges. Ruaridh played in an International Football Tournament in Blackpool. Sam performed at the Citizens Theatre with Gamta in The Wiz in front of an audience of 600 people.

HEALTHY = Josh wild camped with his dad and carried his own rucksack.

INCLUDED = Sofia was brave and tried indoor skydiving.

RESPONSIBLE = Amna makes her bed every day. Armeen and Musa have fasted for Ramadan. Ella has gained three new Brownie badges.

NURTURING = Millie has learnt how to do ventriloquism and looks after her puppet carefully. Ruadhan has helped his brother at his dancing show.

 

Literacy and Numeracy

Our learning in these areas will draw upon the contexts listed above but will differ according to the needs of each class / group. Your support with consolidation of core learning through homework activities will be very beneficial to our children.

Article 13

You have the right to find out things and say what you think, through making art, speaking and writing unless it breaks the rights of others.

 

We have ‘March’ed into Spring!

 

We hope you enjoyed our amazing performance at the Church Spring Service. As Emma will tell you, we told the congregation about how things grow in Spring. Eleena really loved introducing our funny ‘Hay Fever’ song.

 

Excitingly, we are still Growing (Y)our Own Potatoes! Thank you to Sam and Lucy who looked after our bags of potato plants over the holidays. Also to Nimra and Ella who looked after the “Under the Soil experiment” potatoes, which let us see what is actually going on in the grow bags! (Thank you also to Emma, Millie, Eleena and Daniel who nurtured the other class plants).

 

Ruaridh is happy that Mrs Carey has taught us another new hand sign in Music. It is called ‘Do’. As Rio can tell you, you show it with a closed fist.

 

We are excited to have been trialling Talking Homework. Sam has loved it because he got to talk! Logan L enjoyed sharing his thoughts with his mum, dad and Apollo! For our third Talking Homework activity some of us brought in cute baby photos and we all had to guess who was who. Most people managed to recognise Lucy from her baby photo. Callum showed everyone his baby book.

 

We also used the Talking Homework discussion in RME to talk about what happens when a Muslim baby is born. As Nimra can tell us, something sweet is put on the baby’s gum, somebody whispers a prayer in the baby’s ear and then their hair is shaved off and the equivalent weight of gold or silver is given to charity. Musa also shared that the family has a party with their neighbours and friends and eat goat or lamb.

 

Ella loved hearing from our visitors from the Museum of Communications. They told us about AND SHOWED us many Scottish inventions that make a big difference in our lives.

 

Logan A has enjoyed using 2D shapes to make tiling patterns. He worked with a group to discover that circles and shapes with no flat sides do not tile, but also that not all flat 2D shapes tile with each other.

 

We have been working hard in grammar. Fatima knows that if she is asking something in writing, the sentence needs to end with a question mark.

 

We have had lots of fun with spreadsheets in ICT – Josh can even do multiplication and division calculations really easily!

 

Out of school, our achievements are wonderful as ever!!!

 

ACTIVE = Breac has learnt to do the Michael Jackson lean. Callum moved up a level at swimming. Sam moved up to Level 2 in skiing. Lucy can now do a dive.

 

ACHIEVING = Heather has learned to ride her bike with gears. Ruadhan has learned how to read complicated words in longer books. Millie has learnt ‘A Million Dreams’ on the piano. Nimra is now on the 16^th Siphara, which makes her half way through reading the Quran. Amna was Pupil of the Week twice in a row!

 

HEALTHY = Josh climbed the Cobbler. Ruaridh scored 9 goals in one football game and played at Rugby Park!

 

INCLUDED = Sofia has joined a new gymnastics club.

 

RESPONSIBLE = Armeen makes her bed every day. Ailey has been washing the dishes. Daniel helped his dad put down some new grass.

 

NURTURING = Eleena has been helping her mum with housework.

 

 

 

Literacy and Numeracy

 

Our learning in these areas will draw upon the contexts listed above but will differ according to the needs of each class / group. Your support with consolidation of core learning through homework activities will be very beneficial to our children.

 

Article 13

 

You have the right to find out things and say what you think, through making art, speaking and writing unless it breaks the rights of others.

 

There will be a lot of questions with this week’s Talking Homework.

There is no need to write anything down, but it would be lovely to see a photograph or two, if you can.

https://sway.com/9B177ZavrzYAnBEk?ref=Link

 

The additional focus for the children this week is to learn their words (and the songs) for the Spring Service.

Help with that is greatly appreciated!

https://sway.com/LDLTiA8loqPoDKxv?ref=Link

Sophie would like to tell you about the new hand sign we have been learning, “It shows the note ‘la'”. Erion is excited about the two new rhythms we have learned, called Tiri-te and Tiri-tiri. Millie thinks it goes really well with numeracy because the notes show quarters and that is funny! Yousef tells us that this is because the rhythms have four notes in them.

In French, Rhys is proud that he is now able to write down the question, “Quel age as-tu?” which means, “How old are you?”. Armeen is able to write the answer, “J’ai sept ans.”

On Safer Internet Day Heather learnt a lot from the story we read which showed some children getting upset at mean messages that had been posted about their pictures on the Internet. As Sofia will tell you, “You have to always be careful on the internet and be careful what you post.” Amna and the rest of the class each randomly picked the name of a classmate and then wrote kind messages about them on the class discussion list for everyone to enjoy.

We have been learning more about different Scottish inventors with Miss Dunn. Breac is proud that he is able to produce a timeline that shows what year Scottish inventions were invented. Daniel used a ruler to draw lines for his timeline and then showed all the different dates going along it.

Excitingly, we are Growing (Y)our Own Potatoes! GYOP provided us with two varieties – Rocket and the local variety called Swift. As Ailey said, “We chitted them on the window sill for two weeks.” Anshi was excited to see all the chits (shoots) that have appeared on the seed potatoes. Everyone loved the mess made by the compost as we planted them in the special Hado bags we got. We have decided that it is too cold in Glasgow to put them outside just now, as they suggested, so we are keeping them in the classroom at the moment. Watch this space as we keep track on their growth through the Beneath the Soil project.

Talking of growth, we are looking forward to exploring more about plants as part of our part in the Church Spring Service – we hope to see you there to find out all about our learning!

 

Out of school, our achievements are wonderful as ever!!!

ACTIVE = Lucy has been getting faster on her bike. Ruaridh is really good in goals at football and managed to save a great shot. Heather went to Cuningar Loop and climbed to the top of a boulder without using the hand grips.

ACHIEVING = Lucy has gone up a level in swimming and Anshi has now done three levels! Ruadhan has now learnt the note ‘d’ on his guitar. Sofia has passed her dancing exam. Logan L climbed an indoor climbing wall for the first time. Breac has learned how to do Michael Jackson’s moonwalk! Callum has been writing his very own Mr Penguin story. Sam is practising for his Grade 1 in the violin.

HEALTHY = Josh has achieved more than his 120 minute active goal. Eleena is getting better at cricket, being a batsman and Erion is getting faster at swimming.

INCLUDED = Sam has got a place at GAMTA for drama, dancing and singing, following an audition.

RESPONSIBLE = Rio has been mowing the lawn. Ella has been helping out at home by putting her clothes away and keeping her room tidy. Eleena has been tidying up at home without even being told. Millie is an avid reader and has been learning life lessons from the recent books she has enjoyed.

NURTURING = Ella has shown some real responsibility by caring for her fish, feeding then and cleaning out their tank and Nimra has been a huge help with her Auntie’s new baby, Ibrheem.

 

Literacy and Numeracy

Our learning in these areas will draw upon the contexts listed above but will differ according to the needs of each class / group. Your support with consolidation of core learning through homework activities will be very beneficial to our children.

Article 13

You have the right to find out things and say what you think, through making art, speaking and writing unless it breaks the rights of others.

Please click on this link to find the clip about this week’s talking homework.

https://sway.com/MabhEEeJvx2maZ5M?ref=Link