P5B Class Blog November 2017
We have been exploring the topic of healthy eating lately, revisiting the main food groups and finding out more about their benefits. Dougal: “We discussed what the word DIET means and learned that it has various meanings such as what you normally eat, or eating a restricted selection of food for medical reasons, personal choice (such as vegetarianism) or for religious reasons.”
We started our new topic on Fairtrade with a visit from Josh from Rainbow Turtle in Paisley who told us lots about what Fairtrade is and does and how much work is involved before things like chocolate bars reach supermarket shelves. Finn: “We know that when we buy Fairtrade products the workers get paid a fair wage.” Olivia: “We drew the Fairtrade symbol and noted what each part represents.” Phoebe: “We put pictures of the journey from Cocoa seed to chocolate bars in shops into order. We learned what cocoa pods and beans looked like and how much work was involved in the process.”
Through our research into animal adaptations the children have developed their skills in recognising how animals are equipped to survive, how to use search words to locate the information required, how to take notes using headings and key words only, how to organise information into logical sections and how to transfer information into your own words. They have used their ICT skills to present their findings using Sway, a new presentation app that everyone is enjoying using. Maya: “We had a homework task to design an animal to survive on an imaginary planet to show what we have learned about how animal adaptations help them survive.” Leena: “We have been researching animals online to find out about animal adaptations and have put the information into a Sway document.” Billy: “We are learning how to use Sway. We know how to put images into it and text.” Andrew: “We can also make a picture stack.”
We have some keen actors in our class who have enjoyed our recent drama activities to develop skills in creativity and expression. Noah: “We have been enjoying doing some action songs such as Boomchikaboom.” Ruby: “We made up plays about how to deal with negative situations to help us when this happens in our own lives.”
We have been developing our French vocabulary to include parts of the body, including reading and writing texts. Iain: “We made monsters and labelled their body parts in French then wrote a description.” Zara: “This activity helped us to develop our knowledge of the French words for parts of the body.”
To conclude our Blob book study we all took part in a hotseating activity. This helped to develop skills in interpreting information given about characters in texts. The children completed character studies then had to answer questions from the class as that character. Amy: “We got into groups and were given a character from Blob. We took turns sitting in the ‘Hot Seats’ and had to answer questions as our character. I thought it was really fun.”
Through our work in Numeracy and Mathematics we have been exploring concepts including measuring length, time, and multiplication strategies. Izaan: “I’ve learned how to measure in mm and cm. You have to be very exact because mm are so small. I’m really confident with it now.” Andrew: “I’ve been learning more about telling the time and finding information on calendars. It was really tricky to begin with but now I understand it.” Iain: “I’ve enjoyed learning about equilateral and isosceles triangles. I feel confident in identifying them and describing their properties.” When introduced to the long multiplication strategy, some pupils found it very tricky on their first attempt, but showed a remarkable jump in confidence during the second lesson. Scott: “We’ve all been learning how to do long multiplication. It’s fun and helps make tricky calculations easier.” We also worked in mixed groups to discuss problems and share our knowledge of the strategies we have been learning. Abdullah: “We got into groups and chose a calculation then had to show all the different strategies we could use to solve it.”
Awesome Achievements
Izaan is really proud that he achieved a place on the St Cadoc’s football team. Sherwain is proud to have started piano lessons and is looking forward to learning his first song. Chloe and Natalie are excited to be learning how to perform an aerial (no handed cartwheel) on the beam at gymnastics. And Abdullah is now able to hold his breath underwater for 20 seconds, helping him to complete underwater swimming challenges.
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.
Article 29: You have the right to education which develops your personality, respect for other’s rights and the environment.
