This week I have seen a big improvement in homework and this is very noticeable in their class work especially reading comprehension skills. We have been thinking about our future and completed a quiz to work out our talents and what job would suit us. The quiz gave us an animal as an comparison we had lots of bears who are caring and protective of others but have tenacity.

Mental maths is continuing to improve revising previous terms topics. This week we learnt about tangrams a Chinese puzzle made out of 7 geometric shapes. The puzzle pieces could be rearranged to make mountains, houses and nearly every animal you can think of. This developed our visual spatial awareness thinking about patterns and relationship between shapes.

Continuing with our topic changes this week’s science experiment looked the affect of environment on mould growth on bread. We learnt about the importance of a control and subjected our bread to unwashed hands, the classroom floor and even licked it! We had some bread left over so each pair chose a surface these decisions were well thought through including the handrail outside. We eagerly await the results in 2 weeks’ time to see if our predictions are correct.

Expressive Arts focused on a big change in our lives the process of aging. As a class we watched a video which showed a girl age speeded up from 3 years to 80 years. At the start the change was gradual but then alarmingly ramped up. We were each given half of an elderly persons face and had to complete the rest ensuring the proportions were correct which was tricky at first.

Hello from Primary 4/5. This week we kicked off with a juicy debate which became our writing assessment task. The subject ‘Should parents be allowed to limit their children’s screen time?’ Many arguments were impassioned as points included parents are not always a credible role model as they often excessively indulge in their phones and social media! A lot of new vocabulary was explored including hypocritical and ironic. We had a fun time with a lot of laughter. To improve our writing, a lesson was included on synonyms (replacement words) which are now displayed in the class as visual prompts for future tasks.

Numeracy has focused on mental maths cementing the link between multiplication and division. Our times tables are rapidly improving which is helping in our day-to-day maths lessons. Our topic has a STEM theme we are exploring changeable weather and commenced with a science activity to create our own Tsunami. Many of the class commented that this is the messiest lesson ever but many were successful and we made mini mangroves to stop the full the force of the Tsunami. Please note parents if there is a untidy bedroom, I have seen first hand super tidying up skills so you would never know a Tsunami had hit our classroom.

We are approaching our music concert so have been practising our songs and discussing the words which relate to motivation, self-belief, caring for the world and tolerance. Active schools PE is a continued success and we have many budding footballers. Bryanna homework task included making her own game which we shared with the class and played together. It had educational brownie points as it included maths skills. Well done Bryanna and all of Primary 4/5 who have worked very hard this week.

We have had a busy week following from our Scottish dancing. We have learnt about Scottish artists including Steven Brown and his famous ‘highland coo’. We were inspired by his work and designed our own versions and gave them a name. As this was thirsty work we enjoyed Scottish treats including Irn Bru, oatcakes and macaroons.

Our literacy tasks included writing a balanced argument from the question ‘Should dogs be kept on leads in public places?’. This led to a great discussion and our writing included our real-life experiences. We looked at local news stories including rehoming a snake called Taz, we answered and came up with our very own comprehension questions. We finished our book ‘The Man’ and were surprised that he left to pester someone else as although he was a nuisance he was a loveable character.

In Numeracy we focused on estimation and how it can be used in our future jobs. We guessed the number of sweets in the jar so if there is ever a competition we will be force to be reckoned with! We have been building confidence with time and made our own clocks.

Our topic ‘The world In Motion’ has focused on change and we concluded that everything in life changes. In our class we have a book called the ‘Miracle of Life’ which is popular during reading time. We watched a video of the growth of a baby in the womb and were amazed at God’s wonderful creation of life. We have also written our storyboard based on the creation story.

We are very lucky as Emma from St Columba’s Active schools is sharing all her PE skills and will join us each week for PE. This will link to our current Health and Wellbeing topic team work as Together Everyone Achieves More.

We were sad to say goodbye to Mrs Arnold this week but we will still see her as she is teaching Primary 1. We look forward to welcoming Mrs Hendry next week.