On Monday, to celebrate the beginning of book week, we made movies on IMovie to document why we read texts/books, and then we divided ourselves into small groups and made still mimes about a chosen genre of story book (fairytales), and then we made them come to life! (Saad K)

We went to the library because it’s book week, and we selected new books for our personal collections, but also books related to our learning; The British Empire, minerals and metals for Science. (Sakeena)

We began planning our class assembly on Homelessness, which will be taking place next Tuesday. We were brainstorming different ideas for presenting. (Zainab)

We watched a documentary by Stacey Dooley on Homelessness and made notes about the different characters’; Josh, Millie and Shelby (Rayan)

We were discussing what we would be making for the Christmas Fayre. (Anum)

We introduced budgeting and Money into our Maths work, and we went onto Sky Scanner to find Miss Cohen a cheap getaway destination for the Christmas holidays! (Salahudin)

We continued practicing our Athletics skills, but learned how to pass the relay baton whilst running. It looks a lot easier than it actually feels when passing to your team mate on the spot!

We did a class Secret Santa, where we’ll all buy a special someone from P7 a gift and exchange them! Date to be confirmed! £7 is our budget, wow we are relating everything to money and spending! (Amina)

Mimi, Taqwah, Saleeha, Sakeena, Anum, Rayan, Maha, Saad S, Arhum, Eshaal and Miss Cohen went to visit the Govanhill Swap Market as part of a Social Enterprise and Employability skills trip. We were learning about their cashless system where community members can swap and donate items/skills/services. We are hoping to create our very own St Albert’s currency, and recreate this business model to suit our local community and context. The services provided and exchanged can be available to our whole St Albert’s community (teachers, pupils, parents, partners). A very exciting project indeed!

And, of course, we finished off our trip with an ESSENTIAL trip to the park. Hello Friday – we are very much looking forward to the weekend!

Happy Fri-YAY! Enjoy your weekends and I’ll see you all for more fun next week 🙂

Miss Cohen

Nethy Bridge

As requested from parents following today’s meeting, here is a short video about Abernethy Outdoor Activity Centre.

I really hope you are feeling more relaxed and positive about this once in a lifetime trip and opportunity for Primary 7 pupils!

Miss Cohen 🙂

I can’t express in words how proud I am of Saad Khan and Zeenat Akbar in their performances at last night’s Public Speaking Competition.

Saad introduced Zeenat amazingly, inviting the audience to listen to Zeenat’s story with an open mind and heart on the theme of homelessness. Zeenat held the stage beautifully, speaking about a personal matter with such courage and passion. I feel lucky to be teaching such incredibly inspiring pupils, they really are walking and breathing our school’s values about promoting social justice and conscience. WOW!

Well done again, if only every young person and leader in society was more like you both!

What a successful evening  we had here in the school, hosting the “Wee Sleep Out”, as part of Social Bite’s initiative to help the homeless in Scotland. We have raised well over £500 so far, thank you so much for your generous donations!

Thank you so much to our wonderful staff members and partners who made the experience so enjoyable and entertaining; Miss Cohen, Miss McCue, Miss Webster, Miss Bull, Mrs McFadden, Mr Stewart, Mrs Harker,  Mr McCormack, Ben from Village Storytelling, Liam (our Samba enthusiast), Sabrina and Erin (on vocals, WOW) and Kate (our Yoga teacher). We couldn’t have  pulled it off without your help and enthusiasm!

And of course, our PARTICIPANTS!! Well done for raising money and awareness of such an important cause; helping the homeless and developing conscience-led communities.

We even featured in the Evening Times newspaper this morning, for our efforts;

St Alberts

Literacy

We were learning about the phoneme ‘ee’, and the different ways we may see it spelt in texts (ie, ei, y, e, ea); Aibak

On Wednesday, we were making some notes in preparation for writing a diary entry next week.  (Tanzeel) We are going to write a diary entry from a slave as they are crossing the Middle Passage (Atlantic Ocean); Hafsa

We’re learning about the British Empire. At Miss Cohen’s group we looked at pictures and spotted clues and keywords about the experience of being on a slave ship; Mimi

Mr Stewart was showing us some diary entries. We learned that it can be in first person. It can be long or short and it can be quite detailed or in simple note form; Ryan, Dilya

Some people describe where (the setting) they are writing from when writing a diary; Saad Soofi

We were reading an extract from a book titled ‘Lose your Mother’; Zainab

We were trying to redraft the sophisticated blurb written by the NY times using child friendly language; Hussain

We were connecting, hot-seating (we brainstormed questions that we would like to ask a slave and Bosman, the leader of the Dutch Empire), predicting and understanding.

Numeracy

We learned how to find the area of a triangle. We do this by using the formula; half (0.5) x base x height; Abeera

We used our knowledge of area and applied to finding the area of a parallelogram; Anum

We’ve been converting; 10s, 100s, 1000s.

If you multiply a number, by 10, the decimal point moves one place to the right.

If you divide a number, by 10, it moves one place to the left.

It teaches you about decimal numbers; Maidah, and also place value; Hussain

We made our own batch of homemade soup in prep for the Wee Sleep Out (Laiba, Hafsa, Amina, Dylan, Aibak, Umar, Musa, Saad) using onions, sweet potato and carrot. YUM!

We watched a screening of Isaac’s film, ‘Eleven’, on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s a summary of our comments, what we enjoyed about it and what we learned from watching it;

“It was really funny” – Mimi

I liked the part when he was singing at the end, and then said “that’s bad, we’re leaving” – Almaas

“When he asked Siri if he could fart” – Zainab

“I liked seeing when Isaac had a tantrum” – Aibak

 “Isaac was off for a week when he was in hospital”  – Dylan “Now he’s able to walk and walk to the sofa in Class 2”

“The chair in the house that helps you to access upstairs” – Saleeha

 We noticed Isaac’s need for routine. He didn’t like it when there was a change, and got quite upset.

“Is there going to be a sequel?” – Saad Khan

“I’ve seen many movies produced in this school, but I have never seen a film that feels like you are watching an actual live film; it had 5 star comedy, 5 star masterpiece – I loved it! It had time in it, it had structure (5secs each clip), it was phenomenal!!” – Saad Khan

Monday

On Monday, Miss Cohen went to the Glasgow South Football trials with Dylan, Tylor and Emaan. They played really well, and were up against some fierce competition. They worked together and showed great sportsmanship at the event! Best of luck with the selection in the next week!

We started our Topic work, exploring countries that the British Empire had invaded and taken power over. We discussed the reasons why certain countries were desirable and what resources the BE might be looking for; coal, gold, diamond, land, people (slaves/workforce), minerals, money etc. We also analysed the positives that came from land invasion – to have a more balanced opinion of this historical movement.

We also began training for the Super 7s Athletics competition in January – and practiced key events like sprinting, relay, javelin throw, shot put and hurdles. Primary 7 are a very agile and fit class – it’s going to be a tough decision to choose who will represent us in the Heats.

Wednesday’s Halloween Celebrations

On Wednesday, we had a busy day prepping for the Miracle foundation Halloween fundraiser, a charity very close to our hearts.

We ran stalls and activities to raise money for an amazing cause; dooking for apples, wrap your friend up like a zombie challenge, the lucky dip cauldron slime, a photo booth and pin the tail on the werewolf/pin the broom on the witch! We raised over £330.00! Well done Primary 7 and 6/7 for all your efforts…what a success!

In the morning, as part of a creative Writing lesson, we studied an extract from Macbeth’s ‘The Witches’, where witches are casting a spell. We decided to write and create our own original spells, using poetic features such as alliteration, metaphors, personification, onomatopoeia and rhyme. We then recorded ourselves casting these spells, using the green screen to create a scary haunted house backdrop, it looked really impressive! We made a bubbling, fizzing potion by mixing vinegar, baking soda, some washing up liquid and hot water…it was pretty stinky!

IMG_7465

Thursday

On Thursday, Alice from Social Bite visited P5-P7 to chat to us about our upcoming ‘Wee Sleep Out’ event. She wanted to share with us what service Social Bite provide. We learned about the amazing cafes and restaurants that are open in Scotland, which feed over 35,000  homeless people a year. All pupils were so attentive and asked some very important questions;

“Where do you see Social Bite in 10 years time?” – Saad Khan

“How many people are homeless in Scotland?” – Kayden

“Do children have to stay in the same temporary accommodation as adults?” – Lulu

Some Primary 7s (Musa, Hussain, Sakeena) recorded an advert for the Wee Sleep Out event with Mr McCormack. Please check it out and show your parents – it’s on the school Twitter page! Miss Cohen will also be handing out paper donation forms for those who wish to sponsor our exciting fundraising event which will be held on Thursday 8th November. If you’d like to visit our page and make a donation online, the link is https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/stalbertspri

This week in Numeracy, we have been studying Area and Perimeter. We consolidated skills in addition and multiplication, and implemented several different formulas to solve number problems involving measurement. We know that;

-To calculate the area of a 2D shape like a square or rectangle – we can multiply its length by its breadth.

-To calculate the perimeter of a 2D shape, we can add the length of the edges.

-We must add units of measurement to our answers, and sometimes convert questions to a standard unit i.e. cm, m, km. This involves being able to effectively multiply and divide by 10 and 100.

We played a game in pairs which was a race against the grid. Pairs had to roll a dice, multiply the two roll numbers together, and therefore draw the corresponding area onto squared paper. The first person to reach the middle line of the page, after adding on all their shapes’ areas Tetris style, would win the challenge!

Friday

On Friday afternoon, half of Primary 7 were given the opportunity to go along to the Havana Film Festival at the CCA in Glasgow. This film festival documented the collaboration between Pollokshields Primary, Colegio Hernandez (Valencia) and another school in Havana, Cuba. They had made short films to discuss key historical connections and events that linked both Scotland and Spain.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Miss Cohen

Primary 7 were lucky to attend a Storytelling session with Ben and Geeta Ramanujam, an Indian guest. Geeta was amazing to listen to, and really funny! She told a laugh out loud tale about her experiences at school, and sitting beside her friend Ragu (who was generously big and had two sticky out teeth). They had a head to head collision and Ragu’s front teeth were found in her head when she split it open…crazy huh?!

It’s really inspirational that Geeta has found a job that she LOVES doing. She said that telling stories keeps her feeling young, and she likes to make people smile! Well she certainly did that on Thursday afternoon.

During this morning’s assembly, Mrs Martin and Mr Stewart showed you the following video;

This week, our school focus is ‘Being Active’. How does playing sport benefit your body (physical) and brain (mental)? Summarize your findings from the video in a few bullet points.

Are you part of a team? Have you experienced any of the benefits suggested in the video? Write a blurb about your personal sporting triumphs.

If you have a tablet/smartphone – try listening to the following podcast on Spotify, OverCast or Castbox (all free applications you can download straight onto your device)

Deliciously Ella – The science behind why exercise is good for your body and your mind, with Dr. Brendan Stubbs.

It is very informative about the above theme. Record and comment on facts and statistics you learn throughout the listening experience about the benefits of physical exercise on your mental well-being!

Monday

We started off Outdoor Learning week by having an Outdoor Assembly on Monday morning with Mrs Harker. We sang some songs! I’d like to learn ‘Head, shoulders, knees and toes’ in French during Term 2…we should do that!

During Maths time, we used our knowledge of finding the volume of cuboids (length x breadth x height), to measure the volume of different cuboids in the outdoor area; Mrs Harker’s car, the football pitch, the climbing wall, the sheltered area and the gardening shed…to name a few! We used trundle wheels and measuring tapes to do this.

For P.E., we set up our Circuits outdoors and Miss Cohen played some motivational music from her speakers! This kept us going through those tough tricep dip exercises, ooft!!

In the afternoon, we met Mr. McCormack in the hall to have a run through with more space to move and boogie. We rehearsed in rows, like a Samba band would, and this gave us more freedom to dance and perform. The improvement was tremendous!

Tuesday

We have been learning about 3D shapes and their properties in Maths. We went oudoors to make 3D shape nets using natural materials! The straightforward shapes like the square based pyramid were pretty easy to do, but the octahedron was reeeeeeally tricky!

In preparation for Wednesday’s geocaching adventures, we practiced map reading inside using Google Maps and the Geocaching app. We discussed that directions can also be given using different mediums – one of which being a co-ordinate grid. We played battleships with our partner to revise using co-ordinates to find one another’s ships! Miss Cohen became really confused because people kept shouting “Miss” when they missed a boat, not because they wanted her attention lol!

Wednesday

We went geocaching to Queen’s Park on Wednesday morning, with Primary 6/7 and Primary 6. We used our phones to track and map different geocaching locations in the park, and went on the hunt for treasure. My group managed to find FIVE geocachers, woooop!

We will be writing instructions on how to Geocache tomorrow, and will post some excellent examples of this on the blog. Watch this space…

Thursday

In a bid to improve the Outdoor space in our upper school playground, we have decided to upcycle tyres to create a model similar to this…

In order to do this, we split up into teams. Artists started by painting the tyres;

We cleaned them beforehand to get rid of any excess oil or dirt!

We dug a patch of land outside the sensory garden and transported the land to the tyres, ready for filling next time! A lot of hard graft…we were sweating!

Stay tuned for progress on our project, we’re hoping to complete it soon!

Overall, a really enjoyable OLW had by all. And it is true what they say, the fresh air definitely makes you feel more tired!

What were your fave moments of OLW?

Was there anything you would have done differently?

Anything you would have liked to do but didn’t get the chance?

We’ve been developing our talking and listening skills this Term, in prep for a public speaking competition in Holyrood (for those who wish to participate).

Here’s some vids of us in action playing the ’30 second chat’ game, where you have to choose a random subject from the hat and talk about it for thirty seconds. Trust us, it’s a lot harder than it sounds!

They did really well under the pressure of the clock. Why don’t you challenge a family member to try the same activity, giving them a theme or a statement to discuss!