On Monday 3rd October Primary 5 went to Hillend for their first skiing lesson! They had to listen carefully to all the instructions about getting the right size of boot, how to attach the boot to the ski and how to put on their helmet.  On the slope they learned how step sidewards to go up the hill then how to move down the slope. It was very impressive to watch as everyone had a go! We are already looking forward to our second session next week on Monday 10th October. Remember to bring gloves to protect your hands.

As part of Outdoor Learning Week, Primary 5 took themselves outside to the playground to use their environment as a resource for learning. The focus was on developing a sense of how long something takes by measuring the time it takes to complete the activity. The children thought of activities, estimated how long it would take then timed each other. The activities included pointing to 5 blue items, running to the MUGA and touching 10 trees. The challenge was to calculate how much faster or slower they were and how long would it take them to do even more of the same activity. There were lots skills developed and learning taking place including cooperation, reading and writing of numbers, estimating, calculating, measuring time and all whilst having fun!

Over the last couple of weeks we have been reading the Michael Morpurgo book ‘The Wreck of the Zanzibar’ as a novel study. The story has got us all really engaged and we are all really eager to find out what happens next! We have been writing informative reports about The Leatherback Turtle to tie into our novel! Lots of great reports were written using the correct style and features!

Well, the time finally came – the grand finale to our Sixties Day!

It has been a busy couple of weeks continuing to learn about the sixties. We spent time learning about the space race, completed art showing VW vans, twiggy and designing our own sixties shoes, as well as learning about JFK. We wrote biographies about JFK to show what we knew.

We completed research in our home teams, each team focusing on two years of the sixties. We researched the key events and were able to complete a timeline showing all of the events.

Wow! What another busy week in Primary Five. Thank you to everyone who came to Meet the Teacher on Tuesday night – so lovely to meet you. The year plan will be up here soon for you to have a look at.

We are planning to have a Sixties Day on Wednesday 7th October. A letter will be sent out next week explaining everything!

We have been looking at some key areas of the sixties this week and have been researching using iPads and computers. We have looked at transport, fashion, money, shopping and technology and used our information to make posters to inform others.

P5A have been enjoying playing their times tables games that they created at home. They look great!

Primary 5 began their visible learning journey in the last couple of weeks. We began by reading “I Can’t Do This” by K Walton and “My Fantastic Elastic Brain” to learn about what it means to have a growth and a fixed mindset and to think about how our brains work.

We split up some key phrases to decide the difference between a growth and a fixed mindset and created a song, rap or poem that we can use to celebrate when we are using a growth mindset. Already we are hearing lots of growth mindset phrases being used in our everyday learning, such as “I’m not able to put fractions on a number line yet, but I will be able to do it soon”.

We have also been thinking about how our brain works and how challenges are good for us to help our brains grow! We have discussed how we want to display our work around growth mindsets and the brain so have a look soon for photos!

Primary 5 started learning about the Swinging Sixties this week! We had lots of great discussion about what we already knew, what we wanted to find out and how we wanted to learn.

The children were really excited to share their ideas! They are keen to learn about what school, fashion, toys and cars were around in the sixties and really fancy having a 60s dress up day in school. We had better get the hairspray looked out!

Welcome to the new blog for the Primary 5 classes at Hawthornden Primary School