Another week of learning at home. It is great to see signs of learning, in the e-Portfolios, Teams and Minecraft.
I particularly liked some of responses to the photo challenge.
We wrote a great poem in Teams which I’ll post here soon (just waiting for a picture to be sent to me).
Part of a photo challenge
Minecraft Mansion
Scratch Pattern
photo challenge
Pairs (photo challenge)
photo challenge
drawing
Angry (photo challenge)
Pairs (photo challenge)
Drawing
School DEsign
My favourite bit of the week might have been when Heather & Hazel tried to get me to wear a School Uniform in Minecraft (not my comfort zone). After I failed to follow their very straightforward instructions the made a video to show me how and dropped that into Teams. If teaching online is a bit out of my comfort zone, being taught in Minecraft is way out!
Me in my uniform, Hazel explaining how to get into a cart (This took a while and a coffee break!
I am changing the order of the learning this week. Can you think why?
Art
Drawing Challenge
See if you can draw every day this week. Just spend 5 or 10 minutes sitting quietly sketching some objects in front of you. Use a pencil. look at the lines. Draw what is there.
Do you remember how we made observational drawing in class. How much you needed to concentrate and how quiet it was? Choose an object or collect a few together and try and make a pencil drawing. Start by looking carefully. Don’t worry if things are not perfect. Here are some examples from previous years:
We have not had much of a response to the work on the Scottish Parliament. So I’ve have uploaded this NHS topic from North Lanarkshire. You could work on this over the next few weeks. Try to organise the work you do. You could make a folder or put it on your e-Portfolio and make a NHS category. There are some Social Science tasks, Health & Wellbeing ones and some Expressive Arts.
Minecraft Education Edition
Virtual Banton is coming along nicely. Well done to those involved so far. If you want to join in check in Teams for times the server is open and the join code. There is a school, houses, roads and a pub.
Health & Well Being
Hop Snake a game I found in the park.
Think of a creative way to keep fit. What can you do differently this week. Can you make an obstacle course in your garden or a creative routine of exercises. Take photos, write a list or draw a plan. Post to your e-Portfolio.
or
Choose one exercise. Do it for 5 minutes everyday. Do you get better? fed up?
Choose a book you have read during lockdown and tell us about it. Think of an interesting way to do this. You could make a comic, record your voice, create a presentation, make a movie or even write about it.
Don’t just try and do this quickly, take your time and make a really good job of it. Start one day, look at what you have done the next and see if you can make it better.
Writing
Write a recount or report. Think of something you have done since lockdown began where you have learnt something you would not have learnt in school. Here are the Features of a Good Recount.
Maths
Daily Maths
Sumdog We are not using Sumdog very much! Might be an idea to start practising for Sumdog’s mathematics contest for North Lanarkshire which starts next Friday, May 15.
As usual I am enjoying seeing your e-Portfolio work and ‘meeting’ you in Teams. I also saw some of you in Minecraft this week. I am out of my depth there, but it is amazing to see how fast you build things and you seem really good at working together. I am going to try and take a walk down the road you built me so that I can see what you are up to. Hopefully we can get some more folk in this week.
We will try some more assignments in Teams this week. I’ll go over how these work in Tuesdays’s meeting.
Please take your time reading this. Go over it with an adult if you can. Listen to the audio version if that helps. Take your time there is a lot to take in.
Watch the clip and answer the questions. We will discuss some of the questions in one of the meets this week. Watch the clip first!
Write at least three (more for p 6 & 7) of your answers to the questions out fully: As Moana walks onto the beach, we can see the shadow of the birds on the sand. Why do you think the filmmaker does this? As Moana walks onto the beach I think the filmmaker shows the shadows of the birds because…
Try writing the types of poem that Joseph Coelho explains in the video. One with onomatopoeia an one with nonsense. Have fun, say them out loud, try recording them if you can.
You could type up you poem and add it to your e-Portfolio.
North Lanarkshire Learning hub are having literacy challenges, you could give them a go.
Choose one of the topics on Newsround today and research more about it.
Create a poster or fact file with information and pictures on the subject.
Maths
Daily Maths
Sumdog We are not using Sumdog very much! Might be an idea to start practising for Sumdog’s mathematics contest for North Lanarkshire which starts next Friday, May 15.
I’ve put some of the suggested Art activities on another page:
Health & Wellbeing
Make a ‘Learning at Home’ time capsule / diary. Fill it with pictures, thoughts and feelings about the reasons behind us not being at school at the moment. Add to it whenever you want to remember something about this time.
It could be a box full of pieces of paper, bits of newspaper with recent new, writing or you could make or find a wee book.
ICT
e-Mail some of you have sent me an e-mail, I’d like everyone to try please.
Scratch
I don’t think anyone tried the Scratch for last week, please give it a go you should be able to get better effects than me if you play about a bit.
You can get a sprite to “stamp” its image. So you can paint with a sprite. Here is my example.
You need to add the pen blocks to get the stamp. You could have more than one sprite. I’ve used lots of randoms. I am sure you can make something more interesting. (Add a sound).
You can see inside my project. Or watch a video of me making another project like this one.
What an amazing class. The Biggies have posted nearly 180 posts to their e-Portfolios since the school closed. Some children even posted over the holidays. This post should give you a bit of an idea about the range of things they have been learning about in that time. They have certainly kept me busy reading their work! This is a small section of things they have posted.
The featured image above is Alice & Ben’s rainbow gate!
I know there are other children who are too busy learning with and helping their family to add to their blogs and have been in touch with the school in other ways. I am looking forward to hearing about their adventure when we get back to normal. Meanwhile my favourite part of the day is Biggie Blog reading. See the Gallery
It was good to hear quite a few of you in our daily video conferences last week. I am going to try and keep these up.
It has been great reading all of the e-Portfolio posts 18 of you managed to make at least one post and some people posted much more. I’d recommend you have a look, these are lots of ideas on how to record your learning, some lovely art and some funny jokes in scratch. Please leave you classmates some comments.
Please take your time reading this. Go over it with an adult if you can. Listen to the audio version if that helps. Take your time there is a lot to take in. There are a lot of different activities, I don’t expect you to do them all. Try to do some maths, language and something else each day.
We will try some assignments in Teams this week. I’ll go over how these work in Monday’s meeting. These will let you do some work and “Hand it in” to me for marking.
We will also try to work together in Minecraft, the test went quite well on Friday. This could be good fun.
A Symphony of Trees. – Free Online Library Read the poem again. Create a response to it. This could be art, or your own poem, or make a poster of the poem and lable interesting things (alliteration, rhyme etc)
You could type up you story and add it to your e-Portfolio.
Literacy across learning : YouTube or Harry Potter
Try one of these activities:
Record Breaking Research –Find out who the top 10 YouTubers are. What genre do they present? How may followers? How much money have they made? Etc.
Discuss self-confidence.What does it mean? Are you a confident person or not? What can you do to help if you don’t feel confident? Can you be over confident?
New Vocabulary –Choose your favourite character from Harry Potter and think of interesting words to describe them. E.g. what do they look like? their personality, their actions etc.
In Harry Potter and the Chamber ofSecrets,Ron Weasley’s Dad secretly owns an enchanted muggle car that can fly! Imagine you could enchant an everyday object. Draw your design and write about the magical properties that you have given it
Scottish Parliament If you did not do the task from last week please try and do it.
There will be a quiz in teams about the Scottish Parliament as an Assignment.
Art
Google pictures of the Scottish parliament. It is an amazing building. Design a really modern building yourself. You could design a new school. Think about making it look really cool on the outside. You might like to think about how the classrooms are designed too. Do you want a square room with square tables? What sort of spaces would you like to have. Have fun.
Happy Faces
Today's art lesson is inspired by @MrCreighton1 & @NewStevenstonPr. Follow the steps to make cute wee emotive faces that you can use to bring objects in your home to life or even use on your next walk! I had a lot of fun doing this and we hope you will too! 🎨 @ThornliePrimarypic.twitter.com/c00bNh2YGI
What Makes you relax
Keep a note of what you do to relax all week ,you might like to try Flow on GoNoodle, perhaps with your family. At the end of the week look back and see how much you have done. What did you enjoy most, what do you think was most effective.
ICT
e-Mail This week I’d like you to practise using your glow email. e-Mail me, you could send some work you have been doing or a photo to share.
Log onto Glow and use the mail icon to open your email. Try to figure out how to send me an email, bonus point for sending a picture with it!
Scratch
You can get a sprite to “stamp” its image. So you can paint with a sprite. Here is my example.
You need to add the pen blocks to get the stamp. You could have more than one sprite. I’ve used lots of randoms. I am sure you can make something more interesting. (Add a sound).
Hi Biggies,
As usual I hope you are all well. It was great to hear some of you in the video conference last week.
Please take your time reading this. Go over it with an adult if you can. Listen to the audio version if that helps. Take your time there is a lot to take in.
I would like you to post two or three things to your e-portfolio each week. This will help you build up a record of your learning over time. There are suggestions of things to post below. You can post about anything else too. I’ve really enjoyed reading all the posts so far.
You can contact me by e-mail, I’ll be in Teams every day. You can get Help with Glow
Make a Visualiser about a character in the book you are reading. You can decide the best layout, here are a couple of ways you could do it: Visualiser
Yellow & Blue Groups: Write a beginning middle & end for a chapter or short book Green & Red: Write the main ideas for a chapter of your book then write a summary. Write a summary of one of the chapters you are reading.
Octagons, Hexagons & Pentagons Area in square centimetres Area is the size of a surface.
Two Worksheets: Using a Ruler, Measure Area
Triangles & Squares
Area & Perimeter
Find some rectangles around your home. Measure their widths and heights
Work out the Area, remember Area = width x height
Work out the Permiter
Can you make a factsheet, movie, presentation or something else to explain what the Scottish Parliament is. Who goes there, what it is for. Talk to people in your family. Here are some links to get you started.
Hopefully you have found a good way to keep fit, it might be Joe Wicks, going for a walk or something else. Keep a record of what you do for exercise this week. At the end of the week look back and see how much you have done. What did you enjoy most, what do you think was most effective.
Please take your time reading this. Go over it with an adult if you can. Listen to the audio version if that helps. Take your time there is a lot to take in.
We have been away from school for four weeks now. I am going to try and give you ideas for about two hours learning every day.
This week the focus should be getting into a routine. Discuss with your parents and carers how you are going to fit in some learning every day.
I would like you to post two or three things to your e-portfolio each week. This will help you build up a record of your learning over time. There are suggestions of things to post below. You can post about anything else too. I’ve really enjoyed reading all the posts so far.
You can contact me by e-mail, I’ll be in Teams every day. You can get Help with Glow
Make a reading record for the week. Each day spend some time reading, note the book and pages you read. Try to read a book rather than the internet if you can.
Each day choose one interesting word from your reading. Do one of the following:
Write a sentence using the word in a completely different way from the book.
Make a mind map about the word.
Write the meaning of the word as if you were making a dictionary, remember to explain what kind of word it is, noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc.
Write an acrostic poem using the word.
If you can get online do a ReadTheory quiz every day.
You can read Epic! as well. Let me know if you have forgotten your login details. We may be using Epic so make sure your logon works.
Writing
This week we are going to complete two pieces of writing. Work on them for a couple of days each.
On Friday choose the one you like best, check it over, and put it on your e-Portfolio.
Write a diary of how you spent one day.
Look out of your window write about what you see, hear, feel and think. This could be a poem if you like.
Spelling
Each group has a list of the week, you can use the games on Spelling City for the list, or do some fun spelling tasks, diacritical marking for phonics, or think up strategies for common words. Do something with your list word every day and try and get someone to test you on Friday.
On Monday choose a table. Time how long it takes to say it out loud. The whole table, not just stations. Everyday practise, chant it, write it out, get someone to pass you random questions or use the different pages on ibanton.surge.sh if you like. On Friday time yourself again. We will do this for a different table every week. You can post your best time to Teams on Fridays.
Chilli challenge
Number Talks Chilli Challenge this week subtraction. Do the three questions everyday. One day write down an explanation of how you did it in the same way we do in class. You can put that explanation on your e-Portfolio.
Calculations
Practise, adding, subtraction, multiplication and division every day. Just do a little. 10 minutes. Use Gimme some sums or get someone to make some random numbers up for you. Use the formal method for addition and subtraction don’t use your mental skills, keep them for the chilli challenge.
Measure
find 10 things in your house less than a metre long. measure them to the nearest centimetre. Arrange them in order of size. Either take a photo of them with labels beside them with the sizes marked or write a list of the sizes. Remember to put in the units of measurement, cm You could put this on your e-Portfolio.
Maths Group Work: BBC Bitesized
Here are some great learning resources on BBC Bitesized, I suggest you look at these ones this week:
Create a picture of a butterfly either draw an imaginary symmetrical one or draw a realistic one. You can add this to your e-portfolio. How To Draw a Butterfly – YouTube might help.
The trick is have all the code run from the start (the green flag) and use waits to make the different sprites talks at different times.
You can add your finished project to your e-portfolio. Here is how.
IDL
This week I’d like to you think about the word Democracy. Find out what it means, write some notes, brainstorm or make a mind-map. We will be doing some topic work on democracy in Scotland this term.
You could add your notes or mind-map to your e-Portfolio.
Or anything else. It might be good to keep a record of what you are doing to keep fit. Jonah said he was managing 30 press ups! Do you think you can catch him up? This might be a good time to try and improve a particular exercise.
Post the ones you like to your e-portfolio and the one you want to share to the 
