P7

On Tuesday John and Isobel paid a visit to our class. They were both children living in Coatbridge during WW2.

John spoke to us for roughly twenty minutes about the Blitz, Anderson Shelters and Rationing. Then we asked our visitors questions and shared some of our hard work with them.

It was really interesting to hear real accounts of WW2 from a child’s perspective.

Max thought it was a great experience having two WW2 children in our classroom. He said, “This is a one of a kind generation of people to speak to.”

Matthew thought it was quite odd that the one bomb that landed in Coatbridge was roughly 200 yards from where John was seeking shelter.

Evan thought it was amazing how many times the people of Coatbridge had to go into the Anderson shelter. John said he was only in the Anderson shelter about six times in total. The longest time he was in the Anderson shelter was for 6 hours. This was the night of the Clydebank Blitz. John and his family were there until 4am.

John and Isobel were very impressed with our behaviour, knowledge and listening skills.

As part of our ww2 topic we have been learning about the evacuation of children and soon to be mothers. We used books in our class and the Internet to find out information.

The evacuation took place at the start of WW2. Children were sent to school with a packed lunch, a change of clothes and a gas mask. Parents had to say good bye to their children at the school gates or the train station. Children left the cities they lived by train to go and live in the countryside. This was for their safety and protection. When the children arrived at the village they were staying, they were sent to the villages hall and were picked out by their evacuee family.

We had to pretend we were evacuees writing a letter home to our families. We tea stained the writing paper to make it look authentic. We also created our own evacuee labels. During WW2, each child had one pinned to their jacket on the day they were evacuated. It was like a label we would put on our suitcases today.

We also learned about the blitz. The blitz was a time when the Germans bombed the U.K. At night people in the U.K. had to turn off everything that produced light. A siren went off every time German bomber planes were spotted. As soon as people heard the siren, they ran to their Anderson shelter in their garden. Anderson shelters were made out of metal and had pillows and blankets in there shelters. This to keep people safe.

We made blitz art by painting a fire background and using black paper to create the buildings. Everyone enjoyed painting and found it relaxing. Some of us found drawing on black paper and then cutting it out difficult as it was hard to see the pencil line. We therefore helped each other.

By Lorna and Bethany

On Monday Taylor kindly brought WW2 items to school to share with our class.

Taylor’s great grandad was a soldier during WW2. In 1941, he became a prisoner of War. In 1945, he returned home to his Army Base in Scotland with the items in the photos below.

Taylor told the class about each item and then in small groups we got to look at them up close.

Isla- I couldn’t believe the size of the bag used to take all of their belongings in. My suitcase to Kilbowie for 5 days was three times the size of soldiers’ bag.

Kali- The items were very old. It was amazing to look at them up close. I found out what a prisoner of war was and made me think about how that would have been?

Jordan- I felt really sad for Taylor’s great grandparents as they were separated for over six years. It made me think how bad it would be to be away from people I care about for such a long time.

Matthew- I thought the letters that Taylor’s great grandad sent to her great gran were extremely delicate and the handwriting was beautiful. I thought it was amazing that the prison camp that he was help him were very generous to let him communicate with his family. I would like to find out how the letter made it to Glasgow.

 

 

 

We are so sorry for not posting last term but Miss Wallace has been working us hard from the start of the year till now, we will try and make sure this won’t happen again. We now have monitors for doing our class blogs and we will try and have one up for you every week.

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Literacy

For the first few weeks the whole class was reading a book called another me. The book is about a girl called Fay and someone is following her and people are saying that she was at places when she was not. After 4 weeks the class was put into 3 reading groups, they are :- The Ordinary School, Kaspar & Jammy Dodgers. Here are some of the opinions that they thought on their reading books.

The Ordinary School :-

Brooke – I wasn’t really interested that much. The characters didn’t capture my attention.

Tyler :- I’m enjoying the book and the different characters.

Kaspar:-

Chris :- I didn’t like it the setting, main events or characters. I couldn’t relate to them.

Jocelyn :- It is a really good book. I enjoyed reading it from start to finish. It was well written and it caught my attention throughout.

Jammy Dodgers :-

Ava :- I really like it because I found out more about the Victorian times. Billy was kidnapped and became a chimney sweeper. I found out about the work of a chimney sweeper and I would never would have liked that job for my wee brother or I.

Jake :- It was interesting learning about the bad people in Victorian times. I couldn’t believe what people would do to earn money. People in Victorian times must have been desperate for money and wealth.

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Numeracy :-

In maths we have been learning about exchanging currency, using different payments to buy an item of high value. When learning how to exchange currency we had to figure out the exchange rate for the county by using an Ipad.  We times the exchange rate by how many pounds (£) you want to exchange.

 

In angles, we were learning how to use a protractor. A protractor is an measuring tool to find out how many degrees an angle is. It was a case of practise, practise, practise until we were successful.

Blog by Lorna & Marty

In maths this week we Focused on speed,distance and time. We had to work out the speed of cars and see what ones were the fastest.

For our topic Hollywood we watched the trailer for brave and described the hero,setting and characters. Then we started to create voice overs for the trailer.

During Literacy each reading group was introduced to their new reading novels. My group has started a novel called the Eleventh Orphan.

by Fraser Mckay

 

 

 

 

This week in primary 7 we have been doing lots of time in maths. We did time problems involving flight departure and arrival times and looked at different time zones in the World.We then discussed the place we have been to and the countries we would like to visit.

Our topic is hollywood movies and we have been looking at the way films are produced and how actors and actresses are chosen. We also created posters of our favourite movies to attract a viewer to then go and watch the film. For example I created a poster about Shrek and why people should watch it.

By Ross Campbell