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November

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November has been a particularly busy month here in Primary 7!

In Literacy, we have begun studying the novel, Divided City by Theresa Breslin which tackles the subject of sectarianism in our community.

This links well with work we have been doing with the anti-sectarian charity, Nil-by-Mouth in Social Studies.  We had 4 sessions, over 2 weeks where we worked with the pupils from Mossend Primary School.  We discussed many of the issues around tolerance, bigotry and prejudice and we have planned lots of trips and activities with P.7 from Mossend Primary School.

In Maths, we have been looking at decimal fractions and negative numbers.  We looked at temperatures on thermometers to help us understand negative numbers on a number line.

We have now completed our work on genetic testing and the pupils created Powerpoints and wrote persuasive essays on this subject.

We had lots of trips this month too this month including a trip to the cinema in Braehead to see a movie to celebrate Film Week.

Another amazing trip we had was to The Sky Academy in Livingston.  The children were made to feel very welcome and had the amazing opportunity to create their own short film.  They were then given the opportunity to visit the call centre there and discuss the work opportunities available.  The pupils were given their own pendrive with each group’s work  attached and the rest of the school were able to share in their learning at assembly.

 

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Primary 2

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Primary 2 have had such a busy month. Preparation has began for our Nativity show ‘A Miracle in Town’. The children have their parts and have been working hard to learn their lines and songs.

We have continued work on addition and subtraction and have also covered a topic on shape. As always, a great deal of our work is practical using Seal Maths.

Within Literacy we have been doing more work on new sounds and common words. The children are getting so good at reciprocal teaching (teaching each other) by testing each other on what we have been learning. In writing we have had a go at writing a recount and have also been writing instructions. We especially enjoyed writing about how to make a jeely piece for Katie Morag.

The children have devoted lots of their prayers this month to their deceased loved ones as part of our work on the Month of the Holy Souls. We have learned the ‘Eternal Rest’ prayer and have been saying it daily.

As part of our Emotion Works syllabus, we have been identifying emotions and linking things that happen to us with how it makes us feel. The children made their own emotions using play foam and blank faces.

We have enjoyed some S.T.E.M time within our busy class this month. We were given the challenge of designing a new bridge for the Island of Struay as part of our topic.  We made our way around a variety of stations (e.g spaghetti and marshmallows) and tried to design a safe bridge for the people on Struay to use.

Work began on our Christmas enterprise for our Christmas Fayre. The children had a ball making reindeer food and were so proud of the results.

Primary 7, Uncategorized

Primary 7 October

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Primary 7 have been extremely busy this month and have had a range of great experiences which I am sure they have told you all about!  However, here is a short update on what has been happening this month.

We are joining Mossend Primary School each Thursday for our Daily Mile to  build positive friendships with children from other schools in our community.

We have completed our Social Studies Topic on the Scottish Parliament in anticipation of our visit to the Parliament buildings later this month.

In Maths we have worked hard on place value, weight and have started division with a focus on fractions and decimal fractions.

In Language we are continuing with our spelling programme and looking at the various strategies we have to help us spell unfamiliar words.  We have focussed on improving our comprehension skills using our class novels too.  There has been a fantastic improvement  in the quality of handwriting from all pupils in addition to improvement in the presentation of tasks, well done!

In Storywriting, we have been focussing on writing a persuasive text on the pros and cons of genetic testing. The stimulus for this is the work we have been doing in science on genetics. This will make the basis for a review of assessment and moderation of attainment across the Cardinal Newman  cluster.

We have begun our work with the charity, Nil By Mouth, an anti-sectarian charity who work with schools informing children of the detrimental impact that sectarianism has on our children and young people in our communities.  Hopefully there will be a range of events that we will work with Mossend Primary on in the coming months.  So far, all P6 and P7 children have attended interactive workshops on this project.

In P.E. we are very lucky to be working with Young Sports Leaders from S6 from Cardinal Newman each Monday.  They are delivering a series of lessons on fitness with the class which will hopefully lead  to a sports festival held in the high school in March/April of next year.  Many of the pupil in class also successfully qualified for the Sportshall Athletic competition held in the Time Capsule on the 4th November.

The pupils in P7 have been involved in lots of active learning throughout the month of October from designing and carving pumpkins to attendance at the Sky Academy in Livingston.  The pupils had the most amazing experience working in groups with Sky Staff in creating, directing and editing their own trailers for their movie ideas.  Each child was given their own copy of the work produced to keep on a pen drive as a memento of their visit.

 

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Primary 2 October Reflection

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October was a very busy month in Primary 2!! In Maths we have continued to work on addition and have been completing a wide variety of practical tasks. We also began to look at 3D shapes and have been revising what we learned in P1. Mrs Simpson says we are doing so well already.
In Literacy we have been reading lots more reading books. It’s so helpful when we practise our reading at home as it helps us to complete tasks about them in class. We have also been making great progress within writing. Our favourite piece of writing recently has been a recount of our Halloween party. We are learning to use adjectives in our writing to make it even more interesting. We particularly liked our Halloween adjectives lesson when we created a list of adjectives about witches, monsters etc. This has really helped us with our writing.
We have carried out solo talks which we were asked to prepare for homework this month. We have been a brilliant audience for our peers, and have enjoyed presenting about our chosen career. We demonstrated confidence and good presentation skills during our solo talks. We really are superstars in the making!! A special big thank you to our grown ups for helping us prepare so well.

Within P.E we are learning a range of dance moves within lessons with Greig. Our favourite so far is definitely dancing to Thriller. We particularly enjoyed our Halloween P.E lesson where we played a variety of games with a spooky theme.

Our library visits have been amazing!! We love getting the chance to read the books that we choose. As our comprehension, fluency and accuracy improves, as does our enjoyment of stories. Mrs Simpson loves reading our stories to us when we get back to class.

The highlight of our month was our Halloween disco. We had a spooktastic night and we especially loved seeing our friends in fancy dress. The party games were brilliant. We can’t wait until our Christmas party now.

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Primary 2 September

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We have had a very successful September in Primary 2. We have finished revising Primary 1 sounds and common words and have now started brand new learning. We have been pretending to be investigators and trying to find our new sounds in books and phoneme stories.  We have also been learning new Read to Write tasks. Two of our favourites are fixing jumbled sentences from our reading books, and retelling the stories we have read. We love using our magnetic boards and playing Pot Luck to practise our new words. We have enjoyed writing our exciting stories during Taught Writing, and we are always excited to find out who our Star Writers are.

Within Maths we have continued to work on Addition with lots of practical activities. We loved adding to 14 using candles on birthday cakes and sheep inside hula hoops. Mrs Simpson is very impressed by our Number talks especially when we add to numbers bigger than 10. We plan to move on to Subtraction soon.

We have been learning about our senses and have been carrying out experiments and playing games. We loved listening to sounds and playing Sound Bingo.

Our topic is Katie Morag. So far we have made our own Island of Struay for our class using a variety of art techniques. It is looking great. We are beginning to fill our island with all the things we learn about in the Katie Morag stories.

Primary 5, Uncategorized, Whole School

P5 update from August and September

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Over the past couple of months, P5 have been learning a lot about the Titanic and have even made a huge wall display of it; each making their own cabins and/or lifeboats. Did you know, there were only 20 lifeboats on the real Titanic but it should have had 64?!

The children also took part in a STEM activity to see if they could make a tinfoil boat that floated and could carry coins. We certainly have some budding engineers in our class!

In Health and Wellbeing, we each created our own Colour Monsters to explore feelings and emotions. They’re on display outside our classroom if you’d like to come and meet them.

In RE we listened to and discussed the story of Father Damien who lived with sufferers of leprosy. He was such a kind and inspirational man; he made a real difference to this outcast community.

As part of our topic The Titanic, the children worked in groups to try to put the inventions/events in order. It should give some parents out there a wee chuckle!

 

The children worked in groups to demonstrate working in canon, mirroring each other and matching.

P5 have been exploring movement: balance, weight through arms, jumping, inversion and rotation.

At the beginning of the year, our P5s worked in groups on 2D Shape.

The first Golden Time in the class saw our pupils working together socially in small groups. We even had a domino rally!

 

Our class were given potatoes FROM OUR GARDEN!! We made 4 kinds of potato wedges from them and they didn’t last long!

We also hosted a MacMillan Coffee Morning and raised £425! Well done to everyone involved and a huge thank you to everyone who baked, bought or donated – we couldn’t have done it without you.