Number Visuals

To kick start each maths lesson we have been watching interesting  and inspiring YOUCUBE (a maths website) videos.  So far we have learned that when you learn new things the hippocampus (part of your brain) grows bigger.  If you stop using your brain the hippocampus can shrink!

London taxi drivers have to learn thousands of road and street names – they call it ‘The Knowledge’.  When they retire, their hippocampus shrinks because they don’t think about the roads or work anymore!  Mia

Today we learned to think visually about maths.  When we think about numbers as symbols we are crossing our brains and using different pathways.  This helps us to deepen our understanding and learning in maths!

We noticed that the prime numbers didn’t have any obvious patterns and they were mostly circular.

The prime numbers are round. Beth

We are looking forward to watching the rest of the videos in the series and trying out more interesting maths challenges!

Primary 5 were very lucky to receive a visit from Ailsa McInnes, South Ayrshire’s Children’s Services Librarian

Today’s visit was the first of three sessions that will promote reading for pleasure through a variety of games and activities, which all link into the First Minister’s Reading Challenge. 

Ailsa spoke to us about becoming members at Ayr Carnegie Library.  We discovered how exciting it could be to visit the library and borrow interesting books.  We learned that children’s fiction books all have red labels – these would be the best ones for us to read!  Books with blue stickers are suited to early readers and white are for young adults.

Ailsa showed us a selection of books by several authors including Michael Morpurgo, Janis Mackay, Sarah Lean and David Walliams.   It was fascinating to discover that some authors have different jobs during the day and write stories in their spare time.   We explored the many characters and interesting story lines  across the variety of books brought to our class. We learned that some books are printed on cream coloured paper with unjustified margins  (which make them easier to read), these are called dyslexic friendly books.

We were all allowed to borrow a  book to read before next Wednesday’s visit!  A huge thank you to Ailsa for coming into our class 

It was inspiring to hear about the books we can enjoy! Ben

Learning about all the books was phenomenal!  Very interesting!  Heather

One of the best classes I have visited in a long time.  What a lot of great comments!  Ailsa