This week we learned how to spell words with the z sounds made with z, zz, s or se.

We wrote an explanation piece about how to make pottery using the structure

• title
• identifying statement
• explanation sequence
• summary statement

It has put us in the mood to make pots out of clay!

On Wednesday the whole school, including the adults, stopped to read for 6 minutes to improve our well being.

‘Keep the heid and read’ is a great idea and we agreed that it worked.

https://www.keeptheheid.scot/

We are learning how to calculate duration in time, by looking at start and finish times. We also interpreted a database, and know how to get the information we need.

We were given potatoes to plant so we have put them in compost bags in the playground. There are two varieties, ‘Casablanca’ and ‘Sarpo Una’. We hope that they will multiply!

On Tuesday next week we are going on a trip to Kelso for Countryside Day. We are entering the poster competition and the theme is one on the UN goals, ‘life on land’. Everyone designed a poster and the class voted for this entry by Jackson. He is making a large version with some friends to take on Tuesday. Well done, Jackson, and good luck on Tuesday.

Here are some of the other entries.

Although it was a very short week P5 did really well on their spelling test for words with the ng or nk pattern.

We used the structure of explanation texts to write about the states of matter, solids, liquids and gases.

Our maths is time and we learned how to calculate duration, how long something takes. We are continuing to interpret data from bar graphs and will look at line graphs next.

Our class novel, The Last Bear is getting exciting, as April met the polar bear!

A few people in the class are starting choir today after school, and we look forward to hearing how it goes.

Our spelling pattern was the sound m, made with m, mm or mb.

In writing we are learning the features of explanation texts, and this week we focussed on present tense verbs and time and sequence words. We can find these in texts and highlight them.

Our grammar lesson taught us that sentences have a subject and an object, and we practised finding them in sentences. Here is Cara’s colour coded work.

In maths we are learning about time, and graphs. We use a key in graphs called pictograms to count the number represented.

Our science topic is the states of matter; solids, liquids and gases. We are scientists and have set our own questions about things we want to know. We are researching these questions and presenting our answers in posters or power point slides to share.

Here are some of our questions!

Skipper’s strategy for building resilience this term is ‘challenge your mindset’. We listened to a book ‘My Fantastic Elastic Brain’ and drew the parts of the brain and what they do.

Also in health and well-being we are looking at first aids techniques and practised putting people in the recovery position.

It was great to see everyone back after the Easter break.

Our spelling words have the n sound made with n, kn, gn, or pn. We also have a common word.

In writing we are learning the features of an explanation. It explains how or why something occurs, and is non-fiction. Our example text is How Paper is Recycled.

Our maths is telling the time. We are matching analogue and digital clocks, putting times in order and distinguishing am from pm. We learned that am means ante meridiem and pm means post meridiem.

We are also interpreting charts where the picture stands for more than one item.

Our science topic is on the three states of matter; solid, liquid and gas. We will link this to the water cycle and water preservation. We listened to the story ‘We are water protectors’ by Carole Lindstrom and the illustrations are by Michaela Goade. The pictures are bright and colourful and show the water in beautiful patterns.

A similar artist is Ted Harrison and we painted pictures in his style.

We have been trying out lots of novels before choosing our next class novel. Thanks to everyone who brought books in, they were great suggestions. We have settled on ‘The Last Bear’ by Hannah Gold.

Art Competition

Lowri, Leah and Zara ran their own art competition last term and announced the winners today.

Rosie came first with this joy tree.

And Jackson came second with Harry Potter.

Well done to the winners and to the girls for organising it!

We are happy to be at the end of term, and here are some of our highlights.

• The Big Drum Adventure- Anna
• Sunflower art
• class novel  ‘The fish in Room 11’
• planting sunflowers – Lily
•  learning about rocks and natural disasters
• gymnastics in PE – Eden
• Burns competition- Taylor
• writing information report – Zara
• Oor Wullie poem – Grace
• playing keyboard in music – Eden
• making Easter basket – Jackson
• Out of this World show – Cara
• learning about rocks and crystals – Cara

Today we broke the rules for April Fools. Thanks for your efforts and kind donations to p7 camp.

Have a great Easter Holiday!

The highlight for us this week was our Big Drum Adventure performance. We have worked really hard over the past eight weeks and come on a journey as a drum band, Out of this World. We were rewarded with a very enthusiastic audience of p4-7 yesterday, and it was very exciting to play our rhythms and sing our song. We will miss our weekly sessions, and want to thank Mat the Hat for being such an inspiring teacher.

Here are two poems written about Mat the Hat.

Did you know that the national flower of Ukraine is a sunflower?

Mrs Hill, a retired science teacher and STEM ambassador was back at Kingsland to give us more lights. The idea was that we create a sunflower and light it up with our yellow light, as a way of thinking about the Ukrainian people and sending them our best wishes.

Here are some of our pictures.

We also planted sunflower seeds and decorated the pots. We will keep you updated on their growth!

Our writing this week was an information report about doctors. We planned and wrote what they do, where they work and equipment they use.

In maths we used written methods when calculating money, and we measured capacity in cm cubed. Here are our shapes that we built and measured the volume of.

Our spelling pattern was ou and ow.

P5 have formed class bands and here are exclusive recordings on Soundcloud! Mat the Hat has been leading drumming workshops for the past 7 weeks, and P5a and P5b are looking forward to performing for some classes on Thursday.

P5a are named ‘Out of this World’ and P5b are named ‘Blazing Bangers’. Inspired names, chosen by the classes.

Enjoy listening to these performances!

Here we are in red today, ‘having a laugh with our class.’
We told jokes and did a quiz about noses. We learned that the funny bone is really called the humerus.

We are learning how to write information reports and this week we wrote about volcanoes. In grammar we are learning to use speech marks.

As part of our science topic we are learning about earthquakes and tsunamis, and we painted ‘The Great Wave off Kanagawa’ by Japanese artist Hokusai. Can you see Mount Fuji in the background?

In maths we are using the written methods of the four operations to add, subtract, multiply and divide money. In measure we are learning about measuring volume in litres and millilitres.

We are nearly at the end of our journey and today we played really well in preparation for our performance next week. We will show P4-7 what we have learned about instruments, play our rhythms and sing our song.

Here is a clip of our song.

The Calabash Song

Our trip to the museum took us to a Swiss instrument, the hang drum.

Drummer of the week was Louis, well done!

For World Book Day we made a slide of our favourite books and said why we like them.

We hope you enjoy hearing about them!