This week we drew fireworks and learned about the origins of Bonfire Night.
We used black pens to outline these fireworks and stars.

We got into role as astronauts and rocket designers and were set a challenge by NASA to design a rocket to go to the sun. We had to research metals and temperatures and draw our teams’ rocket inside and out.
Our writing was also about space. We wrote a recount of a moon walk, as if we were the first children on the moon. The feelings were mixed, from excitement to terror! To get into the mood we watched footage of the first moon landing in 1969.

Subtraction with exchange

In maths we used materials to exchange a ten for ten units so that we could subtract. Being able to use the column method is very useful for when we are dealing with very big numbers. We also looked at lines of symmetry.

We watched a Skipper assembly about keeping connected. These themes overlap with our HWB lessons on friendship as we look into the changes that happen as we grow up.

We have been talking a lot about climate change as we keep up with news from COP26. As young people we have important views and ideas about improving our treatment of the planet. We are very aware of choices we make to live more sustainably.

We enjoyed watching Primary 7’s video story for Mrs Ward as she leaves today. We made her a card full of messages, and wish her all the best in her new job. We will miss her!

One of Skipper’s toolkit strategies is ‘keep connected’. Today we thought about how we keep connected when we are apart and why we need to feel connected. We made this web of links we have with people in our class. We spoke about what connected us to each other, such as, shared hobbies, living near each other, knowing family members or sharing memories from long ago.
The more lines that connect us, the stronger the web!

We had a fang-tastic Halloween themed day today where we were allowed to dress up, played fun games, dooked for apples and made marshmallow monsters! A monstrously good time was had by all!

We had a spooky themed activity morning today! We did quizzes, puzzles, colouring, apple dooking and watched ‘Room on the Broom’. We took home our collage monsters and painted pumpkin pictures. The costumes were fabulous!

Other learning this week includes HWB; thinking about the qualities of a friend, grammar; identifying past tense and past continuous tense verbs and maths; compass points and turns.
We are learning the features of recount writing and looked at time and sequence words. Our task was to work in a group and sort words into the type of time and sequence group they were from. We did really well and learned some new words such as ‘initially’ and ‘subsequently’.

We are reading the novel ‘Catscape’ by Mike Nicholson and we made a ‘Missing Cat’ poster.

Our topic is out of this world – the Solar System – and we learned what the different planets are made from.

It was EU code week and we took part in an app design afternoon online with lots of other classes. It was a great creative challenge and we enjoyed sharing our ideas with each other.

Here are some our app design ideas.

• Saving endangered animals
• learning how to do different sports
• learning to read
• help with reading, writing and drawing
• donating items to those who need them
• learning how to horse ride

We are creating an Autumn display so we went on a leaf identification walk. We used a chart to spot which trees the leaves were from.

Here are our long a sound spelling words.

In numeracy we are using number bonds to practise mental strategies for subtraction. We are also learning the language of subtraction such as

• minus
• less than
• difference between
• find the difference
• reduce
• how many more
• take away

In maths we are learning about different types of angles, such as right, acute and obtuse.

Our writing this block is recount writing, a personal account of an event or experience, with a personal comment. We were very observant in spotting that it includes past tense verbs.

We drew and painted pumpkins, mixing a variety of shades of orange.

PE is gymnastics and we are very excited about using the gym apparatus!

We were out in the playground yesterday trying to identify the different types of trees we have around the school. We discovered we have quite a few different types of trees including oak, maple, sycamore, rowan and holly. We enjoyed looking at the different shapes of the leaves and found lots of lovely colours too.

Try using the leaf identifier to see what trees are near your house/ in the local park/ on your favourite walk.

We had a great time designing our own apps on Tuesday as part of code week. We had to brainstorm, plan and create a prototype which we are going to share with the rest of the class. We came up with loads of brilliant ideas and some of us would really like to be app designers when we are older.

We have enjoyed this term together and have achieved a lot!

Our last piece of writing was a description of a special person, so you might receive a copy if it was about you!

In maths we  can add using a variety of mental and written methods, in particular, using place value.

Yesterday some p7s taught us how to use keynote on our iPads and we have been practising making animated presentations.

Today is national poetry day so we have been reading and writing poems.

We finished our class novel ‘Max and the Millions’ and really enjoyed the end when Max was reunited with Mr Darrow.

This term we have made patterns cats, Charles Rennie Mackintosh roses, perspective and forced perspective photographs.

Other highlights this term are

• learning to play netball
• getting better at spelling
• learning to use paragraphs

Here are some of the keynote presentations.

Taylor’s poems

Rosie and Eden made these

Louis made this

Have a great holiday and I’ll see you on Tuesday 19th October.