P4 and P5 had a fun jubilee tea party this afternoon. Everyone turned a cupcake into a Victoria sponge and wore royal crowns or ties. We sat outside to have cake, strawberries and juice together before being sent on a treasure hunt by her majesty Mrs Stevenson!
Finally we danced in the playground which was great fun. Well done everyone!

This week in P5A we have been looking after Mrs Wilkinson as she and Mrs Lloyd have swapped classes for the week. It looks like Mrs Lloyd has had a brilliant time with the P7s at Dalguise!

Our highlight of the week was going to Kelso on the bus on Tuesday to the Countryside day with P5s from across the Scottish Borders. We enjoyed seeing lots of different animals, learning about farm machinery and how different types of food, like sausages and butter, are made. We learned about water safety and water rescue and had a go with some of the Emergency Services equipment. A big thank you to all of our parent helpers who made this trip possible.

Here are some of the photos we have chosen to share with you:

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.

We took part in a live biodiversity lesson on Monday which was great fun. One of the presenters was Gill Lewis who has written lots of books which include animals and environmental issues. She set a competition where we had to write a riddle about an animal and, amazingly, out of over 200 school, we won!

The winning riddle was written by Laura:

I see my mum plodding her heavy, broad feet on the jungle soil.

I hear birds chirping happily through my large ears which are flapping back and forth.

I taste the bitter taste of tree bark as I strip it off  the tall, wide tree trunk.

I smell the luscious smell of water, but it could be 12 miles away!

I feel vibrations from my friend through the thick soles of my feet. she’s telling me that she loves me and that she will always be there for me!

What am I?

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.

We had a wonderful day yesterday learning how to sketch woodland creatures with local artist Cherith Harrison.  She showed us how to draw the creatures and also how to use lines and shading to create the texture of their fur or spines. We are really proud of our beautiful drawings. Thank you Cherith!