This week’s Blog post was written by Adam, Ailish, Dani, Flo, Fraser, Jack, Katie, Kirsty and Megan

The past few weeks have mainly been focused on Scottish poetry. Our Burn’s poem this year has been Tam o Shanter and our other poem has been Bletherton Rovers by Mathew Fitt. We have been doing a lot of work around the poems.

We have created movie trailers using iMovie and have had a lot of fun producing them. We chose groups and make some brilliant Tam O’ Shanter or Blethertoun Rovers movie trailers! We acted out the different characters and filmed, edited and completed some amazing iMovie trailers. We also made cool tails for the people playing Meg.  It was great fun watching them in class!

Our Art work was also based on Burns and we created a wall display of the main scenes in Tam o Shanter and used a variety of materials to make them. 

Also this week we performed our Scottish poems to either the teacher or the class.  Our overall winner was Flo and the joint runners up (with only 0.01 separating their average score /5!) were Niamh and Lewis.  Congratulations to everyone who learned and recited their poems and well done for supporting each other so well.

In Maths we have done Perimeter, Area and Fractions.  We learnt about comparing and ordering numerators and denominators in Numeracy as well as revising simplification and equivalence of fractions. This week in practical maths we have been working on perimeter and area to find the perimeter you add all the sides and to find the area you times two of the sizes.

We also made our own Scottish music in Music with Mrs Inglis, practiced our basketball and benchball skills in P.E. and, of course, worked on our spelling!

We finished the week with another Sports Leadership session with Mr Murray…and a lunchtime fire drill!

P7A have been consolidating their knowledge about how to calculate Perimeter and Area.  Today we used the Measure App on our iPads to see how accurate it was in measuring lengths of rectangles around the classroom.  We then checked by measuring accurately with a ruler and completing the perimeter and area calculations. Although there were some discrepancies, on the whole the figures were mostly very accurate and we thought of lots of uses for the App in real life.

This week we have been continuing with our learning around our Scottish topic as the children have continued to practise their Scottish poems and have explored the Scottish vocabulary within Tam O’ Shanter and have spent time sequencing the story. The class have also enjoyed learning about different Scottish artists, discussing their work and creating our own artwork in the same style. We look forward to sharing more of our work with you in our Scottish Celebration Assembly.

In Literacy, we have been revising the qu sound in spelling and challenging ourselves to grow new words with different prefixes and suffixes. Reading for information and finding evidence to answer comprehension questions has also been a focus this week and all of the children have been working hard. We have continued to work on writing our own limericks, considering which lines should rhyme and thinking about the specific rhythm of the poem. A link to how to write your own Limerick can be found below:

How to Write a Limerick

In Numeracy we have continued to learn about fractions and we have been learning how to calculate the fraction of a quantity. For practical maths, the children have been looking at position and movement in relation to compass points and can plot points on a grid.

In Health and Well-being, we have been engaging with our Resilience resources focusing on the theme ‘Respect Yourself’. The children had to come up with a minimum of eight positive words which described them and had to create a word search. Some of us found it hard to come up with positive words but luckily our friends helped us.

A big thank you to the Prefects this week who carried out their duties this week. Many of the adults in the school have commented on your hard work and good manners. Keep it up!

Questions to consider:

1. Name one thing you enjoyed this week and why.

2. Was there anything you found hard? Why was it hard and what did you do to overcome the challenge?

3. If you could do anything in school next week, what would it be? What resources would you need?

Welcome back and Happy New Year!

This week we have been:

• revising 4 operations calculations in Numeracy
• learning about Perimeter in Maths
• exploring Scottish poetry in order to recite some later in the term
• learning about the story of Tam o Shanter by decoding the poem and watching an illustrated film of it.
• Talking a lot about behaviour and attitude to learning as we prepare for our final two terms of P7

Reflection:

1. What is your favourite part of Tam o Shanter?
2. What can you do to make Kingsland a better place this term?

Over the next five weeks, all of the Primary 7s will be working with our Active Schools Co-ordinator, Paul Murray, to develop their leadership skills. Our aim is for small groups of Prefects to run sports clubs for younger pupils at school.

Today we learned the best ways to put children into groups and thought about what skills a good leader possesses. These included:

• Confidence
• Speaking clearly and loudly
• Being organised
• Explaining activities well
• Giving demonstrations
• Listening to others

Thanks to Paul for coming in. We look forward to working with you this term!

It has been lovely to be back together again in school and we enjoyed sharing what we were up to over the Christmas break with each other.

The class have summarised our week’s learning and activities using SketchesSchool on their iPads:

This term we are focusing on being more independent and responsible for our learning, ensuring that we finish pieces of work within a set time frame. Well done everyone, keep it up!