It has been a busy week in P4/5 with a few visitors and it has made me very proud to see the kids through the eyes of people coming in for a short time.  On Wednesday Andrea Henderson and Lauren Smith came to see the work we are doing with writing.  They were very impressed by P4/5 and their excellent work.  On Thursday Davie Sandison and Catherine Hughson came for a visit. They were very impressed to see all the children working very hard and commented on how happy our school is.

Personal Projects were due in this week and we spent a lovely afternoon watching everyone’s presentations.  Presenting to the class group is such an important experience for the kids as they develop skills that they will use throughout their lives including conveying information, engaging an audience and having confidence in their own abilities.  They all did a fantastic job and every single one of them had become more confident and capable since the presentations we did in term 1.  Well done P4/5/

This week we have been learning about the Hindu festival of Diwali.  We watched videos and made notes then we had different craft rotations relating to the festival.  The kids were able to make diva lamps, design henna hands and paint rangoli patterns.

It has been another busy week in P4/5; we have been learning times tables, examining arctic animal food chains, visiting the Wizarding World of Harry Potter through our Trials and Tales and some pupils went to the community polycrub with Mr Clark.  We have introduced a new way to check learning in a simple way called “Post a Plenary”.  The learners are asked a question or a series of questions and have to write their answer on a post-it before placing their post it on their square.

Tales and Trials

Before the holidays each of the children created a character that they will be writing ab out this term.  This week their character landed in ‘Pirate Peninsula’.  The characters faced 4 trials over the week that the kids had to write about.  I was really impressed by the fantastic stories that they wrote!  I hope they are able to tell you some of the adventures that their characters went on this week and look forward to revealing next week’s map.

What a busy first week back!

We started our class novel, The BFG  and set up a display for all the fantastic literacy work we are going to do around the novel this term.

The kids created fantastic pumpkin artwork developing both creativity and fine motor skills.

One of the most exciting tasks of the week was a collaborative task with the P6/7 class.  The kids worked in teams to develop a Halloween themed game.  This develops such a wide variety of meta skills such as critical thinking, collaborating, adapting, communicating, initiative, curiosity about the world and creativity. During this task we were visited by childhood and play expert Greg Bottrill who was extremely impressed with the work that the children were doing.

It is the last day of term and we have had a fun week filled with collaborative working. Happy holidays and safe travels.

We invited parents in to visit our classroom and do some activities to celebrate maths week Scotland.

We watched P1-3’s drumming performance and it got us very excited for doing drumming ourselves in term 3.

We participated in two online assemblies celebrating technology.  The first looked at technology in sport and the second was all about technology in space.  We worked collaboratively  in pairs with a P6/7  to design a new piece of equipment for sport and then later in the week to design a robot that would help us in some way.

This morning we played real life hungry hippos with the P6/7s.  It was great fun and so funny!

This Term P.4-5 have been learning, perfecting and performing a Body Percussion piece called ‘CONNECT IT’ which was written by the composer Anna Meredith for the BBC 10 Pieces project.

Some of the moves were quite tricky but they performed the piece with energy and enthusiasm, well done P.4-5!

Unfortunately I was unable to upload a video of the class performance but if your child would like to perform it to you at home, then here is the link for the performance video;

CBBC – Ten Pieces, Learn the classroom version of Anna Meredith’s Connect It (part 4: recap)

This week we were lucky enough to have a visit from Emma Chittick.  The kids had to design and make their own land yachts.  It was amazing to see their creativity blossom as they created different designs, no two were the same, and to see their perseverance and problem solving as they faced challenges.  They were all fantastic!

While Mrs Johnson was out on a training course P4 went on a super trip to the museum with Mr Clark.  They had a great time looking at different artefacts and making old maps.

Meanwhile P5 were out having a fantastic time on the Swan with Trevor and Helen.  They loved raising the sails and were very amused by the toilet set up!