Drumming

On Monday this week the kids shared their drumming performances with the rest of the school.  I was so impressed with them all, especially with their mastery of the rhythm that we affectionately nicknamed ‘the chaos rhythm’.

We have a video of their performance and I am trying to find a way to be able to share that with you.

Writing

This week in writing we have continued our focus on presentation but from a slightly different angle.  The kids have all been learning to use the accessibility tools on Office 365 via Glow.  They have been using dictate to ‘type’ their stories and then have been using immersive reader to help them check and edit their work.  I am astounded not only by how quickly they have been able to learn to use these tools but by how well they managed to conduct themselves during these lessons, as you can imagine a whole class on laptops dictating at the same time is not necessarily an easy feat but the kids made it look easy. Well done!

These are the methods we use for multiplication of two digit numbers and beyond.  The children have been learning them for  a few weeks and are doing brilliantly developing their understanding of multiplication.

Paired Reading

We did some paired reading this week.  It was great to see all the kids confidently reading to each other and sharing their thoughts and opinions about their books.

Big Question

In big question this week we were learning about different materials and investigating the ones that are natural vs man made.  Thanks to Emma-Lee for the lovely photos.

Writing

This week in writing we have been focusing on developing our presentation skills, this includes handwriting, layout and colour choice for pieces of work. The kids’ story  characters visited an Enchanted Forest and discovered the recipe for Troll Soup.  The kids then had to make a poster showing their own unique recipe.  I think you will agree that they have done a fantastic job.

We have had a busy term so far in PE.  We have been focusing mainly on table tennis and badminton, but we did use the short tennis equipment the last week.  Our main points of technique have been how to hold the bat/racket, our feet position when playing shots and the position of the bat/racket when hitting.  We finished the block with a group activity, creating a target practice for either table tennis, badminton or tennis.  We saw some very creative ideas.

What a week it has been; filled with fun and excellent learning experiences.

We do active spelling tasks on a daily basis, here you can see the kids attempting to make their spelling words from playdough.

Our Big Question this week was all about the Water Cycle so the kids worked in teams to create a model, of the water cycle, with labels using the scientific vocabulary.  The next day they created drawings showing their individual understanding. I was very impressed, they did a great job!

Last week during Big Question we were learning about different ways to filter/ purify water so in ‘Discovery Club’ this week the kids had to design and make an invention that would separate different materials (pasta, split peas and sugar).  The inventions they came up with were INCREDIBLE! We had such a great time testing them out.

Finally we had lots of fun in the snow! Even I got involved sledging down the hill on a plastic tarp!

There were Vikings galore this week as P4-7 looked into the history of Vikings and put on a Viking Gallery for P1-3. The kids worked in teams to make 3 exhibits for their gallery area.  Everyone had an amazing time and worked brilliantly together to put on a fantastic afternoon for the rest of the school.

In writing this week we were creating new base characters.  Each week these characters will visit different worlds and have amazing adventures!

We started off our week in a very fun way by doing African Drumming with Joy Duncan.  I was so impressed by the amount the kids remembered about the different types of drums and rhythms.

In writing this week we continued to work on our ‘rainbow aim’ of  engaging the reader by including openers, connectives and correct punctuation. Our theme this week was Alice in Wonderland so the kids characters have met a whole host of wacky characters! This is the last adventure these characters are going on as we are creating new characters next week. when we will also be adding a new aim to our umbrella.

During our ‘Big Question’ we have been learning about the different states of water; solid, liquid and gas.  In the photos we were exploring how the molecules are in different densities in the the different states.  We also did an experiment to show how a basic water turbine works (it involved Mrs J getting quite wet so the kids thought it was extremely funny!).

Please all stay safe and cosy as the first priority.  If possible please complete the 3 items on the top row (reading spelling and times tables) in the first instance and then feel free to choose 1-2 other tasks from the board.  There is a task available on Sumdog if you have your log in details handy, everyone was given a  bookmark at the start of the year with log in details on the back, the websites are listed below.

https://www.sumdog.com/user/sign_in

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

Fingers crossed the snow is short lived and we see you all very soon.

Mrs J 🙂

Happy New Year!

It has been fantastic being back at school with the kids and hearing all their festive news.

This week we have been learning about the different states of water (solid, liquid and gas/vapour). The kids were learning about how the molecules are closer together in solid and further apart in gases/ vapours.  The kids then did some watercolour art and I think they did a brilliant job!

Clay models of poppies painted and mounted on painted card.

looking across the class today

Esther Adamson, Ava Tuis  and Eilidh Smith

Joe Jarmson, Ava Garrick, Emma Lee Irvine,  Anna Gillespie, Alagne Saxelby

Jess Wylie

Jess Wylie

Jess Wylie

P4/5 have drawn birds of their own choice, coloured using colouring pencils and high lighted with glitter and attached the birds to wool to make their mobiles. They  have made remarkably beautiful drawings.