STEM with Emma Chittick. On Monday we had a visit from Emma Chittick where we had to create and build our own land yachts in teams of two or three. We also spoke about the importance of meta-skills especially adapting, collaborating, communicating, creativity, critical thinking and leadership skills. One other skill that was definitely important for the task was resilience as the pupils had to build and test their designs several times to get the best land yacht possible. Emma and Neve were the winners after the final test but a massive well done to everyone who took part.

Endangered Animals Presentations. It has been lovely to see all the wonderful homework projects created by the class. We practiced our presentation skills when sharing our researched information about endangered animals. Great job P6/7!

Learner Led Event. Thank you to everyone who came along to our Learner Led Event today. We hope you all enjoyed our Maths Week Scotland activities and a chance to see some of the things we’ve been up to this term.

We have have started the year in PE with a block of Games.  Our focus has been on ball games, covering  skills of throwing, catching, kicking and bouncing both in individual practices and in game situations.  We have also looked at skills that are required to play in games like team work, cooperation, aiming, movement, problem solving, decision making and much more.

As part of our development in PE, we are considering our learning.  While working in tasks we want to be asking 3 main questions

• what am I learning
• how am I get on
• what do I need to do next

We thought about these questions in a game called Basketball Rounders.  After the discussions we worked the individual skills required to play the game, passing, shooting and dribbling, before retrying the game.   Although we still found the skills difficult to do in competitive situations, there was a big improvement in all aspects of the game.

Big Questions. This week our question has been all about inherited and non-inherited characteristics. We looked at this by using Mr Men and Little Miss Characters to create our own characters with inherited characteristics. The class are really proud of how the characters all turned out and how it’s clear which Mr Men and Little Miss characters have been merged.

Counting is infectious! The pupils really are enjoying daily counting activities and wanted to share some of their work on this.

This or that. This week we have been focusing on life cycles of an invertebrate and ways to stay active. Lots of creativity on show with some very original ideas on how pupils wanted to share their learning.

Primary 6 and & 7 have been learning some songs to do with the rainforest and conservation. They have also been exploring both instrumental sounds and body percussion to create music relating to the rainforest and the various creatures that can be found there.

Here is P.6-7’s Body Percussion Rainforest Rainstorm Piece, we hope you enjoy it!

Primary 1/2 link up. On a Monday afternoon, we have some time with the Primary 1 and 2 children. The P7 pupils head to the P1s in their room and the P2s come to our classroom to play with the P6s. This week the Primary 2s and 6s worked in pairs to ‘paint’ pictures of dinosaurs on the laptops. There was an amazing amount of creativity on display as well as leadership skills from our P6s, and a lot of fun was had by everyone.

Super STEM. This week we had a lot of fun taking part in the ‘Ping Pong Ball Run Challenge’. In teams, we had to build a ball run for a Ping Pong ball using only paper and masking tape. The aim of the challenge was to have a ball run that took the longest time. There were some fantastic and very different designs on display and the winning team was ‘Libby, Calen and Jacob’!

Big Questions – Life Cycles. This week we have been learning about the lifecycles of the 5 main vertebrate groups – mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians. We worked in groups to create life cycle models showing the different stages of each life cycle.

This or that showcase. Have a look at some of the ‘this or that’ work created this week. The tasks were linked to ‘National Video Games Day’ and ‘Big Question follow up on animal adaptations and survival’. It’s lovely seeing the pupils being able to apply their learning across different activities.

Superstar Maths. Counting cards are a little bit addictive and pupils like to set their own individual goals during this time. For example, counting to 1000 in 5s within 5 minutes!

We hope you enjoy seeing some of the learning that has been going on in P6/7 so far.

Big Questions. This term all our ‘big questions’ are focused on learning about animals. One area we were learning about was food chains and webs. We made playdoh food chains and some food web posters linked to different habitats. We’ve also researched how animals adapt within their habitats to survive.

Maths in P6/7. Every day we do different counting activities linked to lots of areas within maths. We have also spent time doing active maths games to practice our knowledge of numbers to 1 million.

This or that. As part of our independent learning in P6/7, we do ‘This or that’. Each week the pupils have a choice of activity that they can do linked to prior learning or something topical that week. We’ve created cameras linked to World Photography Day, created ‘Shetland’ themed food or drinks and researched keystone species.