All posts by Mrs Smith

Class Debates

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Today, saw the culmination of several lessons spent discussing what a debate is and what the main aims are before choosing topics for us to debate in class, and then writing our arguments.  We spent a lot of time discussing the best language to use when trying to write a persuasive piece and how we could incorporate some facts to back up our arguments.  We also rehearsed our speeches in our groups and tried to make our presentations memorable and convincing so as to gain more votes.  The class all tried very hard.  It’s not always an easy thing to do and they had a lot to remember along the way e.g. using expressive voices, making eye contact with the audience and gesturing as they talked.

Here Liam is sharing his argument for longer playtimes.

Each pupil listening to the debates, left those making the speeches some constructive feedback which we would hope to take on board another time.  The results were as follows…some votes were very close!

Jenga Blocks – An Inside Toy For Rainy Playtimes? 

FOR 8 / AGAINST 10

 

Mobile Phones in School Debate

FOR 10 / AGAINST 9

 

Playtimes Should Be Longer Debate

FOR 14 / AGAINST 6

We hope the class have enjoyed going through this process and that the skills they have worked on, will be of use again in the future.
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Mud Kitchen Progress!

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What a surprise to come back to school to find that John has pieced together all the mud kitchen resources we sourced last term, many kindly donated by parents throughout the school and our staff members.  A HUGE thank you from P5/6!

We hope to begin playing with it next week, but first we are going to organise ourselves into friendship groups for playing, these will be swapped around so we get to play with different people.  We also want to decide on some rules and have time to organise the bits and pieces we’ll play with.

Because we want to quarantine the equipment between groups, another offer of a fish box or similar storage box would be great so we can split the equipment.

Finally, we have been drafting a letter to our Parent Council to see if they could help us purchase some waterproof suits that will help protect our clothing.

Here we are with the kitchen….so far!  John may have more plans for us!

 

Musical Performances and End of Term

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What a superb end to our first term!  Over the past two days, the children have worked brilliantly in groups, pairs and on their own to carry out research on their chosen life cycle.   We look forward to sharing our finished displays and information next term!  We enjoyed a brisk walk around the Boddam loop road during our class P.E. time today and finished off with a short musical concert from our cello and violin players.  It was fabulous to hear them play so beautifully and with great confidence!

A huge well done to all the children for handling this first term so well!  We are extremely proud of you.  Have a relaxing holiday!

Ness Book Fest Reading Challenge

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In P5/6 we do ERIC time (Everyone Reading In Class) every day.  It’s  20 minutes of peaceful, calm reading which really sets us up for the day!  Today we joined up with many schools all over Scotland to take part in the Ness Book Fest Reading Challenge.  There were 14,200 children all reading simultaneously all over the country! More than double the number reading last year.  David Walliams, Michael Morpurgo and David Baddiel books continue to be favourites in P5/6.  Keep on reading everybody!

Thank You Ethan

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Recently, P5/6 were given a talk and PowerPoint presentation by our class member Ethan.  He prepared his talk with the help of Mrs Leslie, to tell us all about Erb’s Palsy and how this affects his daily life.  We learned about how Ethan came to have this condition and he told us about some of the physical difficulties he experiences.  We also leaned about some of the exercises he does to strengthen his arm.  This week, as a thank you for listening, Ethan gave us all a tattoo, badge and wrist band as a gift.  Here we all are!  Thank you, Ethan!

Mud Kitchen

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We are so lucky to have the school grounds that we do, especially now that each class needs their own area.  We’re also delighted to have been given a donation from the Sumburgh Airport Fire Station.  This is allowing each class to invest in toys for their play space and also improve our indoor, wet playtime provision.  However, P5/6 have been wondering about a mud kitchen for outdoors!  We are looking into ways we can maybe make this happen so are appealing to our parents first!  We’ve looked at a few ideas and have a list of items we’d like to try and gather.  If any of you have these items or know where we could source them, please get in touch.  Also, if you know of anybody who would be willing and able to put it together for us, that would be amazing!  We are looking for the following.   Pictures just for a guide.  We may be able to ask the Parent Council to help us in some way but we hope we can do a lot ourselves in the first instance.   THANK YOU for any help you can manage!

Wooden pallets

Sink or sink with draining board

Nails / Screws for assembly

Pots, pans, sieves, spoons, bowls, teapots, trowels etc…

Different Ways Of Learning

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We have been talking about how, for some pupils, learning times tables comes easily, whilst for others, they are really tricky to remember and recall quickly.  We looked at different learning styles today and talked about how finding a way that suits our individual learning style might just make it easier to learn these tables.  Over the past two weeks, we’ve tried out various ways to see which way we prefer.  We’ve also tried aural learning, chanting our tables to the clave rhythm.

 

Friday’s Activities

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We’ve had a lovely day in P5/6!  We started off working on refreshing some of our times tables by making fortune tellers and testing our friends.  Then it was outside to work on our fitness in Class PE.  We clocked up an amazing total of 194 laps of the multicourt as a class!!  Our Accelerated Reader time was so peaceful and relaxing after our run outside.   We also worked in pairs to talk about positive emotions…naming them, recognising what they look like, compiling lists of what makes us feel good and, perhaps the most difficult to describe, how our bodies feel physically when we feel good.  The afternoon was spent designing our Christmas cards!!  Yes…in September!

Sometimes, the most fun and memorable things to happen are the unexpected moments!  Today, we were gifted a pile of tree cuttings from our nature garden for P5/6 to use in the grassy area to make dens.  I was delighted to see the joy and excitement this brought to everyone and we are keeping fingers crossed for good weather next week so we can enjoy it.  I also loved seeing the enthusiasm and team work bringing up the branches! 😃