We are on our second week of our 31 Playful Minutes journey in P4/5. It’s certainly a much looked forward to part of the week. Please ask your children to explain to you why we are doing this each week, and why it is for31 minutes!
We plan to stick with our chosen ‘play’ choices for at least another week before deciding if we’d like to try one of the activities some of the others have been choosing or picking a different interest.
Below are some of the things we’ve enjoyed so far….
Always a hit! Staff like to join in too!
A lovely, quiet area for building a Minecraft world.
Role play in the grocery shop. They had some
tricky customers this week!
Crafts….from clay to stuffed pigs and paper bag people!
Following our own topical interests and presenting our findings however we choose.
Farms, trucks and tractors! We even had a friend stop by who couldn’t resist a play!
We have already seen wonderful examples of sharing and cooperating together during these sessions. Sometimes compromising can be hard at times but a playful environment is a wonderful way to work through these challenges.
Thank you to all our families who donated used magazines for our grammar lesson! It fairly cheered up learning about the correct use of speech marks! Character images were chosen and cut out from the magazines and we had to decide on what each would be saying before adding in all the necessary punctuation marks. There is so much to remember! Some pupils created short conversations, making sure they took a new line for a new speaker. Some pupils worked on sentences where the speech comes first and then showed different examples using the speech at the end of their sentence. Others wrote inside speech bubbles and will work on punctuating this with inverted commas next week.
Great focus and careful work P4/5! (3 votes, average: 1.00 out of 1) Loading...
We recently completed our latest Mission from the Children’s Parliament. It was based around Safety and Security. We revised what ‘data’ is, the different ‘types’ of data there can be and how it is used in AI systems.
We then thought about our rights and how this relates to safety and security with AI. We talked about online gaming and the importance of keeping data safe to protect their right to play and privacy. We discussed sharing locations online and talked about safety in relation to this too.
Our next task was to try to guess the identity of a mystery YouTube channel user based on their recommendation homepage. They had to consider what this person may like, where they might live, how old they are etc… For this activity, we needed to think like AI and to have respectful and fair ideas about this person. We are hoping to hear more about the mystery user when our Investigators have their online call next week!
Our final task was a craft based one. We each got a wooden house to decorate. The outside needed to reflect information they’d be happy to share with the world! Within the inside of the house, they were to write, draw or symbolise pieces of information that should only be shared with family and friends.
(2 votes, average: 1.00 out of 1) Loading...Busy making our houses. The Children’s Parliament provide all the wonderful resources we use.
We often use these coloured cups during class time, but they are especially handy during Maths time. Ask your child to explain to you how they are used!
During Health and Wellbeing lessons, we’ve been thinking about the topic Friendship. In groups, we talked about what qualities we think are vital, preferable or not necessary in a good friendship. We had different ideas about this but there were many qualities that we all agreed on. We decided to turn these words into a display for the hall and a ‘Tom Gates’ style display was chosen to reflect the interests of many members in the class.
We looked at books in the Library and from home and talked about the style of lettering and drawings used by Liz Pichon. We then created our friendship words and black pen drawings of us with our friends. This proved an enjoyable activity for many and the end result looks very charming!
We will now move on to think about different aspects of friendships and getting along with others.
(3 votes, average: 1.00 out of 1) Loading...Adding the final ‘doodles’ to our display!
It was lovely to see everyone back for the start of Term 2 and to hear about holiday adventures both near and far!
This week some of the learning that P4/5 have been involved in has included creating an atmospheric, moonlit sky for a spooky Halloween painting, creating a plan for a story about ‘staying out’ on Halloween night and starting our opening paragraph and in Maths, working with change.
It was very amusing to see some of these activities being carried out in Halloween costumes for our dress-up day!
We’ve also had a change of seating arrangements in the class so we’ve got new friends to work alongside.
Concentrating while mixing and blending colours.Painting is always a favourite activity in P4/5!A quiet class, happy at their work!
Opening sentences for Ollie’s ‘Staying Out’ story…
On Halloween Bobby and Miller go camping in the street. They set down the tent on the grass next to a path. The grass was wet, soft and damp but they paused. They heard a noise, a loud noise. It came closer and closer AND closer.
Opening sentences for Alex’s ‘Staying Out’ story…
It was Halloween and Jeremy and Bob went camping in the forest. It was a misty and cold night and it was hard to see. All they had was a small tent, a torch, beans, firewood and matches. They were sitting next to the fire when suddenly it went out.
Monopoly Maths in fancy dress!Super group work playing by the rules, working out change and double checking using calculators. (4 votes, average: 1.00 out of 1) Loading...
Today we had our final day with Janny John! We have written lovely, heartfelt messages to him along with the rest of the school. We enjoyed his company in class where we played Hangman together and then ended up with a game of Toilet Tag in the hall. The best part of the day was when we all gathered together in the hall to watch him carry out his Taskmaster style challenges. He will be a huge miss. We have all been very lucky to have him. Best wishes John!
Happy October holidays to you all!
Locking up for the last time.
Some interesting costumes on John’s last day! (5 votes, average: 1.00 out of 1) Loading...
It’s been a week full of active learning and creativity this week!
In Art with Ms Burr, the children have been painting butterflies from the rainforest. They have been thinking about the colours they see in nature and recreating this in their work. They have been working with concentration and care. We have also created beautiful Christmas card designs which you’ll be able to see when you visit for your parent appointment shortly!
In Topic work this week, Mrs Henderson found an active way to help illustrate how food webs work.
We had another visit from Gregory and Frances from the Children’s Parliament who came to meet our new P4/5 pupils who have joined our class and introduce them to the work they do and to begin talking about AI. There were, as always, some great ‘Getting To Know You’ games and we spoke some more about the UNCRC.
We were delighted to receive our MCP lanyards!
Getting To Know You Paper bag introductions!
Group work is at the centre of all that we do in the Children’s Parliament. In groups, we had to choose an animal and think of statements about it that would allow the rest of the class to guess our creature. We had to agree on the animal and statements before ordering these from most difficult to easiest.
In groups, we drew around a life-size body and wrote inside it about the kind of person we’d like to be and our hopes and dreams and how we’d get there in the future. Again, team work, discussion, listening and sharing was needed to make this task a success.
Then we started to think more about AI and where it can be found in daily life. We also recapped on how data is collected for AI and introduced our new pupils to the ‘Cleaning Up The Ocean’ online game.
On Thursday, Gregory returned to help us think more about fairness in AI. He gave us a challenge! A school has over 300 pupils and for the upcoming day trip to the Golf Course, there can only be 100 children chosen! Who gets to go? We were introduced to coding using ‘Python’ which uses simple words and numbers to instantly sort and analyse data.
The challenge was to build an algorithm that decides who gets to go on the trip by using a points system. Points had to be allocated under certain headings – pupils who are always late, those with best behaviour, age of pupil, those performing best in a test etc. When the numbers were input, the computer made the decision for each pupil as to how many points they were rewarded.
After a list of names was produced and we found out who the 100 tickets would go to, we then heard about some of the personal stories behind the pupils. This made us realise that selecting pupils in this way was unfair and sometimes, you need to know more information. Our investigators will pass on our thoughts at their next online meeting.
Thursday afternoon saw us drumming with Joy again and I was so impressed with how quickly the class have built up some complicated rhythms and combining these together. I love watching the concentration on the faces as the pupils follow Joy’s lead!
Friday saw us learning about the Spanish Armada and the wreck of the El Gran Grifon which sank off Fair Isle in 1588. This gave us some background knowledge before listening to music from this period of time from the Chroma Music Group.
The afternoon saw Nora and her violin and Rory with his accordion, creating music with others pupils while we learned a dance in the hall. It was a war dance between the Spaniards and Elizabethans. It was a very different and enjoyable Friday afternoon!
Over the past few weeks, P4/5 have been working together to create our class charter. We looked together at the Articles listed in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and picked out four that we felt were important for our class. We chose Non Discrimination…Be Ourselves, Be Respectful, Be Safe and Be Healthy.
Our next job was to identify our responsible behaviours under each heading. Once agreed, we voted on a theme to display our charter and the most popular idea was a Rainforest theme!
It would be really great if you could spend time talking through the responsible behaviours we have decided on at home too.
Be Ourselves
We understand that we all have similarities and we will respect our differences too.
Be ourselves…don’t change being you for other people!
Take interest in everyone and what they like to do.
Include everyone!
Be Respectful
Be kind and fair to everyone.
Listen to all ideas, even if different from your own.
Talk in a polite way to everyone.
Treat others how you would like to be treated.
Be Healthy
Keep our brains active and our ideas healthy.
Let staff know how we are feeling.
We will notice if our classmates are struggling and help.
Be active!
Be Safe
Use equipment at school sensibly.
Wear a seat belt on the bus.
Follow all the school rules.
Treat others with care.
The Duty Bearers were also given a set of responsibilities too. The children felt these were important to include.
Encourage us.
Help us to sort out any problems we have.
Help us in a small group if we find something tricky.
Take us to new places and let us try fun activities indoors and outside.
There will be much excitement tomorrow! We have been gifted four stick insects to look after and care for! We look forward to learning more about them and will keep you updated on their progress.
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