Today we celebrated World Book Day in a number of ways. Last week, we talked about the importance of listening to books, especially from a young age. We talked about books that would appeal to younger children and how the reader has an important part to play in the enjoyment of a story. With this in mind, each child chose a book that they would like read to a pupil in the ELC department or P1/2. They rehearsed reading it and thought about stopping to ask questions or point out details in the illustrations.
Our class really enjoyed it and were super role models! When the books were done, it was great to see the younger pupils rushing to get their books to read back! We even had a little time to watch them paint.
Back in our class we played a World Book Day game where they were shown a cover, title and blurb. Each team then had to create a believable opening sentence, thinking about recent class work done on different openers. When all were written, we read them all out, including the real sentence. Each group got 2 points if they correctly guessed the right sentence and a bonus 5 points if their sentence was chosen instead of the actual one!
Here are the made up sentences for the book ‘Jelly’ by Jo Cotterill. Can you tell which is the right one?
Angelica, nicknamed Jelly, was the comedy queen of the classroom!
“Do it now, Jelly! Please!
Angelica, also known as Jelly, was the class clown.
”Angelica, stop that noise,” said Mrs Brown.
Angelica was shocked that her Mum had a new boyfriend and was going on a date!
At the end of the day, we shared some of our favourite books.
I really like the Wimpy Kid series. I like all the characters. Each story is new but the books link up a bit.I really like The Call of the Wild and I have watched the movie. The book has lots of twists and turns in it!This book is split into stories about each pet. So far, my favourite is Picasso the Horse because Molly gets rich when she finds out the horse can paint!I like this book about animals. My Mum reads it to me. I like learning about animals like the poisonous dart frog.We had some dressing up characters today too! We had a ballerina and Baby Yoda. 🙂I like the Rainbow Grey series. They are good to read.I like horses and ponies so this is the book for me!I like this really funny book! It has good descriptions. Tom Gates writes little stories and puts them in the book.This is about a cat that can turn spells on dogs. The spells can make them invisible and talk! Anyone who likes cats and magic would like this book.
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It’s been a very busy week in the Draatsi class! We’ve even managed a photo and interview with the local media so keep your eyes peeled in the Shetland Times for news of our AI work with the Children’s Parliament!
Here are some of the activities we’ve been involved in…
Language
We have moved on to Target 2 in our Writing Challenge. With Mrs Henderson the pupils started a longer story which they will build on over the coming weeks. They need to try to include carefully punctuated sentences with interesting openers. Today saw us looking in more detail at openers that begin with -ing words. The pupils were given a sentence ending for them to decide on suitable beginnings. We also looked again at using speech marks. There’s so much to remember!
Maths
Various Maths topics have been worked on this week. These include addition and subtraction methods, multiplication, fractions and work on area. They have been working hard and developing the skill of explaining their answers in words.
HealthandWell–being
Class PE is always really popular so we took advantage of the fine weather on Thursday to go outside and play some of our class favourites! We love Capture The Flag and Rock, Paper, Scissors!
Last week, we watched the Oscar nominated animation, ‘The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse.’ This week we created our own charcoal drawings in the style of Charlie Mackesy and wrote quotes that mean something to us. Some examples are below…
Work by Scott, Jasmin, Rory, Scarlett and Alec.
Wednesday saw our class taken over by the Children’s Parliament. We were joined by Gregory and Sophia who have visited before but were also joined by Cathy who is the founder of the Children’s Parliament in Scotland and Rona who is Head of Projects. They were so impressed by the knowledge of the pupils and how they can articulate themselves. 😌
They helped us with our next Mission. Each group was given a case study which used a different aspect of AI. The children had to read these through and decide on how the AI was being used in a positive or negative way.
This group’s case study was about the use of online video games. They found more cons than pros in their story.
The next task was to illustrate how these pros and cons could be shown using plasticine! This was a hard task but we were all amazed at the imagination each group showed. Each plasticine model had a detailed story behind it.
This group’s story was about how AI can be used when diagnosing illnesses and injury.Models were created to show how people left out of facial recognition would feel.We had to explain what our models showed.
The culmination of the day was creating a news report with each person taking on a different role…Presenters, Interviewers and Editors. The pupils had to write a report about their case study and ask questions about the type of AI used in their story. Joining us live, online, was Mhairi from The Alan Turing Institute. She was able to answer all our questions while the editors quickly noted down her responses. The children ALL rose spectacularly to the challenge and were not put off by the bright lights or Gregory’s dictaphone!
Our presenters were not fazed by the bright lights!A career in the making…Interviewers patiently waiting for their cue…Delighted to be asking The Alan Turing Institute the cutting edge questions!Presenters Fruit Cake, Sponge Cake and Chocolate Cake!
It was a fantastic day of learning and team work. Thursday saw each pupil being interviewed by Gregory to tell him what they understand of AI and how they are finding being involved in this two year project.
The recent snowy day closures have meant less time to work on our concert and Christmas crafts this past week. However, please look out for these gorgeous Christmas cards coming home next week and rescue them from the bottom of bags!
We talked about how lino cut paintings are created and then designed a simple picture that we could draw into polystyrene before using ink and rollers to create our prints. We hope they help spread some Christmas joy! 🎄
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Mrs Henderson and I have been given the chance to take part in an Improving Writing Course run by CYPIC – The Children’s and Young People Improvement Collaborative. We gathered views on writing from the class at the start of the project and used a piece of written work to help us assess where our writers need most support initially. We aim to write three times a week and our focus just now is on improving our understanding and use of punctuation. The class write for just a short 15-20 minute slot before having time to edit and improve their work. The pupils also help each other in this process too. 😊 Their writing jotters are filling up fast with a variety of writing topics across the curriculum! Most recently, we have linked our writing to work going on throughout the class and school. Some examples are…
Write your top tips to cope with bullying during Anti-bullying Week
How do you use AI in your daily life?
Describe the ‘den’ in our class novel
Persuade Santa to put you back on the good list OR employ you as his elf for this Christmas season OR keep his beard…don’t shave it off!
We contine to share the success of the class with the pupils and they are keen to see the progress they are making. We hope to reach our target set in the new year before moving on to the next element of ‘Tools for Writing’ to be improved.
We have one JRSO pupil within our P4/5/6 class, who has been working with the other P6 pupils in Mrs Scanlan’s class next door, to help promote road safety in our school. These pupils worked so hard to compile and deliver a special assembly following Road Safety Week. They also invited the older classes to create a road scene picture which highlighted some of the road safety dangers they addressed in their assembly. These pictures are displayed in the main foyer. Time has also been spent with some of the younger P2 pupils playing a board game that reinforces road safety. The JRSO pupils also plan to visit the ELC pupils to share ‘Ziggy’ stories in the future. Well done to all the JRSOs!
Our JRSOs for this year!Playing along with some of our P2 pupils in the Explore & Learn Room. (No Ratings Yet) Loading...
Yesterday, the Draatsi class watched a video all about ‘The Poppy Story’ and they took notes as they watched to help them recall details for their writing today, on Remembrance Day. Note taking is a really tricky skill but they all persevered and tried hard to just write down the main points! Please see the photographs below of some of the completed pieces of writing. Perhaps you’ll learn something about how the poppy became a symbol of remembrance.
We also spent time looking at John McCrae’s poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ which was written as he looked out over the poppy fields in Ypres, Belgium. We took his very famous poem and blacked out some of the words to create a new piece of writing by choosing words we felt were important. It was amazing how many different versions were created using this technique! Some are still to be completed but please see some of the finished examples below.
It’s taken us a while but sometimes you can’t rush a good job! The children have all created beautiful self portraits in the style of a famous artist that we found out about. They were shown his work and we talked about how we could recreate it. The children were given the choice of working with larger squares or smaller squares in true Chuck Close style. We talked about drawing 2D shapes within each small square or taking the opportunity to make each small picture more personal to them and some chose to do a mixture. We talked about the use of shading to make certain parts of their picture stand out and used black pen to make each portrait more visible than the shapes and squares. When the pictures were complete, we looked at the colours used and they picked backing colours to help display them to their best advantage! They will be displayed in our ICT Suite so please look out for them when you next visit.
Below are three examples from our P6 pupils.
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Scott’s portrait really catches your eye! His small shapes fill his page and I like that he’s left some of the background white. This works particularly well on his face. He’s still used skin tones to create the colour of his face.
Innes chose a bright background and his small shapes work really well on this! I really like the way he’s captured his hair line…very effective! Best of all…Innes thinks it’s his best portrait!
Robbie worked tirelessly! He chose the bigger squares, but within each one, he drew something special to him. Robbie chose the backing colour green to compliment the colours in his picture and to represent his favourite team!
Please see below our learning overview from now until Christmas. This can be subject to change depending on interest but hopefully, you’ll be able to get a ‘feel’ for what is going to be going on in the Draatsi classroom over the coming terms.
One exciting project that has not been included on the emailed copy is that our class have an amazing opportunity to work along with the Children’s Parliament and staff from the Alan Turing Institute finding out about Children’s Rights and Artificial Intelligence. You will be receiving more information about this soon. 😊
Some pupils from the Draatsi class were delighted to start the school day by finding a frog! We carefully took it to the pond area but not before we’d had a good laugh at it jumping on Mrs Smith’s shoe! Happy Friday everyone!
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