Maths – Exploring 2D Shapes

March 12, 2022 Mrs Smith Leave a comment

In P4/5/6 this week, we have signed up to the Shetland Sumdog Competition so we made a start at climbing up the leader board on Friday. We are hoping to build on our success in the National Competition last time so it would be wonderful if the pupils could log in at home too and play along. It runs until Thursday 17th. Good luck!

These past few weeks, the class have been learning about 2D Shapes. We have found out about polygons, regular and irregular 2D Shapes, parallel and perpendicular lines, how to find the number of diagonals a many sided shape has and naming quadrilaterals.

All of this helped lead up to this week’s Maths lesson where pairs of children were given either a description of a 2D shape or a specific shape for them to describe using the correct Mathematical terms. They had to use different materials to make them as accurately as they could. I was really impressed with the team work shown and their ability to keep working when shapes did not quite come together and when clues had to be puzzled out. (Sorry for out of focus photos!)

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The pupils were given a choice of materials to make their shapes.

Kirsty and Andrew worked so well together that they whizzed through their clues!

Eilidh and Innes used a lot of tape to secure their shapes.

Always great to see a busy class, just getting on with a task!

Straws were used to make some shapes and we found we could make the more basic shapes easily, by bending and fitting the ends inside.

Kate happy at her work, writing her description.

An organised and clever way to display shapes made.

Festival of Care

February 13, 2022 Mrs Smith Leave a comment

This week, we have been preparing for The Festival of Care 2022. The Festival runs from Friday 18th February until Tuesday 22nd. Our school, along with all the other Shetland schools, have received a pack with suggested ideas for us to work through. The #ShetlandCrew are a group of care experienced children and young adults who are asking us all to think about the different types or combination of families that children grow up in and to be aware that, for some children, growing up can be difficult, especially if they are care experienced.

The theme for this year is, ‘Tending the Light’ and they are asking us to think about the following questions.

Do you have someone who is a lighthouse for you?
What makes them a lighthouse?
How do you think you can be a lighthouse for the children and young people who need it most?

We looked at examples of care experienced characters in famous books and films and spoke about the different families they grew up in and what these characters have in common.

We enjoyed playing some games suggested by the #ShetlandCrew to get us thinking about what it may feel like to be care experienced.

Finally, we created our own lighthouse window art that will be displayed next week to show our support for all those who are care experienced throughout Shetland.

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One of the games saw us leading a friend who could not see. They had to put their trust in a friend to safely guide them.

Everyone was kind and gentle towards those who could not see.

It felt strange not knowing where we were going. That was when we had to trust our partner knew what to do!

Andrew felt like he was falling but Ryan was there to catch him!

The second game saw us forming a tight circle around a friend who could not see. They were then spun around and around until dizzy!

We spoke about how this felt. They didn’t know which direction to move in. They felt dizzy and a little out of control.

As they started their journey to find their place back in the circle, there were kind hands reaching out to guide them and show them the way.

We started making our lighthouses that will be displayed next week. How fitting to have the light streaming in on us as we worked!

Andrew, Scott, Robbie and Ayanda get started.

Archie, Rachel, Lily and Freya worked together.

Scarlett, Jade and Olga happy at their work!

Ryan, Innes and Ruben take a rest from glue and tissue paper!

Amazing teamwork! Almost done! We look forward to sharing our finished window displays next week!

Our Day…

February 2, 2022 Mrs Henderson 1 Comment

Today we have been looking at our digestive system. We worked in small groups to demonstrate what is happening inside our bodies when we eat food. We used everyday items to represent different things inside our bodies.

First we “ate” some food (crackers and bananas) and it travelled to our stomachs (plastic bag).

Then we added saliva (water) and stomach acid (orange juice) to help break down the food in the stomach.

Next our stomach muscles got to work and squeezed all of

the food until it was a gloopy mixture.

I wonder if everyone liked this part…?

Then the food was transported to the small intestine (tights) where it was again pushed and squeezed by many muscles. This allowed all of the useful nutrients to be squeezed out for the body to use, leaving behind what our body doesn’t need.

After that, whatever was left over was sent to the large intestine (cup) and left the body as poo! This was the part that many found too disgusting to watch!!

Poor Peter just couldn’t look!

We began our new novel today The Nowehere Emporium. Don’t worry if you are not in school right now, you can catch up with the story on Teams! Mrs Smith will post more information on this soon.

After playtime we did some Maths, focusing on different aspects of multiplication. Keep practising at home too everyone!

In the afternoon we spent time in our research groups to begin our posters. Each group has chosen an aspect of Human Body that they would like to find out about. Everyone worked so well in their groups, making sure all members had a job to do and felt included.

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Topic Work

January 25, 2022 Mrs Henderson Leave a comment

We now have 2 skeletons on display in the classroom.! We have had some helpers today, writing labels for each one.

The skeleton on the left has been labelled with common terms for the bones, such as thigh bone, knee cap and skull. The skeleton on the right shows the medical terms for each bone, for example femur, patella and cranium.

This afternoon we made our own moving skeletons. It was very fiddly and we had to have a lot of patience to make it work!

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Skeletons

January 24, 2022 Mrs Henderson Leave a comment

Today we worked in groups to try to build a skeleton! It was interesting to see if anyone knew how our bones are connected. We had fun trying to identify the internal organs too and where they are located inside our bodies.

Last week we wrote down all of the things that we would like to find out about the Human Body. So many excellent questions! We are going to begin group research projects soon to try to answer some of our questions.

Working as a team to decide where each organ is located.

Where do all of those organs need to go?

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Quiz Time!

January 18, 2022 Mrs Henderson Leave a comment

In P4/5/6, we have been learning how to build electrical circuits as part of our topic work. We have also looked at which materials act as conductors of electricity and which materials are insulators.

We found out that metal is a conductor, so we used tin foil to help us build an electrical quiz board for the younger pupils in our school.

We thought carefully about the focus for our quizzes and tried to keep in mind how to make the questions suitable for younger pupils.

It was amazing to see how many social skills were developed during this process: turn taking, co-operation, talking and listening, compromising and providing support and encouragement to each other. Of course, there were opportunities to develop ICT skills too. It was lovely to see so many pupils eager to pass on their ICT knowledge! What a team!

To play our games, you need to use an electrical circuit. Instead of completing the circuit, the wires at each end connect to our quiz board – one wire to a question and the other wire to the answer. If the question and answer match, the bulb will light up! This means that we have completed the circuit!

We can’t wait to show you the finished quiz boards soon and test them out on the P1/2 and P2/3/4 classes!

Using ICT skills to create questions and answers.

Ayanda is connecting his question and answer on the back of his board with tin foil. Then he has to cover this with tape before connecting the next question with its answer. The tape acts as an insulator to make it safe and help the game to work!

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Merry Christmas!

December 21, 2021 Mrs Henderson Leave a comment

We can hardly believe it is the last day at school in 2021 already! What a year it has been!

P4/5/6/ sat back and relaxed with an ice lolly on Monday afternoon while they enjoyed their online Christmas pantomime!

Wishing you all a lovely Christmas and all the best for 2022!

Let’s make it a good one!

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Christmas Lunch

December 16, 2021 Mrs Smith Leave a comment

We had a super Christmas lunch in the classroom. We played Christmas songs while we enjoyed good food and company! Grateful thanks to the cooks for all the effort they went to.

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Our Day

December 4, 2021 Mrs Smith Leave a comment

Friday 3rd December…

Our class is beginning is get ready for Christmas. Each morning, we open the light bulb advent calendar we made and we also learn a new “sign” each day when we open a door on our Signalong calendar. We are taking part in the reverse advent calendar again this year and want to thank you all for your kind donations to the Shetland Food Bank too.

We started our day with a reading session. Lots of quizzes were taken with some great scores being recorded! We’ve had a new delivery of books from the Sandwick School Library so lots of pupils had a look through them and chose stories that they think they will enjoy. We have some very keen readers in P4/5/6.

We are working hard on handwriting in the class. Some pupils worked alone on joined sentences while others copied my examples from the board. Getting to grips with joining can be tricky but all pupils worked hard and did not give up! It was great to see their confidence grow in just one short session.

Maths time was spent exploring 3D shapes and their nets. We built up various shapes using construction, then folded it flat so that we could see how we needed to draw our own nets on squared paper. There was a lot of learning in this activity! It didn’t always work out but we spoke about how we’d improve on what we did next time!

After lunch we looked at two Christmas cards and spoke about the different themes that appear on them. The class have been asked to look out for this over the coming weeks at home. Do the cards link to the Christian faith and festival of Christmas or are they more winter themed with images of Santa, snowmen, robins and things we associate with this time of year?

Then we started to think about creating a Christmas card to take home. We painted the background ready to start decorating next week.

We took advantage of the calm day to go outside for a longer Class PE session while Ruben and Ryan grabbed the chance to rehearse their guitar pieces for our Christmas Play in peace and quiet. Two of our violin players also celebrated success in their individual lessons. See the photos below!

Have a lovely weekend all!

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Innes is hoping to find a treat in his advent bulb!

We used nets to create our 3D light bulbs.

Last week we explored 3D shapes using tooth picks to create the edges and play doh to hold it together. It made it easy to count vertices.

It was tricky to get the shapes to stand up. We needed patience and sometimes, a friend to help hold our structures up!

Rachel was pleased with her triangular prism. We’ve talked a lot this week about the difference between pyramids and prisms.

It’s good to work alongside friends on your Maths!

More complicated 3D shapes were easily made using the Geomags.

Our recent measuring topic came in handy as we had to draw lines of the right size, using the squared paper as a guide. We had to work accurately.

Ruben quickly realised he needed to use a protractor to measure the angles so he could draw his net accurately.

Gluing the tabs and sticking them down was tricky!

Eilidh’s construction cube and her completed net.

These two budding musicians have now moved on to playing first finger! They are very proud of themselves.

Look for the different types of Christmas cards coming into your homes over the next few weeks.

LEGO Renewables

November 25, 2021 Mrs Henderson Leave a comment

Emma Chittick, who is a STEM Engagement Advisor for Skills Development Scotland, came in to help us with another STEM wind turbine challenge., but this time we used LEGO!

She set a competition to see which design could generate the most power. The tricky part was trying to build a strong structure to set the turbine on. The class also had to consider how they attached their blades and in which direction they were facing.

Everyone was so engaged and worked well on their own or with a partner to complete the task.

Well done P4/5/6! You did a great job!