Today Tory, Kayla, Evie and Lois from Primary 6, represented our school in the Shetland Heat of the Euroquiz. We are delighted to say that they came third equal! Congratulations to them! It shows that all their hard word paid off.
P5/6 Shared Learning
Thank you to all our supporters who came to our Shared Learning event today. We hope you enjoyed our journey through Europe on this historical day! Our pupils have worked so hard in the lead up to today, especially on their STEM inventions which they presented so well in their “Dragons’ Den” style act. We had fun learning the EU anthem on the boomwhackers and were glad to share it with you. We hope you were able to spend time looking through your child’s pupil folio, looking at our climate change posters and completing our Europe quizzes. Well done – some of you scored full marks! Our displays will be in the foyer next week if you missed them. A big well done to all pupils. Your confidence when presenting to an audience always impresses us!
Apologies…no photos from today but we all enjoyed the moment!
Christmas Cards … and Poetry
I hope you have found your lovely Christmas card that was sent home today! This class enjoy craft work and created really striking winter tree paintings for their cards.
We also used these pictures to inspire us to do some creative writing. We went out into the nature garden to look at the winter trees and gather words, phrases and ideas for our work. Back in class, we looked at various free style poems to give us more inspiration before creating our own. The poems needed to sound as if we were having a conversation with the tree. They needed to have questions and repetition within it and they were not to rhyme. This proved harder than we thought! Some excellent pieces were created, very quickly. Here are some of my favourite lines…
Dream and dream until the sun shines through to wake you up, winter tree. (Amy)
Tall and elegant, but dead looking inside so bare and brown. (Fergus)
Will your leaves ever return? Lying dormant on the ground but in the summer you’re tall and proud. (Magnus)
Trees do you hear me? How do you feel? What do you see? Dusted with frost. (Fiona)
Oh winter tree, how do you survive the harsh, harsh cold winter? (Matthew)
Oh cold frosty tree, how do you stand so strong and proud in the strong winter breeze? (Hannah)
I’ll speak to you next year but now it’s time to sleep, sleep, sleep. (Isabel)
No reply came from the winter tree. Then I wonder… Is he alive? (Robbie)
The newly fallen snow is…hair. It’s winter, tree. (Ellie)
I don’t know how you can stand so tall and proud in this bitter wind. (Kelsi)
Are you cold? Surely you are! Will your leaves ever come back? You’re so naked. Soon your leaves will return. Just keep dreaming and dreaming. (Liam)
Oh tree so cold, bent and old. Your pine cones so spiky. Do you feel it if you bend so bold? (Kathryn)
Winter tree, your leaves have fallen. You’re covered in a cloak of snow. You are freezing in the bitter temperatures. (Bella)
How do you live outside in the cold lifeless winter, tree? You must have thick skin. (Bobby)
You dream about the summer and the flowers and the grass and how you’ll have leaves at last. (Ava)
Winter tree, how can you live like this…in the vast winter wind where your life has faded…? (Abi)
Yes, yes, yes! I can get cold on the outside but in the inside I can feel happiness. (Anders)
Do you want my jacket? Wait, no, that strong, insulating bark of yours will surely keep you warm. (Evie)
Mum said you’re dreaming of spring with your green, vibrant leaves but I can not see it! (Fearne)
Bare, chilly and frosty, you need some warmth. Dream of spring, summer, flowers and the sun. (Tory)
Your fantastic green leaves, gone but when summer comes around, you will be remade and beautiful once again. (Koll)
That’s too many questions! Let me stand here until spring! (Hayden)
Are you ever going to take off in this winter breeze? Swaying in the wind, bare and cold. (Kayla)
The full versions of our poems will be displayed in school next term. Please feel free to come and have a read in the new year!
Christmas Carol Concert
A huge well done to our P5/6 pupils on two wonderful performances at our Carol Concert! We are very proud of you all! What super singers, instrumentalists, percussionists and performers. We hope you enjoyed your time rehearsing and on the stage. Thank you for rehearsing so well and thanks too, to parents and carers supporting at home and on the day.
Electricity
Today we looked at the next aspect of our topic – electricity. It was great fun exploring the electricity boxes and trying to make an electrical circuit to light the bulbs! Lots of exciting discoveries were made and I’m sure the hilarity could be heard throughout the school as we tried to create a complete circuit with our bodies!
Advent
As November closes and we look forward to the advent season, P5/6 have been preparing their origami tree advent calendars. Lots of cutting, folding, gluing and sticking resulted in some lovely trees being made ready for Monday.
STEM – final challenge!
Today was our last STEM session with Emma Chittick this year. The children were asked to use all of the knowledge and skills gained over the past couple of weeks to build something that would generate electricity. Everyone was raring to get started and it didn’t take long for their designs to take shape!
Some made wind turbines, some used solar cells, while some used both in the same structure. It was great to see the children interacting and problem solving together to try and achieve success. I was very proud to see everyone working so well as a team and providing support for each other. Well done P5/6!
Handwashing
We had a visit from the school nurse today to remind us how to wash our hands properly. It is so important to keep washing our hands thoroughly, especially at this time of year with all of the nasty bugs that can so easily be spread from person to person.
Everyone took turns to cover their hands in a special cream that will show up under UV light. Then we all washed our hands carefully, following the advice given, and put our hands under the UV light. If anything did not get washed properly, it showed up on your hands with the special light.
Everyone did a brilliant job and now we need to remember to keep this up with our daily handwashing routines!
STEM
This term we are looking at renewable energy so we invited Emma Chittick into our class to work on a few STEM projects linked to our learning. In week 1, the children were challenged to build a wind turbine using Lego. When their structures were ready, everyone had a trial run and were given time to make any necessary alterations to their design. It was very exciting waiting to see if it would turn with the wind from the fan! We measured how much electricity was produced from each design.
In week 2 the class were asked to build a structure with solar panels that would capture natural light and artificial light. This meant that they had to design a structure that could change the angle of the solar panel. Again, they were given a trial run, then a fair test with the same conditions for each group. During our testing, we quickly realised one disadvantage when relying on solar energy. The position of the sun moved as we were testing at our classroom windowsill, resulting in less direct natural sunlight for some of the tests.
Keep a look out for the final challenge next week!
Happy Holidays
That’s been a fast term!
What have P5/6 been up to on their final day of term? They all worked on grammar activities first thing before heading out to the multicourt for class P.E. where we scored a record number of frisbee goals! Then we all worked on our own personal learning goals before lunch so all different types of activities were going on at the same time. The afternoon saw us gather together to have a whole school photo to celebrate our 50 years and this was followed by a great JRSO assembly. Happy holidays everyone and here’s hoping this weather holds!
