Our spooky house paintings are complete and we are so proud of them! Everyone listened carefully to the instructions and put in 100% effort. Fantastic!
Last week we focused on creating a spooky beginning to a story, linked to our paintings. We talked about how to draw the reader in and how to use different punctuation to add suspense and excitement. We then spent time reading each other’s work and editing what we had written, looking for capital letters and correct punctuation. We also had to check that it made sense.
Here is a sneak preview of some story beginnings…
One cold, dark night I found a haunted house. It was dark so I couldn’t see much but I could see enough to make me shiver. A tree fell making me jump but I kept on going, intrigued by it’s spooky silhouette. Lightning struck and in the flash of light, I saw a cloak swish past the window, but it was too late to turn back now. As I opened the door I heard an evil cackle, was it a witch? Or a ghost? My heart skipped a beat as I walked into the unknown.
One night, I was walking through a dark, gloomy forest. I noticed a haunting house. It was old and dusty and the garden was covered in fungus and parasites! As I walked to the door I heard some spooky sounds. the noises continued. I tried to ignore it and moved on. Inside things were even worse! The furniture was broken and the hallways were putrid. I went into the basement and the lights started to flicker.
One dark and stormy night I found myself in a giant corn maze. I could smell the horrible smell of still lifeless decaying bodies of animals and even humans. After what felt like hours of walking, I found the way out. Then I had found a house. I thought “Finally! I found somewhere to sleep!”
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! (4 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.
Week 3 was another busy one with lots of opportunity to work with others and be creative.
We played a variety of word building games and revised some common high frequency words. These words are used regularly in our writing, so we will work hard to learn them in many different ways.
Thank you for sending in resources to help with our Rainforest in a Box project. We started building them this week and it has been lovely to see so many creative ideas being shared amongst the class. We plan to have them ready to show parents towards the end of term.
In Maths this week we have been looking at Place Value and how to construct larger numbers. The class had fun using the Place Value blocks to build models and then work out the value of each model. It was great to hear the children sharing their thinking and supporting each other to understand. We will be moving on to comparing numbers and ordering them too. I’m sure everyone will be keen to challenge themselves with even larger numbers!
We love to hear about any achievements outside of school and this week enjoyed hearing about one P4’s success at a recent athletics competition. Well done!
Please see below, the learning that is planned for the Draatsi class over the next two terms. As always, this is subject to change to allow for pupil interests and our learning taking new directions and paths as we go. 😊
This week our new Investigators have been announced. They have been given their welcome packs and will be preparing to meet the children they will be working alongside on their first online call shortly. We wish them luck in this exciting opportunity.
Our new Investigators!
We’ve started our class novel, “The Explorer,” which ties in with our Rainforest and Biodiversity topic.
We have learned about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and have used some of the most relevant Articles to help us form our Responsible Behaviours Agreement for our class. We plan to create a rainforest theme which we’ll share with you in time!
Any pupil wishing to represent their class in the Pupil Council had the opportunity to think about what would make them a suitable member and we’ll take a vote on this next week.
For writing this week, poems created in Week 1 were rewritten for display in class and there was a big effort with handwriting. Well done!
Maths this week was based around problem solving activities with pupils choosing from a wide range of tasks that involved them using strategies such as trial and error, act it out and look for a pattern. Lots of paired and cooperative group work was also needed to succeed!
It’s been lovely to see all our pupils back this week! The Draatsi class have been kept busy.
Last year’s P5s helped our new pupils to get to know both of their teachers by introducing them to one of their favourite games on the laptop, Blooket. It was fast and furious fun!
They have also been looking carefully at their reflections and have drawn amazing self-portraits. These will be displayed beside a Bio Poem they have been creating to help us get to know them better too.
They have been introduced to our class topic, Rainforests and Biodiversity and have listened to the blurb on our class novel. The title yet has to be revealed but it’s a good one!
Time was spent thinking about our school rules – Ready, Respectful and Safe and the class worked on T Charts to help them record what this would look like and sound like in our class.
The good weather meant that we could spend time outside playing team building games together so we can get to know each other better and begin to work well, collectively, as a class.
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