On Wednesday 21st, we welcomed all our families into school to share an afternoon focusing on all things Maths! Prior to the day, the children helped plan activities that could be played with our visitors showing them the areas of Maths we’ve covered lately in class. It was a great opportunity to show them the different ways we learn Maths.
Activities included working with money at our shop, Telling the Time using chilli challenge cards, pupil made Blooket games, a Time scavenger hunt, Time Snap or Pairs, a 1 minute speed activity, Addition and Subtraction Connect 4 and Number line jumping.
Thank you to everyone who came and joined in, in good spirit! Special thanks to those who gave Multiplication Twister a try!
Please leave us a comment to let us know which activities you tried and liked best!
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!
Part of our learning in Maths this term is focusing on Measurement. It’s a great topic to incorporate in every day tasks, outside of Maths time too.
During our RME work, we used our skills to measure Ayanda’s turban material that he wore at a recent wedding. We were shocked to find out that it measured around 4m 80cm!
The Daily Mile has also created an opportunity to think about distances in metres, kilometres and miles. We are counting up laps and adding these measurements together to get a class distance. To date we have walked, jogged and sprinted our way to 31, 4730m or 314.7 km or 196.7 miles.
This week, we measured out a rectangular shape that measured 50m in perimeter. We timed how long it took us to walk that distance twice and will use this information to help us work out how long it would take us to walk 1km.
Our class had fun exploring the human body with the visitors from The Glasgow Science Centre today. In the morning we were given the chance to play with different interactive exhibits relating to different parts of the body.
The girls were looking to see if they could spot when this patient needed an x-ray.These boys learned about the different organs in our bodies and where they are.Putting the brain back together wasn’t very easy!Can you see which parts of their bodies were the hottest?All the images are in the correct order! Well done!This memory game was very competitive! We had to remember the correct sequence of flashing lights and try to repeat it.
Later on we took part in a Disgusting Digestion interactive show.
It was great fun and we learned about the journey of food throughout our bodies.
We learned how long our intestines are…up to 7 or 8 metres long!What is going on here? Can you have a guess based on their facial expressions?
Somehow, we also managed to squeeze in a session with a local musician today! We were treated to some dialect singing and fiddle playing by Claire White. She planned a busy session looking at some interesting local stories and how she managed to turn these into songs for people to remember.
Then we split into groups to write our own stories and eventually turn these into songs. Some groups chose their own local stories to develop. These included the St Ninian’s Isle treasure, The Queen opening our school in 1969 and the Braer Disaster. It was a lot to do in the short space of time, so we didn’t quite manage to finish this today. Next term we are looking at local history, so we will save what we have achieved for now and build on these again at a later date. I look forward to seeing what we can produce!
It has been a busy scientific term in P4/5/6! Over the past few weeks we have explored all aspects of Light. We learned about shadows, reflections and how light can bend when it travels through a different medium.
We had fun with a periscope, looking around the room for a secret message being held up on a whiteboard. This was made possible with the mirrors reflecting the light.
Our camera obscuras showed us how light is reflected into our eyes. This appears as an upside down image. Our brain flips this around so that it makes sense to us. But in this camera, it is projected upside down on to the tracing paper screen. One pupil decided to do some handstands so that she would be seen the “right way up” in her friend’s camera obscura! It was lots of fun to experiment with.
Investigating how to make long and short shadows.
Can Kirsty read the secret message using her periscope?
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.
Sometimes we had to rethink our ideas!
Kate happy at her work, writing her description.
An organised and clever way to display shapes made.
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!
Great teamwork to build a successful wind turbine.
As part of our topic work, we have been learning about Renewable and Non Renewable energy sources. We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of these and which ones would work best in Shetland.
Last week, we worked in teams to design and create a wind turbine using a selection of materials. The turbine had to turn when we used a hair dryer on it and it also had to lift a plastic cup! Lots of things to consider in their designs!
It was lovely to watch everyone interacting and taking turns to contribute. Everyone showed consideration towards the ideas shared and compromises were made as to what the design would look like and how it would work.
It was important to try little tests now and again, to check if any changes needed to be made. Some groups found that when the hair dryer was switched on, the blades of their turbine were not strong enough and required further reinforcement. Some found that there blades were the wrong size or shape and some discovered that they needed to attach their cup differently so that it would lift without getting tangled in the turbine blades. Lots of learning going on!
We tested all the designs and everyone had the chance to add their thoughts on what they thought had worked well and what could be done to improve their designs further. I was impressed with how the children were able to make suggestions in a such a positive, caring and considerate way. Look out world…some future engineers here!
All very busy!
Great team work going on here.
Everyone worked well in their group.
It was definitely a case of try, try and try again!
This team managed to design a turbine that could turn and lift the cup!
Great idea for the blades here!
Brilliant social skills being developed with this group. Lots of challenges, but they took it in their stride!
Super team work to create this design.
Another successful wind turbine. Lots of discussion and changes to their design allowed them to make a successful design.
We grabbed our chalk and headed outdoors last week to show what we had been learning about telling the time!
Some helpers drew clock shapes on the playground ready for our task. Each person gave their partner a “time” to draw on the clock face. These varied from o’clock/half past/quarter past,/quarter times to minutes past/to the hour. We also wrote a digital time to match, sometimes including a 24 hour clock too!
Some pupils gave their partner challenges to find things like 27 minutes after a given time. This took a bit more thinking!
Keep having fun showing time when you are out and about P4/5/6. Perhaps you can make a clock on the beach next time!
During P6 Bikeability time on Monday afternoons, P4/5 have been busy working in small groups to create their own animations. The plan was to create an animation to help children in the school learn something that they might find tricky.
Our groups are making animations showing alphabetical order, 3 Times Table, Tricky Words and Telling the Time.
We have a couple of weeks left to tweak our animations and then hopefully we can share them with you!
Some people chose to use words and pictures in their animations…
Some groups chose to use items in the classroom to make their animations…
We can’t wait to see the finished products!
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