Please enjoy these photos of some things we have been up to recently.

Big Question – Religious and non-religious celebrations in society

Maths – Shapes and Symmetry

Cooking with Mrs Bannister 🙂

SMUHA Fun

Shetland Museum Visit

Thank you so much to Mhairi from the Shetland Museum for coming to visit the class to tell us all about Johnnie Notions. Johnnie Notions was a Shetland man who developed an inoculation for small pox. Despite having had no formal education and no fancy equipment he was able to create the inoculation and save hundreds or thousands of lives. I knew nothing about Johnnie Notions so every day really is a school day, even when you are the teacher.

World Book Day – Character Competition

Well done to all the finalists in our character competition and extra special congratulations to  Glyn who was our winner.

Canva and AI

On Monday we wrote character descriptions of animals that live in France. We were then able to feed that text into an AI app on Canva and create images to go with the text.  The kids  loved seeing their descriptions come to life in a picture and although AI is not always 100% accurate I think the results are pretty cool!

World Book Day

We have had a wonderful day today focusing on reading, developing a reading culture and enjoying books.

First we had a class competition to create book characters from cardboard cylinders, the winners are still to be decided.

Then we took part in a national Footy and Booky Quiz hosted by the authors Kit Brown, Ben Lyttleton and Alex Bellos. You can have a go at last year’s quiz here:

World Book Day 2024 Footy & Booky Quiz!

After that we had some reading time in class while we ate snack.

After break we learned how to use a resource that is new to us in P4/5, Canva. The kids all made poster showing the kinds of things they like to read about. The kids have their log in information home with them and they will be able to access it if they want to:

1. First log on to glow.
2. Open Canva using the tile on their glow launch pad.
3. Enter glow email address.
4. Once they have entered their email address Canva will send them a code
5. Open mail, also found on their glow launch pad.
6. Retrieve code
7. Enter it on Canva and access the site.

Finally everyone got the change to visit the amazing cosy reading area set up by Carrie-Ann in the open area, it was so beautiful, engaging and interactive, the kids had a great time.  Thank you so much to Carrie-Ann for all the hard work and effort she put in.

Home Learning and Talking and Listening

This afternoon we have had presentations from each of the learners in the class. These presentations were the ‘Dream Menus’  that they did this term as their home learning project.  All of the learners handed in their projects, all of their projects were done to a high standard and they all loved sharing their menus with their friends. It was great to see the improvement in their presentation skills over the course of the year as the learners have become more confident speaking in front of a larger group of peers.

Big Question

This week we have been learning about the skeleton.  The kids drew their own skeletons using oil pastels and then worked together to give each skeleton and interesting fact to “say”.

Maths

The green group have been learning about 3D shapes this week.

Big Question

This week we have been learning about the digestive system.  Here are the kids drawing life sized images of what they thought the digestive system was like before they learned about it.

Food Preparation with Carrie Ann

This week a group was looking at making healthy sandwiches. Hopefully everyone will get a chance to do 3/4 food preparation sessions over the course of the term.

Discovery

Last week in comprehension one group was learning about impressionist and post impressionist paintings. This week for discover the topic everyone chose a painting to recreate. I am so impressed by the amazing art they have produced.

Table Tennis

The kids are having the opportunity to try out table tennis with Mrs Smith, Chris and Kay coaching them. The kids had great fun practicing their forehand, backhand and rallys this week.  Next week they are going to have the chance to work on their serve and full games. Mrs Smith will be at Cunningsburgh Youth Club for the next couple of weeks so the kids can have further opportunities to play there if they want to.

Writing – Adverbs

This week the kids have started a new learning target in writing. This involves using descriptive vocabulary such as adjectives and adverbs. In order to develop their understanding of these parts of speech we have engaged in lots of active learning experiences such as quizzes, stop the bus and capture the flag. It has been great to see the kids confidence, understanding and vocabulary increase throughout the week. This has resulted in a great improvement in their writing too!

Big Question

This week our big question is around being able to read food labels and understand their importance in both a healthy diet and in managing allergies and illnesses. We practiced reading some labels and then sorted foods from healthiest to least healthy based on one specific aspect such as salt content. This helped the learners to understand that deciding if something is healthy or not is not an easy concept and so we have to think about all foods in terms of balance.

HWB

This week we have been looking at anti-bullying in comprehension and discovery the topic. As part of this I did a demonstration using toothpaste. I said unkind things to Mr Chum (our class teddy) and every time I did the learners squirted some toothpaste on to a tray. At the end I asked them to tidy up and pop the toothpaste back into the tube. Lots of the learners quickly cottoned on to the lesson I was teaching, ‘words, once said, cannot be unsaid’.  We then had a great discussion about the importance of stopping and thinking before we speak so we don’t say unkind things in the moment. We also then discussed the fact that we are human and we will get it wrong some times and so the only thing we can do then is apologise and try to make it right. I forgot to take any photos but as you can imagine fun was had a mess was made!

Cunningsburgh’s Got Talent

On Friday and Monday afternoon P4/5 organised a Cunningsburgh’s Got Talent talent show for the whole school.  There were musicians and mimes, dancers and magicians, singers and skits. P4/5 made up the backstage crew, the judges and the hosts. Everyone did an amazing job and had so much fun. Special congratulations goes to Anthea who won the competition with her rendition of Love Story by Taylor Swift.

Healthy Eating

For Big Question this week we have been learning about the different food groups.  The kids designed their own healthy, balanced meal.  I wonder if they can remember the 6 different food groups and explain how they are represented in their meals.