P3B 2023-24

This term both P3 classes have been working together in music. We have used their Human Body project to help us with our rhythm work. We matched up three project related words ‘skeleton’, ‘muscles’ and ‘joints’ to the three rhythms ‘ti-ri-ti’, ‘ti-ti’ and ‘ta’ as shown here:

Then we used these words to help us read different rhythmic patterns. You can see that our patterns included one beat rests which means that we had to count a beat of silence in the rhythms.

We then worked together to suggest ways we could put these rhythmic words together to create our own composition which you can see below. We even added a repeat sign at the end of each bar to make our piece longer.

The next step was to add the musical notation under the images to create our piece of music.

To round off our transition activities this term, Primary 3 all got together to tackle a STEM challenge!

The pupils worked in mixed groups from 3A and 3B. They had to build a tower using toothpicks and play dough. Everyone worked really hard and worked well with others.

After the task, we discussed which meta-skills we had used. Pupils decided that we had used the following:

• Critical thinking: deciding how to make our towers stable.
• Curiosity: wanting to find out what others thought.
• Collaborating: working together in groups.
• Leading: good organisation and leadership skills.
• Communicating: discussing different designs and options.

Pupil Quotes:

“This is harder than I thought it was going to be.”

“I really liked trying to make different shapes and models.”

“We were doing a lot of teamwork.”

“I just can’t get this to stick.”

“I need reinforcements.”

“I liked working together.”

“It was very fun trying to make it steady in different ways.”

“It was really fun to do it with the other class and see what they thought.”

“It was quite hard. It kept falling down. It was probably because it was not stable enough, so we had to do it a different way.”

“It was fun to do but hard to make.”

“It was very tedious getting hands between toothpicks.”

This term our topic has been ‘Healthy Bodies’.

We started off by learning all about the human skeleton. We looked at the bones that make up the human skeleton and labelled these.

We then learned about some of the main organs in our bodies. We worked together to find out more about these and to write about them.

When we learned about the lungs, we created model lungs. This allowed us to see how the lungs work.

Some pupils decided to do extra research to find out facts about the human body. They used this to create a display.

We also learned about common diseases. We found out about symptoms of these, ways to prevent them from spreading and how these can be treated.

As part of Health and Wellbeing week, we learned about the importance of sleep. We then made posters about this.

Some pupil quotes:

“I liked when we wrote about the organs. I wrote about the intestines.”

“I liked when we got to figure out which foods were good for our body.”

“I liked when we drew around someone and came up with adjectives for the body parts.”

“I liked when we made the moving skeletons. It was fun to stick all of the pieces together.”

“I enjoyed when we made the lungs. It was really fun!”

We had lots of fun making hats in art with Mrs Sinclair. We worked hard to make sure our hats fit our heads and we spent a lot of time adding details. We loved making our hats.

“It was so interesting how we drew it and then it came to life!” P3B pupil

Our first transition session in music involved working in mixed groups across both classes, to play different untuned percussion instruments. We learned a little bit about the Italian composer, Antonio Vivaldi and his most famous composition ‘The Four Seasons’. In the clip below, you can see the first rotation of instruments for the first movement called ‘Spring’ Gp 1 – triangles, Gp 2 – tambourines, Gp 3 – shakers. Each group had to follow the visual play along and they could only play when their instrument was highlighted. There were sections in the music where two groups had to play together and at the end, all three groups played their instruments to create a loud crescendo by shaking or striking their instruments continuously. At the end of the piece, each group then moved to another section and a new untuned percussion instrument. Everyone had the chance to play all three instruments during our session.

Here is a clip of rotation one:

We took a trip to the Wildlife Area to get some inspiration for our poems. We looked at the different things we could find and thought of two adjectives to describe them e.g. sharp green leaf. We can’t wait to write our poems later on.

We developed our meta-skills of sense-making, creativity and thinking.

We have been learning about internet safety through playing the Google Interland game online. There are different levels to work through and we have enjoyed playing the fun games. We have to answer questions about how we should behave online and what we should do if we feel unsafe or that something is wrong. It has made us think about how we behave and how we can expect to be treated online. We know that if something feels wrong online we should tell an adult immediately.  Here is the link so that you can enjoy playing Google Interland too! We think it is lots of fun and brilliant – we love it! Top Tip: the red level requires some practise!

Play Interland – Be Internet Awesome