This week pupils visited Taing House to spread some festive cheer and do some arts and crafts with the visitors there. We had a great time. Thank you for having us!

In music we have been learning about the English composer, Gustav Holst, who composed a piece of music called The Planets Suite. There are seven movements in the piece, each reflecting the characteristics of a planet. We listened to the first movement called Mars – Bringer of War which is a very powerful piece of music. We thought about how it made us feel and wrote down some words to describe it. We thought if it was a colour, what colour would it be? If it was a shape, what shape would it be? And, if it was a line, how would we describe it? We then created a picture to show what the music made us think of. It was amazing to see how differently we all thought about the music. It evoked a range of feelings, thoughts and emotions.

Here are a range of examples across both P5 classes.

This week we have been learning more about the planets. To give pupils a better idea of the difference in the sizes of the planets, we used fruit as a comparison. The pupils has a great time guessing which fruit represented which planet.

We were very grateful to our parent volunteer for coming to speak to the pupils about maths and how important and useful it was in his job. The pupils got to look at some equipment and asked lots of questions about his career and passion for maths. Thank you very much for visiting!

We have had an eventful and exciting week celebrating numeracy. We completed a whole school, Christmas themed activity to help our elves get ready in time for Christmas. P5’s task was to create a stable shelf to hold toys. We first tried a basic design, improved this design, planned, drew detailed diagrams and tested our finished shelves with toys. We used problem solving skills, considered balance and weight distributions.

REMINDER

Swimming starts tomorrow (Friday 24th November) so please remember to bring your swimming kit to school. Swimming will run on the following dates:

24th November

1st December

8th December

15th December

22nd December

12th January.

We also have PE on Fridays so please wear comfy clothes and shows for this aswell.

We have learned a little bit about the musical genre of Jazz this term and we discovered that the very first piece of music to be played in space during the Apollo 10 mission was a song from the Big Band and Swing era called ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ by Frank Sinatra.

We learned that  jazz music actually evolved from folk music which is traditional songs passed down from generation to generation.

One traditional folk song we have learned recently is ‘Obwisana’ from Ghana, in Africa. It is traditionally sung by children in a circle passing rocks in time with the pulse of the music. We adapted this by using drum sticks to keep the pulse and we also composed our own four beat patterns. Our performance takes the form of (A) the song, (B) stick pattern 1, (A) song, (C) stick pattern 2,(A) song, (D) own stick pattern,)A) song and the ‘coda’ which we have learned is an Italian term used to describe the ending in a musical piece.

P7 pupils put their enterprise skills in action, setting up stalls offering games to raise money for Children in Need. P5A thoroughly enjoyed the burpee challenge. The pupils even got to meet Pudsey himself. Well done to everyone who took part and raised money for Children in Need.

P5A met with their P3A reading buddies and enjoyed reading stories together in our school library. This is a great opportunity for pupils to learn from each other and gain more confidence in their reading whilst supporting a fellow pupil.