Literacy

We are currently studying the novel ‘The Thief Lord’ by Cornelia Funke.  It’s a story about a group of children living rough in an abandoned cinema in Venice.  They are being chased by a detective whose job is to find two of the boys (who are brothers) and return them to their cruel aunt.  The book is really adventurous and there are lots of interesting characters including Hornet, Prosper, Bo, Scipio and Riccio.  We have looked at different movie trailers and we are making our own ‘Thief Lord’ trailers just now.

Last term we wrote and delivered our solo talks to the class.  We covered topics such as ‘My Pets’, ‘Roblox’ and ‘Jack Grealish’.

We recently learned all about persuasive writing.  There are many things you have to include when you are writing persuasively, and here are a few examples:

• A title that illustrates your point of view
• Arguments with supporting points
• A rhetorical question

We also made a brochure persuading people to visit Venice.

Our writing this term is narrative writing and we are focusing on using direct speech.  Our first story was ‘What happened to Lulu?’ which was based on a poem that we had to turn into a story.

Grace N. and Ava B.

 

Numeracy

Last term in maths, we learned how to find the mean, range, median and mode in a set of numbers like the length of our arm or our shoe size.

We also learned more about percentages and we can find percentages of amounts. For example, if you have to find 17% of £253, first divide by 100 to find one percent, which is £2.53.  Then multiply that number by 17 to find what 17% is.  £2.53 x 17=£43.01.

We have started a ‘measure’ topic this week and we are learning how to measure angles accurately using a protractor.  Then we will be using our protractors to help us draw angles.

Kay D. and Sophie W.

 

P.E.

We have recently finished gymnastics.  Every week in our groups, we went round different stations such as the rolling station, jumping station and climbing frame.  We learned how to do different kind of jumps like tuck, straight and split.  We used the iPad to film our jumps then played them back to see where we needed to improve.  We also learned different partner and counter balances.  I learned how to do a roll on the high horse!

Miss Morrison from Calderside P.E. department came in to teach us a dance.  She split the class in two and we had to do the same routine but at different times.  You can see the final dance on Twitter.

The P6s are still enjoying their swimming lessons at Hamilton Water Palace. Here’s what Aiden and Kacie D have to say about their swimming lessons:

‘In my level, we’re learning how to swim on our backs. I’m getting better at it and we’re learning different ways how to swim on our backs.’ (Kacie D)

‘We’ve been taught how to use our arms and legs like rockets top help us swim better.’ (Aiden W.)

Callum B.

Transition

While the P6s have been at swimming, us P7s have been learning about our transition to S1.  We have learned about all the different subjects you get at high school, like maths, English, art, Spanish, tech, home economics, science and modern studies.

Jack S. and Kayleigh K.

 

Reading Schools Update

We ordered new books to freshen up the library a bit. We are all getting a chance to see all the new books before we choose which class book nook they should go in.   We have lots of different genres like animals and adventure.

Molly C. and Poppy A.

Literacy

In literacy we have been reading excerpts of books such as, ‘The Lottie Project’, ‘The Demon Headmaster’ and ‘Oliver Twist’. We use our reading skills of skimming and scanning, predicting and visualising to help us understand more about the text and what the author is telling us. We can easily identify similes and metaphors in what we read. This explains the difference between a simile and a metaphor:

 

 

In writing we wrote our own imaginative stories including ‘The Magic Ring’, ‘A Terrible Storm’ and Christmas stories for our wee buddies and friends. This coming term we will be learning how to write persuasively.

Mazie M. and Sophie McP.

 

Numeracy

Last term in maths, we learned lots of different things. We really enjoyed learning what integers are and for people who don’t know what integers are, they are negative or positive whole numbers. If a number is a fraction or decimal, it isn’t an integer. For example:

integer                     not an integer

-4                                4.5

200                          

We also have learned about the order of operations. When you get a sum that has more than one operation, you have to follow a rule.  BIDMAS it is a word that stands for the order that you do the sum in. B stands for brackets so you do that bit first. Then indices, division, multiplication, addition and finally subtraction. If you remember BIDMAS, you can’t go wrong!

 

Aiden W. and Kacie D.

 

Christmas Fayre

Last term we ran the Christmas Fayre! We had everybody in the school making different things for the stalls and we were all in charge of different classes. All the things that the classes made were sold at the stalls and we had other stalls too, like:  loom bands master class, recipe books, bottle stall, face painting, nails, tattoos, jewellery made of cereal, raffles and big popping rice balloons. We used the CCC room for Christmas games like find the elf, find the chocolate, cups game and Christmas colouring. We had a brilliant time and at the end of the day Mrs Kelly counted all of the money and we made over five hundred pounds!

Marcus M. and Callum B.

 

RME

We learned about Christmas in the Victorian times in RME. Christmas was not really celebrated like it is today until the Victorian times. The rich people in Victorian times had goose or roast beef for dinner, while poor people had rabbit.  Queen Victoria ate roast beef and swan for her Christmas dinner. On Christmas day, the richer people would wear dresses and suits and poorer people would just wear ordinary everyday clothes. Christmas trees were decorated with candles, sweets and fruits.

Nadine M. and Catherine D.

 

Reading Schools Update

Recently people have started to use the Reading Forests (upper and lower) more often and are enjoying regularly going to the Book Nooks to sit back and relax while reading with a friend, or alone! We have changed the books up so that everyone can explore different genres and types of books so that they can find a perfect fit for them. At our school we love reading so this has a great benefit for everyone.

Molly C. and Poppy A.

Literacy

Most mornings we have a spelling starter task to help us learn our weekly words. We have spelling homework on Google Classroom too.

Our class novel is Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. It’s a very good book and we all love it. It’s basically about a boy (Michael) who gets shipwrecked on an island in the middle of nowhere. He has to survive storms and killer jellyfish and it turns out he is not alone on the island!  We are using Kensuke’s Kingdom to learn comprehension strategies like inferring, metalinguistics and predicting. When we predict, we learn more about the book and we expand our imagination.

In writing we are currently writing in the style of a diary and as an evacuee in 1939 at the start of WW2. We imagine that we have been sent away to the countryside and have to live with a host family. We have thought about the things an evacuee would carry in their suitcase, for example, a gas mask, clothes, a toothbrush, shoes and if you were lucky, a toy or a book. The diary has to show our emotions and thoughts so we have to really think about what it must have been like to have been sent away from your family.

Jack and Sophie W.

Numeracy

After playtime we usually have a numeracy/maths lesson. To help with our times tables we have been playing a game called ‘Shoff’. It’s basically the game ‘Around the World’ but when you get 5 people you put a shoe on their desk and once you get both shoes off you get a prize from the prize box! Another game we play is ’Pac-man’. You can play it outside or inside. Each person gets a different space and the teacher will say a times tables question and if you answer it correctly, you can move a space back or forwards. Once you get closer to a person you have to tag them, then they are out. But if you cannot tag them nothing happens to you or them. You cannot dodge while they tag you!

We have recently been learning about different types of fractions. The fractions we have been learning about are: proper, improper and mixed number. The numerator is the number at the top of a fraction and the denominator is the number at the bottom. In proper fractions, the numerator is smaller than the denominator, but in improper it’s the opposite, as the numerator is bigger than the denominator. Here is an example:

Improper                                             

 

 

 

 

Proper

 

 

 

Another fraction we know is a mixed number fraction. The fraction consists of a whole number and then a proper fraction, remember the fraction always has to be a proper fraction.

 

 

 

 

We have learned how to convert improper fractions to mixed number fractions and the other way round.

Aaron M and Catherine D.

WW2

We have been learning about WW2. We know about the axis and allied powers. If you don’t know what the allied and axis powers are then read on. The allied powers were: Great Britain, USA and the Soviet Union. The axis powers were: Germany, Italy and Japan. We have studied the evacuation process and we learned what evacuees took with them when they were evacuated to the countryside. People took a suitcase if they could afford one but if not they had to carry their things. We have started to learn about propaganda in WW2.

Kayci and Aaron G

RME

Stories from World Religions is our topic in RME. We heard some stories from the religions of Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism and then discussed what the meanings were. All the stories had different morals, like mini lessons. Most religions say that is important to treat animals well, and as if they are human. This is because all creatures on earth are important.

Alex and Kai

Reading Schools

We (Molly and Poppy) are our class reading champions! We organise events and other activities for our school with the help of the reading champions from the other classes. We have a Book Buzz area on our Google classroom where we can complete reading challenges posted by our teacher and we also do some activities in class and every day we have DEAR time. We have also created some book nook areas around the school where you can take a book, sit down and relax.

Molly and Poppy