Primary 4 – January

Welcome back to the Primary 4 class blog – we can’t believe we are already halfway through the year! Everyone had a lovely Christmas holiday and enjoyed sharing stories about the fun things we did at home with our families.

Literacy

Last term, we focused on information reports and narrative pieces of writing. Each group chose an animal and used the chromebooks to gather information.

“For an information report you need a title, general statement, description and evaluation.” – Lucy

“My group chose polar bears. We had to search up what they do, what they eat and where their habitat is.” – Caled and Max

“We found out that green anacondas live in the Amazon Rainforest and can eat capybaras. Once we finished our planning sheets, we turned our notes into paragraphs.” – Morris

During our grammar lessons, we did lots of work on the apostrophe of contraction – we decided we learn best when we can practise by playing games and doing practical activities. Our favourites were matching the Lego pieces and the contraction flashcards.

  

Our class also had lots of opportunities for poetry during term 2. Firstly, we used onomatopoeia to create our own firework Cinquain poems. They were very effective!

“It was fun to use the pastels to decorate our firework poems.” – Max

“Onomatopoeia is when you use a noisy word. The word sounds like the thing it means, like crash, zip, bang and kaboom.” – Leo

 

Similes have also been a big focus for our writing. We thought of lots of examples of our own to help us create excellent Christmas simile poems.

“A simile helps you to describe something better. You compare whatever you are talking about to something similar.” – Quinn

“Santa’s jacket is as red as a rose.” – Halle

 

Maths

Some of us used number lines to one hundred to help us work out how to give change. We were very confident at coming up to the whiteboard to share examples with the rest of the class. Once we knew how to find change from £1, we realised we could then find change from £2, £5, £10 and even £20!

 

“We were using coins and notes to help us.” – Shea”

“The coins made it easier.” – Olivar

Some of us have started learning about decimals and percentages and how these link to fractions. We were able to link our prior learning of fractions and division to help us find 50%, 25%, 10%, 5% and 1% of different amounts. There were lots of real-life situations we discussed where percentages are important to know about.

“If there was a 50% off sign in a shop you can work out how much you would need to pay.” – Caled

“I thought decimals were quite tricky but it was helpful to have some extra challenges to practise.” – Lucy

 

We are continuing to use fluid groupings in maths and numeracy tasks. Lots of us enjoy working with other people in our chosen group to discuss our learning, problem solve together and peer-assess our work.

“I like having different levels because it lets me decide what challenges I can do.” – Hannah

“I like that if the work is tricky you can pick silver. If you can do silver, Miss May tells us to move up to gold.” – Quinn

 

Health and Wellbeing

Every Monday, Mrs Brock does HWB sessions with us. We have been learning about different kinds of fruit that help give us a balanced diet.

“Mrs Brock made bear sandwiches with us. Some people used slices of bananas as eyes and some people used spread to make the fur.” – Morris

“I liked eating the bear sandwiches. We used Biscoff, jam and Nutella and grapes, apples and oranges.” – Jessie

STEM

One of our favourite skills we continued to develop in term 2 was coding with Marty the Robot and Vex. We learned how to connect Marty to our class iPad and explore the different features of the app.

 

“Marty was fun because you could control him and make his lights change colour.” – Logan

“You can put coloured tiles down on the carpet and make him walk, turn and do a cool dance.” – Daniel

“You could make Marty dance and kick the ball. Two groups were making him play football. It was amazing!” – Lily

 

“I like Vex because you can write answers to times tables on the squares on the Vex board and give him directions to get to the right answer.” – Arwyn

“Vex was fun because you could control him and make him go onto patterns and find numbers. I liked watching him spin round and round.” – Morris

IDL

Our IDL topic last term was Enterprise. One of our main challenges was organising a stall for the Christmas fayre. Each group was responsible for sourcing materials and making a product to sell at the fayre.

“We searched up different ingredients online and made a list of the cheapest ones because we had a budget and we wanted to make more money for the school.” – Ozy

 

“We went to different classes and made empire biscuits, reindeer dust and all sorts of stuff!” – Jessie

“My group went to P6 and made sweetie cones. It was fun.” – Olivar

“I went to P2 to make hot chocolate cones. It was fun helping the little ones.” – Layla

“I liked making the icing for the biscuits in P7. I felt a bit nervous at first but when they came to the table I felt more confident.” – Arwyn

  

“I liked that lots of people were interested in the things we made. We sold lots and lots of everything.” – Lily

Every single teacher commented on how responsible, organised and confident we were when we led our demonstrations – Miss May was so proud of us! We had a lovely surprise during the next assembly when the whole class received the Golden Balloon for our efforts.

Our topic next term is Glasgow and Edinburgh. We have created a big poster with everything we know about our topic already, as well as what we would like to find out.

“We have decided we will use chromebooks to research more about Glasgow and Edinburgh.” – Leo

“We can find information from books from the library. I want to find a book about landmarks in Glasgow and Edinburgh.” – Elliot

“I want to find out where the Science Centre is.” – Olivar

“I want to research how many people live in each city.” – Kali

Expressive Arts

The whole school was lucky enough to attend an assembly and workshop with Chief Chebe. As well as having a shot on the drums, he also let some of us try and recreate songs and rhymes on this special instrument!

 

“Trying the drums was fun but scary because at first I didn’t know how to do it! Chief Chebe helped me practise.” – Hannah

“Chief Chebe showed me how to play ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ on the instrument. It was tricky to start with but Chief Chebe was really fun!” – Lucy

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