Welcome to our last Primary 4 blog – we can’t believe how fast the last year has passed! We had such a busy term after Christmas and were lucky enough to be joined by a fantastic student teacher, Miss Holmes. She taught us lots of interesting new things including data handling, handwriting and gymnastics.

Literacy

Our writing genres last term were procedural and exposition. A procedure is a set of instructions that helps the reader complete a task, such as planting a seed, making a cake or playing a game. One of our favourite (and tastiest!) writing lessons was making jam sandwiches.

“Our instructions had a title, goal, materials and steps. All our steps started with an imperative (bossy) verb.” – Jessica C

“Pour, get, put, open, spread and eat are all bossy verbs.” – Reuben

“It was easier to write the instructions because we had everything in front of us.” – Billie

“My favourite part was eating them!” – Kye

   

   

   

During DEAR time, we have been choosing our own books based on titles, pictures and blurbs that interest us. Now that the weather is improving, we have enjoyed doing DEAR time outside.

“My DEAR time book is Horrid Henry because it’s funny.” – Lexi

“I picked this book because it’s full of sweets.” – Adeline

Our whole class have been making excellent progress with handwriting. Miss Holmes taught us lots of different joins. Some were tricky, but we kept practising and now we are working on transferring them into our other literacy tasks.

“I’ve learned lots of new joins.” – Jaxson

“I’ve got more confident with handwriting because we’ve had lots of practice. It was tricky but I was still trying my best.” – Joshua

Maths

Miss Holmes taught us all about data handling. This is how we gather information and keep it organised. We created surveys to ask other classes in the school, displayed our data in different ways and asked and answered questions to help us interpret our results.

“We were making bar graphs on the chromebooks. I enjoyed it because I hadn’t done that before.” – Alana

“I liked using real sweets for our data because it helped me see exactly how many of each thing were voted for.” – Jessica C

   

Another maths topic we have learned about is 2D shapes and 3D objects. We went on a shape hunt around the classroom, school and playground to identify real examples of what we were learning about.

“A 2D shape is flat and a 3D object is something you can pick up. My water bottle is a cylinder and the globe is a sphere.” – Euan

“I found a ball that was a sphere, the MUGA was a cuboid and there were cones when people were building the outdoor classroom.” – Alana

Platinum also looked at triangles and circles in more detail. We learned that triangles are made up of 180°, which meant we could use our addition and subtraction skills to calculate missing angles. We also practised calculating the diameter, radius and circumference of circles.

“You divide the diameter by 2 and it gives you the radius. To find the circumference, you times the diameter by 3.14, which is also called Pi.” – Sahan

Another concept we looked at was measurement. We used rulers, metre sticks and trundle wheels to measure length, mechanical scales to measure weight and jugs, beakers and cups to measure capacity.

“I measured the length of my glasses using centimetres.” – Billie

“I measured the length of leaves and stones.” – Jaxson

“The trundle wheel clicks every time you move it one metre. It’s used for measuring longer distances that can’t be done with a ruler.” – Jessica D

   

   

HWB

Our indoor PE focus last term was gymnastics. We learned how to stretch and warm up our bodies properly, balance, jump and roll.

“I liked doing the star jumps because I’m good at doing the splits so I’m very flexible.” – Amelia

“Jumping off the horse was fun because you could go really high.” – Finlay

   

All of us have thoroughly enjoyed our swimming lessons at the Hamilton Water Palace so far. Miss May is so proud of how much our confidence in the water has grown and how well we have represented Neilsland during our lessons.

“I like learning backstroke.” – Joshua

“It’s fun because I already do swimming lessons so I’m quite good.” – Kaiden

“I like the time at the end where we can play with the balls and floats.” – Darren

STEM

Over the past term we’ve been learning all about forces being a push or pull on something. We made marble mazes, tested the best rolling car, engaged in a tug of war and even designed our own mini-golf courses (see the QR code). This term we’ll be learning about germs and disease – what the germs actually are and how we protect ourselves from them by washing our hands and keeping clean.

“We’ve been learning about the good and bad types of fungus. Some fungus can be used to make medicine and some fungus can just make you very sick.” – Reuben

“Mr Connor has taught us about gravity, which is a force. A force is a ‘push’ or a ‘pull’,” Adeline

IDL

Our class was lucky enough to have some special visitors to teach us all about Scotland. We created mind maps on what we wanted to learn – we loved being in charge of our own learning! Some of us focused on Scottish authors, some were interested in the Scotland team and some wanted to learn more about Highland cows.

“I liked learning how to do Highland dancing,” – Amelia

“We made Scotland flags out of tissue paper. It was fun to do it.” – Abigail

   

   

We were one of the first classes to use the new VR headsets – lots of us in the class were experts at this. We used the joystick and our head movements to explore Hampden, the Scottish Highlands and even Robert Burns’ house.

“I liked using the VRs because we could look at different places in Scotland. My favourite place to look at was Hampden.” – Ashton

“I liked walking around on the VRs. I’ve got one in the house so I knew how to use them.” – Kaiden

“When we were on the VRs, I enjoyed going to the Alice in Wonderland place.” – Billie

   

   

Everyone worked in groups to create their own news team, writing, editing and delivering scripts to tell the public about Nessie sightings. We filmed ‘on location’ using different areas of the school. Primary 4 definitely has some budding newsreaders and camera crew!

“I felt like a real newsreader because I had a script and I was getting recorded.” – Euan

“I liked going outside to film in different places.” – Ashton

“It was fun to be a cameraman.” – Jaxson

   

   

Our class can’t wait to share our learning about Scotland at our Primary 4 assembly on the 8th of May. We hope to see you all there!