Welcome back to our P4 class blog! We have lots of new and exciting learning to share with you since our last post in October.
Literacy
Writing
Our writing genres this term were information reports and narratives. We were able to use the chromebooks to research which animals we wanted to write our first reports on.
“A narrative has a title, orientation, complication and resolution. A complication is another word for a problem that needs to be solved.” – Jessica C
For Bonfire Night, we used onomatopoeia, verbs and adjectives to create Cinquain poems.
“Onomatopoeia is a word that sounds like the word it is. It’s kind of like a sound effect. Some words could be crash, bang and boom.” – Reuben
Reading
Last term, we spent lots of time learning the features of a non-fiction text. Our focus text, Natural Record Breakers, included a contents page, index page and glossary.
“An index page shows you the page numbers of the main words to help you find them quicker.” – Lillie Mae
“I used the contents page to find the longest river in the world. It is the River Nile in Africa.” – Lilly
We even managed to find lots of unfamiliar words in other texts and create our own glossaries, making sure our definitions were correct and listed in alphabetical order.
Lots of us enjoyed celebrating Scottish Book Week by reading in cosy places, including cosied up in the gym hall. We were able to pick texts that we liked the look of based on their cover illustrations, title and blurb.
As a class, we have loved reading George’s Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl together. We were so interested in George’s experimentation skills that we created our own marvellous medicines during our open afternoon.
“I had glitter, vinegar, honey, washing liquid and salt in my medicine. I liked making it because it was glittery!” – Jessica D
Maths & Numeracy
Last term, we learned lots about fractions. We completed a KWL grid to see what we already knew and what we wanted to learn about. At the end of our topic, we were able to ]go back and fill in lots of new things that we had learned.
By the end of this topic, we were able to show fractions of a shape, compare equivalent fractions and order fractions correctly on a number line. Some of us were even able to convert between improper fractions and mixed number fractions.
“Improper fractions are where the top number (numerator) is bigger than the bottom number (denominator).” – Reuben
Platinum explored the relationship between fractions, decimals and percentages. We understood that we need to know how to use percentages to help us work out discounts in shops.
“50% is the same as one half or 0.5 and 25% is the same as one quarter or 0.25.” – Sahan
We also learned all about money. All of us were able to suggest why knowing how to use money is important and when we would us this in real life.
“We were using coins and notes to figure out how to pay for things and how much change we should get.” – Alana
“You can pay for things with card too. You need to tap your card on the machine or put it inside and put in your special PIN number.” – Ebony
Some of us found finding change from £1 difficult, so we played lots of games to help us practise our number bonds to 100.
As well as fractions and money, we also learned a lot about telling the time on analogue and digital clocks.
“There are sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour.” – Lilly
“I liked using the clocks because we could move the hands to make different times. The small hand is for hours and the big hand is for minutes.” – Kye
As well as telling the time, we also related months to the appropriate seasons and worked with durations. Along with extracting information from calendars, we also made our own timetables to show what our perfect day in school would look like.
IDL
Our topic last term looked at how local businesses meet our needs. After some chromebook research, we decided that we were the most interested in looking at food banks. We wrote excellent pieces of explanation writing describing what they are and what they do.
“A food bank is somewhere that you can donate food to. People who don’t have enough money to buy their own food can go to a food bank.” – Lucy
“They look for tins and boxes of food so that it doesn’t go out of date quickly.” – Amelia
“We made posters to let people know that there is a food bank in Hamilton called the Hamilton District Foodbank.” – Abigail
Our whole class very kindly donated lots of perishable goods that we will be taking to the local food bank soon.
RME
One of our pupils very kindly brought in some family members to talk to us about halal food. We had a very enjoyable taster session.
“Halal is meat that has been cooked in a special way to Muslims. My mum and gran brought in satay and kebab to try.” – Adeline
“My favourite was the kebab in a roll. I would give it a ten out of ten!” – Lillie Mae
“The chicken on the stick was amazing.” – Lexi
Christmas & Pupil Leadership
As part of our Christmas show, Kaiden and Stuart from Black Box came in to teach us how to sing a Grinch medley. We enjoyed exploring different volume and pitch when singing alongside the piano. They even taught us some dance moves to go with our song!
“I liked when Kaiden was playing the piano and we were signing. I liked the ‘shooby doo wap’ bit because it was funny and like a tongue twister.” – Lucy
We became young entrepreneurs at the Christmas Fayre. Different groups of us went round the other classes alongside Primary 3 to make tasty treats to sell at the fayre. We used our budgeting knowledge from our money topic to source ingredients that would still allow us to make a profit.
“I made reindeer dust with Primary 1. It was hard work!” – Jessica C
STEM
STEM
