Hi everyone and welcome to our first blog of the year. We have settled into Primary 5 and we think it is really good. In the first days of staring Primary 5 we created a Class Charter together and we linked this to the theme of the novel The Butterfly Lion.
Literacy
We have read The Butterfly Lion by Michael Morpurgo. It was a great story, and we found the ending very emotional when Bertie was reunited with the lion and then later passed away. We would recommend that you read the story.
Joy – “I liked the book, and it was very interesting.”
Kieran – “I would say it is sad that Bertie had to lose his lion because the lion was his only friend.”
Eva S.H. – “I would totally recommend the book, as the story is telling a story.”
Chester – “I liked that Bertie and the lion were reunited.”
We have been practising our handwriting and it is helping us to join our handwriting in all our written work. To help us learn our spelling words we have been using different strategies like Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check, blue vowels and diacritical marking.
In Term 2 we will be analysing some newspaper articles and then we will move onto reading the novel ‘The Borrowers.’
Writing
“We have been doing reports about things that we like doing – I did a report about gymnastics.” Enja
We also wrote some Halloween stories – we’ll be finishing them off later on.
“I did a story about a spooky hideout.” Chester
We have also been covering recount (retelling events that have happened) – “I did about my 6th birthday because it was one of my favourite memories.” Eva S
Numeracy
We have been learning to round numbers to the nearest 10, 100 and 1,000. We have been learning to add 3, 4, 5 and 6 digit numbers. In our class we get to choose challenges and the choices are silver, gold, platinum and titanium.
Kieran – “I like the challenges as they give you the perfect level to work at.”
Sophia – “I get to choose the difficulty level.”
Olivia – “I like titanium as it is really tricky.”
“We have also been continuing to learn our times tables (so important in P6 and P7!). One pupil is now on the last sheet and is trying to beat it before the end of the year.” Kieran
“We did lots of cool 2D and 3D shapes which we made from paper.” James
P.E.
In indoor PE we have been focusing on gymnastics. We practised forward rolls and backward rolls and balances. We do tig games as a warm-up and one person gets to be the teacher and explains the games and makes sure we are safe.
Outdoor Learning
We used the magnifier in the back area of the school – we saw lots of things like a red spider mite, a slug, a bird feather, mushrooms, a hole and acorns.
Health &Wellbeing
We learned about the 6 nurture principles and completed some artwork to help us visualise these. In the month of September, we looked at the SHANARRI indicator safe and we learned about food safety. We learned that when preparing food we need to wear a hair net and not to mix cooked meats and raw meats. We also learned that you need to take off all jewellery when cooking.
In Term 2 we will link the Health and Wellbeing to P.E. We will be working on circuits and we will be creating our own circuit activities to increase our fitness. The SHANARRI indicator focus will be Healthy and later on in the term we will learn about food and create some Christmas food.
French
We have been learning to count to 100 in French and we practised our numbers by playing French bingo. We learned greetings in French and we have been learning about the weather in French. We will be learning the days of the week and months of the year next.
Skills based workshops
“With Miss Cassidy we learned how to get on the bus and use timetables.” Joy
“With Mr Connor we learned about body movement and 2 of the children were running with Mr Connor while he had to hold his breath. He went very purple!” Enja
“Mrs Kennedy taught us how to budget and spend money wisely. She gave us £70 and I saved it!” Eva S
“With Mr Connor we had different categories and we put different foods into the categories to see which ones were healthy or not.” Alaina
Indi City
We have been building a city for one of our STEM robots. It’s taking a long time but it’s been lots of fun getting there. Eventually we’ll release a video of the whole process.
“We’ve been building a city for Indi who is a little robot. We’ve built lots of houses and Indi is going to drive around them.” Isla
“People are building lots of different things like hospitals, town halls, skyscrapers and other cool things.” Calum
Music
“We’ve been using percussion boom wackers.” Joy
“We’ve been doing body percussion by stomping and clapping. We’ve also been learning about notes and how they look when they’re written down.” Ollie
“Chief Chebe came into the school and he played lots of drums and played games from Africa.” Devon
