Literacy

Writing

We have started narrative writing again to build on the work we began at the start of the year. This time we are working on detail and learning how to use paragraphs.

The first story we wrote was Little Red Riding Hood and the pupils created some fantastic versions of the story.

“It was a fun experience learning the story of Little Red Riding Hood again” – Mason

“I liked highlighting the work to see where all the detail was” – Enja

“I found it quite hard when we were highlighting it to find all the detail” – Olivia

Reading

We have started reading The Killer Tomatoes – We know it’s about a boy who is in hospital with some sort of tomato related accident. We will find out more as we read it.

We finished Fantastic Mr Fox.

Here are some quotes about what we thought about it:

“I liked how it was about survival and Mr Fox was very smart and got them food” – Ava

“I liked how it was small chapters which made it feel less than it actually was and the story was cool” – Eva SH

“It was really cool because Mr Fox was very sneaky to get all the chickens and geese from the farmers” – Alaina

Numeracy

We have started learning division which is really just times tables backwards. Like…. 72/8=9 and 9×8=72. So if we know our tables we’ll know division.

We’ve also been learning about fractions again and guess what – fractions is also about times tables because. 5/15 is the same as 1/3.

“It’s sometimes hard but it’s useful to learn” – Courtney

“I found it hard but then I found it easier when the teacher explained it” – Enja

“It was tricky at first but the teachers helped me” – Ava

“I’m still enjoying the times tables sheets, especially since we’ve started the Avengers Infinity maths battles” – Sophia

PE

In PE we’ve been doing rounders and we all enjoyed that. We’ve been learning badminton which is a really fast game which doesn’t use a ball, it uses a shuttlecock.

“In rounders I like being the batter as fielding is harder” – Enja

“I found badminton quite hard because it’s hard to hit the shuttlecock” – Olivia

“I like badminton because we were able to do a match against each other” – Sionainn

We’ve been doing something quite new in outdoor PE because the pupils have been running the lessons – the teachers really love this!

Some examples of this are…

Kayden and Mason doing touch rugby.

Olivia and Joy did tennis.

Enja, Ava and Sionainn did One Touch.

Alaina and Isla did dodgeball.

Chester and Devon did ball games.

Taku and James did football.

Some of the pupils haven’t had their turn yet but are looking forward to doing things like Netball and Four Square. All we do know is from running their lessons the pupils have found out how hard the teachers work 😄!

STEM

In STEM we’ve started work for BEAR who do engineering and construction for the Scottish Government. Soon we’ll be going to visit the Forth Road bridge and in preparation for that we’ve been making geodesic domes. The first ones were made out of gummies and cocktail sticks. Then we made bigger ones out of A4 paper and sellotape.

“The domes were really fun to make and they were really strong and big” – Calum

“I was surprised that the domes were so strong” – Devon

“I liked working as a group and seeing failures and success, But it was REALLY warm :-/” – Alaina

“It was really fun but it was just too hot!” – Eva SH

“I was surprised that the gummy domes were so strong” – James

 

RME

In RME we’ve been making dream catchers. These are special things that stop you having bad dreams. When you have a bad dream they catch it.

We made them by getting sticks and wool – we bent the sticks and wrapped the wool round them. Later on we’ll be adding feathers and beads to them.

School Trip

Soon we’re off to the Forth Road bridge.

We’ll be making some bridges and actually going on to the bridge itself. Hopefully we don’t have a fear of heights. We’re all very excited!!

Lastly, keep an eye out for our Braveheart reenactment which will be happening some time before we break for the summer – we’ll be posting out the YouTube video once it’s all complete!

We’re now well into the New Year and looking forward to what the new term is going to bring. There’s loads to get done before Easter so let’s see what P5 have been up to…

Literacy

Writing

We had great fun making our Scottish language Christmas poems. Hopefully some of you were able to scan the QR codes to hear your child reading.

We have now moved onto procedural writing which covers things like recipes, instructions or even building a snowman. Keeping things simple and sequentially correct are core to this style of writing.

The boys and girls are looking forward to the end of this section as that’s when we get to make some chocolate cake! Yum :-).

 

Numeracy

We continue to try and improve our times tables through daily practice and by running the challenge sheets. Lots of the pupils are moving on and some may even complete the challenges by June!

Remember to keep practising at home as this is instrumental in making good progress.

We made some cool percentage pictures using 100 squares which we filled in and counted.

Calum Brand’s Percentage Pikachu

PE

For outdoor PE the pupils have taken over! They are deciding on the lessons and running them themselves. Thus far we’ve had Olivia and Joy running tennis and Kayden and Mason running touch rugby. There are many other lessons to come from different pupils – it should be fun!

STEM

Indi City was finalised just before Christmas. The pupils had all sorts of fun making and running it. But why don’t you see for yourself by following the link below….

Topic

Our topic this term is one of Mr Connor’s favourites. The Scottish Wars of Independence. There is so much to share here from the key people such as Robert the Bruce and William Wallace, to the battles and political intrigue. We’ll be learning the history, making swords and shields and possibly getting involved in a little re-enactment if the weather allows.

William Wallace

‘We watched some episodes which showed us about the people in the Wars of Independence’ – Alaina

I’m excited to be watching Braveheart as I want to know what it is about’ – Eva S

Music

Our external music lessons are coming to an end. We’ve covered so much – from boomwhackers and Katy Perry to learning to sign Makaton. We’ll be presenting our work to the school at assembly on the 24th of January – we’ll be sure to get a video of the proceedings onto YouTube as soon as we can.

‘Sometimes in music we did Incredibox which is a fun music game where you make different beats’ – Calum

‘We did body percussion where we use different parts of our bodies to make music’ – James

‘Using the Boomwhackers was fun’ – Olivia (it was also very noisy – Mr Connor)

Assembly

Our class assembly will be on the 7th of February and will be based on all of the learning we have done this year. We’d love to see you there but if you can’t make it it’ll be on YouTube.

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 6^th 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

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