Welcome to our January blog!

This term is a very busy term for Primary 6.  We are currently organising our class trip to Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh and will be taking part on a workshop about climate change

We are really excited to have a student  teacher starting with us  called Miss McQueen.  She will be working with us from 2.2.26 – 21.5.26.

Literacy

Reading

We are currently the reading The Nowhere Emporium which is about an emporium which appears and disappears.  So far we have met the character Daniel Holmes and Spud Harper.  We like that the characters are a similar age to us and the story is set in Glasgow.  This story is definitely keeping us on our toes as we just never know what is going to happen next!

Writing 

This term we are going to be learning about exposition and explanation writing.  We will also be learning about poetry and recently entered a poetry competition all about our hopes and dreams for the future.

Talking and Listening

As part of our home learning we are currently preparing for our solo talks which are due to take place on 19 February 2026.

Numeracy

Sumdog  numeracy is an adaptive game based learning platform for children which seeks to boost mathematical fluency and engagement.  We have a 45 minute Sumdog session  on the chromebooks every week which we are really enjoying.

Mrs Marnie has also asked that if possible we try to access  Sumdog for 15 minutes 3 times a week as part of home learning.  Sumdog logins are available in your our homework jotter but please let the office know if your child requires a copy of their login.

We have been learning about the link between fractions, decimals and percentages.  We like it and can see how it all links together but it can be tricky.  We can keep practising our times tables to help.

We have been learning about 2d shape and 3d objects.  We have been learning about  vertices,  edges and faces .  This week we have been learning about place value. Here is an example     48,372 – 40,000  8,000  300  70  2.  We have been learning about decimal factions to 1, 2 and even 3 decimal places!

Social Studies

This month  the whole school has been learning about Scotland.  In P6 we have been learning about Scottish Traditions.   We learned about the traditions associated with Hogmanay and First Footing.  We laughed when we learned that the first foot in your house after the bells at New Year should be a tall dark haired man!  We also looked at Scottish national dress, the Edinburgh Tattoo and the tradition of handfasting at weddings.  We learned more about Robert Burns and looked and some children recited some of his poetry.  Mrs Kelly organised a Burns Supper for us and Ms Cassidy would like to say a huge thank you to Chester for his Address to  the Haggis and to Calum for saying the Selkirk Grace before our Burns Supper.  A huge thank you also goes to Isla and Olivia for reading the translations for both.

STEM

‘We learned about all the organs I liked learning that the heart pumps all the blood around the body’ (Devon).  We have also been learning about forces of objects.  We dropped lots of different balls from heights and recorded our results.

John Muir Discovery Award

We are working towards our John Muir Discovery Award during our outdoor learning sessions.

So far we have investigated how we can keep safe outside, we also looked at plants and flowers which can be dangerous to touch such as giant hogweed.  We conducted a winter audit in our curriculum garden and have also built dens for small creatures.

“I like going up to the back bit and enjoyed the  outdoor audit because I like spending time in nature. (Enja).  We all like doing the John Muir Award as we are learning about new things.

Euro Quiz

Euroquiz is an annual project open to all P6 pupils across Scotland, which sees teams of four working together to broaden their knowledge of Europe and the wider world. Subjects covered include languages, history, geography, culture and European affairs. Heats take place in South Lanarkshire in  March, with the winning teams from all areas progressing to the National Euroquiz Final in June.

We will be entering a team of 4 into the South Lanarkshire Euro Quiz in March.  Olivia, Devon, Eva S and Ollie have kindly put themselves forward for this (with Ava and Sophia taking on roles of substitute team members).  Team members will be working with Ms Cassidy and Mrs White over the next few weeks in preparation for the quiz.  Good luck everyone!

Football

Mrs Hare continues to coach our football team.  We are really enjoying football because we get to play  football after school every week and see our friends.   We enjoy playing against other teams and developing our football and  team working skills – thanks Mrs Hare!

Chanter

Mrs Kelly arranged a special treat for us when a visitor came in and taught us all about the bagpipes.   He even played them in the class! We were then given a chance to practise chanter.  Some children have joined the after school club and are learning scales and to play happy birthday!

Thank you for reading our blog – see you next time!

Welcome to our first blog in Primary 6.

We are delighted to share our leadership roles with you.

Leadership roles

Pupil Council – Kieran and Alaina

JRSO –  Mason and Isla

Reading Champions – Chester, Olivia and Enja

Assembly Tech – Ollie and Ava

This year we have been given the very important job of becoming  peer mediators.    Our role is to support younger children to solve minor disagreements in the playground.

Literacy

For reading we have been studying Charlotte’s Web. It’s about a spider and a girl named Fern. There’s also a pig called Wilbur. The basic plot revolves around their friendship and how they are going to save Wilbur’s life (as he is a pig on a farm).

Alaina “I liked it because it contains lots of animals”.

Mason “I liked it because there was a pig in it and I wanted him to survive”

Chester “I liked Charlotte because she tells stories”

In writing we have been creating diary entries,  persuasive writing and recount. We have linked this to our Titanic topic – we made posters which encouraged people to come and sail on the Titanic.

We have also been making Halloween poems especially for the P2s. Here’s a good example from  Alaina and Mason :

Numeracy

In numeracy we’ve been covering fractions. In P6 this gets a bit trickier because we have to learn about mixed fractions, improper fractions, ordering fractions and decimal fractions. We’ve been using an app called PolyPad to help us with this.  We can create our own fractions to help us see the fractions visually.

We’ve also started doing decimals and percentages which links to fractions (in fact they are all the same thing just shown in different ways).

For time, we’ve been comparing digital and analogue time – this can be tricky but we’re powering through it.

Learning Across the Curriculum

Our first topic of the year is the Titanic. We have been learning about who was on the ship (like Edward Jay Smith who was the captain).

We made a big display of the ship and it’s 16 water compartments.

We also learned why it sank: The captain kept the speed up because they wanted to beat the record time for a ship to cross the Atlantic. They had 9 iceberg warnings but they were ignored.

1517 people died. There were many reasons for this – one of them was they didn’t put in enough life boats because they thought it would spoil the look of the ship. They also launched a lot of the lifeboats when they were half full because they put women and children first.

Calum “Officer Murdoch saved the Titanic from a head-on collision with an iceberg but then it hit another one.”

Kieran “I found learning about the Titanic really interesting”.

Alaina “The ship Carpathia came but it came too late”.

Olivia “If only 4 of the watertight compartments had survived then the ship would not have sunk.

As you can see we’ve learned a lot already. We’d love you to come along to our Titanic-based assembly on the 14th of November! Here’s a couple of teasers about what’s in it:

There will be drama with the different classes of passenger!

You might want to check your seats for a mystery envelope at the end!

There will be some iconic characters to see!

Black Box Theatre Group

Isla – we’ve been doing dancing and singing with the group who have come in to help us with the Christmas Show – the song we are doing is…… no….. that is secret for now…..

STEM

We have been learning about Space.  We learned about the different names for the moon which was so interesting.    We created a slide show about different planets.   We thought this was a fun way to learn together.   We’ve enjoyed using Scratch and CODE.org to learn how to code.  We have been  learning to follow instructions carefully to make our programs work.

We were really lucky to have a STEM workshop all about dairy farming.  We learned about how technology is used on the farm and how it makes the farm  more efficient.   We created our own AgriTech inventions for the farm and we are waiting patiently to find out who the winner is from all of the schools who have entered this competition.

Outdoor Learning

We are planning to work towards our Wild Places Guardian Level  for the John Muir Award this year.    The key areas are Discover, Explore, Conserve and Share.  We started off with a playground litter pick and were surprised by how much litter we found.  We took this back to this to the ECO committee so that they could remind everyone in our school to keep our playground clean and tidy.

Bagpipes Taster

Mrs Kelly organised for Chris to come into school and give us a bagpipe taster session.   We really enjoyed learning  about  the bagpipes.   Chris played the bagpipes for us and they were really loud.  We  got to practising chanting  and we all had so much fun.

Football

We are loving  our after school football club with Mrs Hare.  We do some drills and play games against each other.  So far we have attended one tournament.  We worked well as a team and supported each other brilliantly.  We love being part of the tournaments and hope to be part of more this year.

Goodbye Mrs Barnes and Mrs Gardiner

We are sad that Mrs Barnes and Mrs Gardiner have retired but we are glad that we were able to send them off with one of our fantastic  Neilsland shows.    We would like to thank them for all the love and support that they have given us throughout the years and for walking with us every step of the way.

We hope they have a  very happy retirement doing all all of their favourite things with their favourite people.  We will miss them both very much.

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