Our Blog is brought to you by some of us in the Blue and Green Groups :  Lailah, Heidi, Teejay,  Jorjia, Lilyanna, Kayden, Rowan, Jacob P and Cooper.

House Captain and Vice-Captain Update

Last term we organised a LOT of fun events for the whole school. First, we had our famous Neilsland’s Got Talent show!  The overall winners from P4-7 were Ariana and Peyton and the overall winner from P1-3 were Myla and Aya-Rose.

In March, we had a Danceathon for Comic Relief and we raised £177!

We finished up last term with our Easter Fun Day where we went round the classes and did lots of different activities with them such as Just Dance, Don’t Say It, Easter colouring and an Easter egg hunt.

Numeracy

In maths last term, we did a big topic on ‘Measure’.  We found the perimeter of squares, rectangles and composite shapes.  We also learned how to find the area of rectangles, squares and triangles and the volume of cubes and cuboids.  Right now, we are working on fractions decimals and percentages, and there is a game that we all enjoy playing that links fractions with reading. Here’s how to play it:

• Mrs Kennedy says a word from a given page in our reading book
• We find a synonym for that word
• We estimate how far down the page the word is as a percentage of the full page
• We calculate the percentage using a calculator
• We get points of we are close and lots of points if we are spot on!

We all enjoy this as it gives us a bit of a challenge, and it is fun.

Outdoor Learning

This term, we did a variety of outdoor learning. We started the term off with a giant litter pick!  We got into four groups and firstly went to the playground to pick up litter using the litter pickers. After that we got to the back bit that had a whole bunch of litter. Amazingly, each group got 2 or 3 bags full!  Another thing we did at the start of spring was to look for and write down signs of spring.  We got a lot!  One day, Mrs Kennedy had a fun idea for us to start a campfire, and we made some delicious s’mores.  For safety reasons Mrs Kennedy made the fire, but we were allowed to come forward in pairs and toast the marshmallows.  It was great!  We also had a lot of fun making mini-beast hotels. A few weeks later, when we did a mini-beast hunt, Jacob saw a slug and an ant in his hotel!

 

Sky Academy

Before we went on our trip to Sky Academy, we did lots of preparation work on films, storyboards and all the different jobs you can do that are related to movies and TV.  When we got there, we had our lunch then we split into our four groups. We went into the studios and made our movie trailers that we had planned. The genres of film we made were:

Lucy’s group: horror / comedy

Teejay’s group: action / comedy

Lacey’s group: thriller

Ariana’s group: mystery

HWB

Last term we focused on gymnastics for indoor P.E.. First off, we did counterbalances and yoga poses. With the counterbalance, we held our partners hands and leaned back and made a perfect V.  We also did partner balances and had to hold them for 10 seconds.  We also used the high horse and the small  horses to do jumps and to land properly.  We played football in outdoor P.E. In March, we did tennis in indoor and outdoor P.E.  We did partner work and group work to help with our skills before playing against each other. This term we are doing athletics.

We have also done some food preparation and cooking!  We have made coleslaw, French toast, Greek salad and marinara sauce.  We already learned the safety rules of cooking like always wear an apron, wear a hairnet if cooking for others and always wash your hands with warm water and soap before touching any food and while preparing.

We have just started our learning on first aid. So far we have learned how to treat a burn or a scald, what to do if someone is choking, and how to help someone who has been stung including people allergic to stings.  Did you know?  A burn is caused by fire or something hot for example a curling wand or an iron and a scald is caused by boiling water or hot steam.

Literacy

Last term we focused on functional writing.  We finished our discursive writing block then we went on to exposition writing then procedural writing.

Exposition writing is writing that exposes facts about a topic. For example, we wrote Every Child should have a Residential Trip whilst at School. Some of the points we wrote about were:

• you develop new life skills
• it can get you away from technology
• you develop social skills

For our procedural writing, we got to make homemade marinara sauce and pasta then write down the recipe and method for our assessment.

 

Last term we did our solo talks. It was really entertaining because you could pick your own topic and most people did something different to everyone else. Mrs Kennedy gave us a sheet telling us everything we needed to know for the solo talks and what the success criteria were.

Hera are some of our solo talks:

• Oly did hers on preparing everyone for high school
• Peyton did hers on her trip to Tenerife
• Adam did his on Texas
• Jacob P did his on his pig
• Lacey did hers on money

 

We had such a good time during our solo talks, and we really loved listening to each other.

Transition

In February, we did a book study at the same time as the P7 pupils from Townhill and David Livingstone primaries. The book was called ‘What you Need to be Warm’ and the message from the book was that warmth comes not just from coats and fires, but from kindness, memories, and the people who care for us.  We all did the same work (such as art, HWB and Adobe) than we met on a Google Meet to show and tell each other what we did.

Isabella and Jack (who were pupils at Neilsland) came out with Mr Palmer to do some work on subjects with us.  We learned a lot.  Last week, we had a visit from the English department, and the maths departments will visit us in May.  We have our two-day visits to our high schools on the 19th  and 20th of May too.