This week P7 has been very busy, first off, our new trainee teacher arrived, Miss McGregor, who has been helping us and Mr Downs around the classroom and will start taking more and more responsibility with taking lessons. We were also very fortunate to have a special visit from the Artist, Iona Leishman to kick off our new 6 week topic on the Famous Scottish architect, John Allan. We went on a trip out where we were taken to some of John Allan’s buildings and we had a go at drawing some of them. John Allan was famous for his contradictory and magpie-like tendency to borrow ideas and designs from other countries and cultures, designing buildings that stood out from the average Scottish dwelling.

We have just kicked off our reading topic of identifying themes in movies and books, we started this off by doing short drama sequences with a theme that the rest of the class had to guess.

We also had a taster of what it must have felt like for children in the 1940s by doing an air raid drill and then been rushed to the train station without warning to be evacuated and billeted to host classes in the school, some of us had a pleasant experience in our host classes meanwhile others were made to feel rejected and had to make themselves scarce to avoid a telling off.

Also, on Thursday evening the APC hosted the Halloween disco which involved dancing, fabulous costumes, competitions and games. There was also a best costume which zombie agent won but the entries were show stopping with the joker from suicide squad and others.

Archie & Alasdair

This week we have been learning about “The Blitz” in our WW2 context. We learned about the Aberdeen, Clydebank and Greenock Blitz and the most famous one known as the London Blitz that went on for 11 continuous weeks. We also made “caricatures” of our chosen WW2 leaders: Hitler, Churchill, Mussolini, Stalin, Tojo, Roosevelt and De Gaulle. We also made a biography all about our leader and what role they played during the war. We created paintings of the Blitz Skyline with explosions in the background. During our reading block, we were summarising a short passage about the Blitz.  – Rebecca and Luca

Thanks to everyone who visited our classroom at the open night last week, we hope you enjoyed looking at all of our work! If you didn’t manage to come along, here are some pictures of some of our learning from this term. We’ve loved having Harry Potter as our context and have developed skills in reading comprehension, creative writing, model making and new art techniques, to name just some.

This afternoon we were introduced to a new tool we are using in school, called the 5 point scale. We first of all thought of all the things we are good at – there was such a range from rugby to singing to writing really small!

We then thought about some of the different feelings we can have in different situations- things that we feel comfortable with are about a 1 or 2, but things that make us feel uncomfortable or nervous are a 3 or 4. When we are most anxious or worried we are at a 5. Here we are sorting some of the scenarios based on how they make us feel:

We then made our own stress scales to show which situations in our own life make us feel a 1,2,3,4 and 5.

Finally, we brainstormed some strategies we can use to help to bring us down from a 4 or 5 to a 1 or2. We can up with some great strategies! Watch this space to find out how we will be taking this forward in our class….

Last week P4/5 made 2 visits to Stirling Castle to find out what life was like in Stirling in the past. We all agree that Harry Potter was lucky to attend school in a magic castle and wanted to find out about the castle on our own doorstep.

We focussed on finding out about the Great Hall and Palace.  We looked at the different artefacts in the room, spoke to the experts on hand and read information boards to find out what the rooms were used for and who used them. We made notes and drew sketches to help us to remember what we found out. We are looking forward to using what we have found out to make Castle Guides and 3D plans of the rooms next week.

Below are some pictures from our trip.

Today we had a sorting ceremony and we all got put into houses.