All posts by Mrs Clark

P2

P2b

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Hi I hope you have enjoyed viewing the photos of our visitors on p2a’s blog page. I think the special dog was the favourite.

Once again we have learned lots in a short week.
We started learning “Being Cool in School” we learned that nobody can help having feelings – they are part of everyone. We feel different things all day long as different things happen to us. It is important not to be ashamed of having feelings. Everyone has them – good and bad. What counts is what we do about our feelings – we can all learn to show our feelings in ways that are helpful to us and to others, not ways that are hurtful.

We thought about what we already know about money and will use this knowledge as we learn more this term.

Did you know that some trees loose their leaves in Autumn to help the tree conserve energy during winter?
We looked at some drawings to see how artists use line to draw trees. We compared drawings and identified what we thought made some drawings better than others. We think that using pairs of lines to make branches and twigs worked well. Lots of short branches worked well too. Not colouring in but using lots of lines also made the tree drawings good. We applied these ideas and made drawings we are proud of.

Our class novel this term is called The big blackout. The front cover told us the title, the author and the illustrator. We liked the illustrators use of colour and his use of line.

Whole School News

P2b Holiday weekend

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What a busy time we are having in p2b. We have been using lots of things to help us visualise and deepen our understanding.
During maths time we have been using straws and ten frames when subtracting from a teens number. We bundled ten straws into 1 bumble of ten. This has helped us see that a teens number is a ten and some ones. This has made us move accurate when subtracting.
When learning tricky words we have written in purple sand, cut out tricky words from some pages of writing, used magnetic letters and used playdoh.
We are on holiday on Monday and Tuesday so we have no homelearning jotter to take home. We still have reading and tricky words to read and spell.

Whole School News

P2b Mrs Clark’s Class

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We are all so excited to be back. It has been a short week but we have been busy learning about our new class routines, sharing information about ourselves and learning about our new friends. We have been learning about rhyming words and the symbols for “greater than” and “less than”
P.E. days this term will be:
Wed – indoor
Thur – outdoor most weeks but indoor sometimes

Dates
Meet the teacher Wednesday 7.9.16 6:00
Our first Shared Start will be on Tuesday 4.10.16, 8:55-9:25
Assembly will be in the Summer Term -Friday 2.6.17 9:20

Whole School News

p3/2 This is what we think this week!

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Murray- I enjoyed estimating
Spencer – I liked learning about area. I learned that measure can link to area.
Miles- l enjoyed measuring. I liked learning about non standard measure but I can see why we need standard measure.
Skye- I liked measuring in cm
Ranna-I enjoyed watching p5’s great assembly about Bathgate. They included lots of things we have been learning about.
Katie- I enjoyed topic because we made a park.
Max- I enjoyed making a poster for a new shop in Bathgate.
We think that a good poster should
Have the important information in bold – SHOP NAME, WHAT IT WILL SELL.
The poster should have a clear illustration.
The poster should use only a few colours

Whole School News

P3/2 using writing and maths skills

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Ranna – “I am making a thank you card for my mum.”
Amy – “I am making a welcome home card for my auntie.”
Katie – “I made a poster for a best friends club. (everyone can join)”
One of our homelearning tasks is to spot when we are using Maths in everyday tasks.
At the biscuit decorating Golden Time activity Alex said, “If Ross got 2 more mallows and I got 1 more, all four children at the activity would have 9 mallows each.”
Ross said, “If we were to have 10 mallows each, then I would need 3 more, Alex 2 more, and Catriona and Skye would both need 1 more.”
How many mallows were on the plate before the children began the activity?
Shared BIG start on Tuesday 17.5.16

Whole School News

p3/2

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We are using a storyline approach to learn about Bathgate.

Ross- We worked with a partner to make an item we wanted to include in our class park collage.

Catriona- We wrote story starts. We set the scene of the park. The main thing we had to let our reader know was WHERE but we needed to include who and what to help our reader picture the scene.

Ranna- We made KWL posters about Bathgate.

Katie – We have been learning about area

To help us get better and faster at doing sums in our head we used 10 frames and 100 squares to think about how far from ten or a tens number different numbers are.

All welcome to Celebrating success Thursday 12.5.16 at 1:30

Whole School News

P3/2 The P2 Show Tadpole Rag

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Well done p2 what a fantastic Show. We loved the dress rehearsal and think the show was even better. We were so impressed with our classmates dressed in their costumes singing, dancing and speaking their lines clearly. I hope we were a quality audience.
“We were nervous,” said Katie “but we loved it.” “The best bit was giving the flower at the end,” said Rory “but it was all good”
In maths this week we began to learn about area. We linked it to the grass in a field and the carpet on a floor and this made it easy to understand what area is.
For a challenge we all choose to draw our 3 times table and colour in the rectangles. It was important to colour the rectangles because the edges are not the area the coloured part is. However the edges help us to measure the area. Knowing our 3 times table made counting the squares a quick job.
Remember you are on holiday on Monday and Tuesday. Have a fantastic time.

Whole School News

P3/2 Division, Mothers’s Day

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Mums are you even prouder of your child when you read your Mother’s Day story? With such lovely mothers it is not surprising we have such lovely children in p3/2. We had a busy week writing about and drawing our mums.

We  entered an Edinburgh Fringe poster competiton. We looked at previous winning posters, identified what made them stand out then used this knowledge when designing our own poster. This strategy we try to use continually. Identify what works and improve.

We learned about division this week and because we could link it to what we knew about multiplication we were pleasantly surprised at how easy we found it. The previous knowledge that helps includes knowledge of: equal groups, arrays, numbers line, pattern, skip counting and multiplication tables. We spotted that similar to addition and subtraction facts having a link, multiplication and division facts are linked. We made number triangles and wrote out the number sentences we could make from them.

Busy week ahead

Shared start on Tuesday.

Roman trip to Callandar House on Wednesday.

Roman homelearning project are starting to arrive in class and the children have reported the fun they have had in doing them. Remember the learning intention was to have fun research and recording learning related to Roman Britian. The focus was the process not the product so don’t feel pressured to have a model, speech or object at the end. Focus on the fun in learning.

class based learning 2015-2016

p3/2 Happy New Year

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p3/2 wish everyone a Happy New Year! We are all looking forward to a new beginning in 2016. We have looked back at some of our fantastic successes and building on them to  create a wonderful future. We recognise that sometime we need to work really hard but when we do we get better results. We also said that pracising new things help us learn. This term we will be pracising our multiplication tables and lots of us choose to practise them this week.

Mrs Hay gave us a gift and we put it in our Golden Time Cupboard. We enjoyed playing with the twigs, cork and bark. (if anyone picked up a little mouse can they bring it back on Monday please.)

Class Dojo Winner: Rory

We are learning a Scottish poem: Street talk. Here is a link to it. http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/resources/k/kistscotslanguage/texts/streettalk/index.asp (words below)

We also like

THE CAT’S PYJAMAS
Da says I ett like a grumphie,
Ma says I’ve the sense o a flee,
Gran says I’m the cat’s pyjamas,
Bit I say I’m jist me!

There was a rammie in the street,
A stishie and stramash.
The crabbit wifie up the stair
Pit up her winda sash.
“Nou what’s adae?” the wifie cried,
“Juist tell me what’s adae.”
A day is twinty-fower hours, missis,
Nou gie us peace to play.
“Juist tell me what’s ado,” she cried,
“And nane o yer gab,” cried she.
D’ye no ken a doo’s a pigeon, missis?
Nou haud yer wheesht a wee.
“I want to ken what’s up,” she cried,
“And nae mair o yer cheek, ye loun.”
It’s only yer winda that’s up, missis.
For guidsake pit it doun.
Whole School News

p3/2 Assembly & Christmas Thanks

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WOW

We loved our assembly. A big thank you to our audience! We were nervous but when we looked up and saw our family and friends we were so pleased. Our photographer wasn’t so good. If you have any photos could email them to the school(email address is in the newsletter). We would love to see what we looked like altogether in our under the sea costumes.

A big thank you all the people who have sent in the new and nearly new toys for the West Lothian Toy Appeal. If you have any  new or nearly new toys you could donate that would be great!

009

Whole School News

p3/2 What the children say…

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Islay:I am happy that I am Pupil of the Week. At Balbardie I like doing maths

Ross:I got class dojo

Zara:I enjoyed adding hundred in maths

Campbell: I enjoyed Friday. I like to do my review jotter and Golden Time

Catriona: I like upstairs down stairs sums

William: I liked writing in my review jotter

Murray: I liked making Christmas tree for the Fayre

Katie:I liked making the things to sell at the Fayre

 

Whole School News

P3/2

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Come to Balbardie on Sat morning 10-12 and you can buy some of the lovely decorations we have been busy creating. We have been practising giving change as a homelearning task so we are looking forward to using our money skills on Saturday. On Wednesday Miss Davidson read a story about a pigeon and we drew the main ideas. We then use the pictures as a plan to write the story using our own words. We did well once again.

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P3/2

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We are proud of our learning in p3/2.

The problem solving strategy we have been practicing is “try a simpler model”. This helped us. “I wonder if we could use what we know to try a more difficult model,” so we tried and it did.

We discovered that when we linked our understanding of place value and our knowledge of number bonds we could do really impressive sums like 42 + 39. The part we found tricky was to remember to include the exchange 10 in our answer. We discovered that when practiced adding numbers that had an exchange 10 this helped us get better at remembering to include the exchange 10. We also got faster too the more we practiced. Soon we were able to subtract larger numbers too.  IMG_0975

 

This is a page from Niamh’s jotter. Top Tip: Neat work is a great help. It stops us muddling up ones with tens.

A challenge group were able to add larger numbers like 375 + 146.

We are preparing to present some of our learning about biological science at assembly on 4th December.

Our class novel, The big bad blackout, has been very popular. We think it has humor and good word choice. We have identified  lots of technique the author has used. We are thinking about including some of the techniques in our own writing. We like how the author gives clues to what is going to happen. We like how the author makes us want to read more.

Class, class based learning 2015-2016

P3/2 A short but busy week.

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In p3/2 somethings have continued similar to before the October holiday and there has been some changes. Mrs Gallagher has moved to a new job and we wish her well.  We enjoyed learning with Mrs Gallagher and have also enjoyed learning this week with Mrs Clark. We are all very proud of our learning. This week everyone worked hard to write upstairs downstairs sums. We found it helped us to understand adding ones to ones, tens to tens and exchanging 10 ones for 1 ten. Most people choose to answer the sums we have been learning to write. We did well. Our new class novel was a great hit and we wrote our own personalised version of chapter 2. Our art work was superb too. Using only a pencil, we drew a variety of lines to draw tree. We surprised ourselves with the quality of drawings. This term we plan to learn about food chains and the environment through the context of the sea, At the assembly on 4th December we hope to show our sea learning. We have already worked with a partner to make mini walls displays to show our knowledge of food chains.

One of the changes we have is P.E times: outdoor Tuesday(Mrs McClafferty),  indoor Wednesday(Mr Jeffries)

Lots of children in p3/2 have earned lots of dojo points this week and Mrs Clark is very proud and happy with her new class. The classdojo have been doing strange things this week so we cannot keep track of totals. We hope the dojos will be working well next week and we can have a dojo points winner. As this week was a short week we did not take our homelearning jotters home but we did think at home about what we were going to write at writing time and thinking about it before we wrote helped us as we wrote. We also found counting counting on in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s much easier than counting back so we thought practicing would make us better at counting back.

Pupil Comments

Lucas & Ross : Maths was challenging but I enjoyed writing upstairs/downstairs sums.

Katie: Big Maths. I enjoyed checking answers to identify the facts I need to practice

William: being super. I was proud of my work.

Spencer:The French colour game was good.

Amy: I enjoyed having a new teacher

Pupil of the week : Alex (imaginative writing)

P4, Whole School News

P4m: Imagine, Broons and Fayre

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17th November

P4m have enjoyed being very imaginative in writing this week. We wrote the beginning of ‘The Magic Door’ and tried really hard to use as many adjectives as we could to describe what we imagined was behind the door. Fiona and Michelle were our star writers this week: they both produced extremely descriptive pieces of writing.

For our Broons aroond Scotland topic we were researching lots of different landmarks from Scottish cities. We really enjoyed being able to use the netbooks to find out the information we needed.

We have also made some lovely Christmas decorations to sell at the Christmas Fayre- making them made us feel very festive and excited for the holiday season!

P4, Whole School News

P4m

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14th November

P4m have had a busy week! In Maths we have been working on learning different strategies for revising our 2, 5 and 10 times tables. Some of us have also been working on subtraction with Mrs Ghafoor.

We were lucky enough to get a special lesson with Miss Henderson who helped us to continue our learning in writing newspaper articles about the Handball Festival.

We have also been practicing some new activities in reading- the Book worms groups really enjoyed creating new titles for their reading books.

To culminate our Wallace’s Wacky inventions topic we presented our group inventions to the rest of the class. Our posters are looking great and are displayed proudly in the classroom!