Another week gone!

It’s been another fast week in P5d. We have been learning how to multiply by 20!!! We know there is a sneaky quick way to do this now…..after we spent ages trying to actually multiply whole numbers. For example if we wanted to multiply 12 by 20 we would double 12 and add a zero ….. Mrs Drummond waited patiently for the penny to drop !

This week we have been developing our punctuation and grammar skills. We were focussing on identifying words and phrases to do with settings and atmosphere. This task turned into a real brain buster as sometimes some phrases could be used to describe both the setting and the atmosphere at the same time. We have worked out that setting is more to do with physical things and that atmosphere is related to the senses. We had no idea how important our senses are in all areas of our learning and in life in general.

We have learned the dance moves to Uptown Funk and we got together with P5m to practice the moves then we practiced an American Indian tribal chant to which we added instruments and the P5m girls added some choreography. It was amazing. We really love getting together with P5m on a Friday morning. We spend 45 minutes not even realising that we are learning until Mrs D or Mrs McClafferty point it out!

Today (Friday) we have been extremely lucky to witness the eclipse. The last one was in 1999 and it will be many many years before there is another one. Mrs Drummond thought that sharing such a special event with all of us in the class was particularly special.

Two weeks to go ……….hang on in there!

5d rocks!!!!

Just when we thought we couldn’t get any better we have excelled ourselves by learning a more complicated rhythm pattern that sounds really cool and we even played along with the Meghan Traynor song All About The Bass !!!

Writing

We have been learning about the daily routines of rich and poor Victorian children. We used this as a focus for writing out a timetable for each and it was really interesting to see the difference between the two. We will be using the timetables next week in maths!                                                                                                                  We were also able to relate our work on timetables to this morning’s assembly that showed how the lives of rich and poor children were very different and we understand this in the context of social norms and values.

We will now be doing a weekly reading rave slot (an idea pinched from Mrs McKenzie) where we have the opportunity to bring our favourite reading material into school and talk about it with the class. The idea behind this is to encourage those who maybe aren’t keen readers to read more and those who are keen readers have the opportunity to share their thoughts and ideas with the class.

Have a great weekend!

Wow, what a week!!!!

I would just like to take this opportunity to thank all of the musicians from both primary five classes who worked extremely hard over the past few weeks to make Thursday’s performance such a great success. I am very proud of each and every one of you!!!!

New Lanark

We had a fantastic time on our trip to New Lanark. We especially enjoyed the Annie McLeod ride and the Victorian classroom. Here are some of our pictures……

LATC

We have decided that toys in the present day are much more fun than in the Victorian times although we did have great fun playing with them in class!

Maths

It’s been fun this week as we have been going over everything we have learned about money before we get to the hard stuff! We really enjoy this as it reminds us of just how much we already know and gives us a real shot of confidence. We are now moving on to a variety of tasks from making a given amount in as many ways as we can and problem solving using money up to £20.

HWB

Mrs Duncan makes P.E. really fun and we weren’t really aware just how much exercise we can get through learning dance moves. We have been learning the moves to Bruno Mars song Uptown Funk. We broke the dance moves down and learned the individual moves then put them into a sequence. Eventually we were able to perform along with the music!!

Writing/Latc

This week we learned about writing and sending an e-mail. We wanted to send an e-mail to the staff at New Lanark to thank them for our fantastic visit. We discussed as a class what information the e-mail should have then we talked about the composition of the e-mail. We were delighted when the staff at New Lanark replied to us thanking us for our kind comments.

Unfortunately Mrs Duncans time with us has come to an end. We have really enjoyed having her with us. Myself and  the boys and girls in P5d will miss her! We have invited Mrs Duncan to visit us in the near future so we hope to see her soon.

Have a great weekend!

Another great week!

Maths has been very challenging this week! We have had great fun in our problem solving lessons. We worked collaboratively to solve a problem that almost pickled our brains …..here it is….can you solve it? We’ll give the answer next week!

Andy, Oliver, Joseph and Miles each own a bicycle. One has a green bike, one has a blue bike, one has a white bike and one has a silver bike.

Work out the colour of each person’s bike from the following clues:

Oliver does not like white.

Andy borrowed the green bike because Oliver was using his bike.

Joseph does not like blue.

Miles does not like green.

Joseph does not like green either.

Miles borrowed the silver bike because Joseph was using his bike.

Andy’s favourite colours are silver and blue. His bike is one of his favourite colours.

Joseph borrowed the blue bike because Andy was using his bike.

Miles’s favourite colours are green and white. His bike is one of his favourite colours.

Come on parents get your problem solving hats on !!!!

Writing/LATC

Once again we are taking the opportunity to use our topic to enhance our writing. We have learned how to write instructions to make a thumatrope and a peg doll. We now know that instructions come in different forms: bullet points, numbered, short sentences, in a list or as a paragraph depending on what the instructions are for.

Comprehension

Mrs Duncan has introduced us to the fabulous author Anthony Browne. We have been learning about illustrations and what they can tell about a story that isn’t written in the text.

Polina – I enjoyed learning about how to read a picture. Anthony Browne hides lots of little pictures in the bigger pictures and thy help you to think more about the story.

Valerija – I think his books are really strange but good. They are a bit like brain teasers!

Brooke – Mrs Duncan let us hear from Anthony Browne and he said that he makes the pictures in his book like spot the difference pictures because he liked that as a boy.

Expressive Arts

Working with Mrs McClafferty we have made peg dolls that Victorian children would have played with. We have also had great fun designing and creating a piece of artwork for the art exhibition next week.

Mrs Drummond has been working us very hard to learn our rhythm piece that we will perform at the opening ceremony of the new hall.

Have a great weekend folks !!!!

Maths

We have been learning to find the position of an object on a grid. We know that we have to give the bottom co-ordinate first and the side co-ordinate second. We all thought it was a fun exercise although we are not quite so excited about doing more next week because Mrs Drummond said it will be harder!

Writing/LATC

We continued or writing this week as part of our topic. We are doing a creative piece about a trip to see the Loch Ness Monster. Last week we wrote the opening and this week we have been learning how to structure the middle of our story.

LATC

We carried out an experiment with Oreo cookies this week. The three layers of the cookie represented the crust, mantle and core. We broke off the top the Oreo then broke that part in half. The two halves represented tectonic plates and we put them back on top of the Oreo and pushed them together. The pressure when the two parts came together caused the two parts to push upwards. This was a great way to learn about how mountains are formed.

Have a great weekend folks …..12 school days left !!!!!!!!

Another great week!!

Maths

This week we learned about reflective symmetry. We did this in a very fun way by using dance. In pairs we decided who the performer was and who the mirror was then the mirror copied every move the performer made at exactly the same time. In our pairs wee then performed our dance to the song Everybody Dance Now.

Callum D – It was very hard but I kept trying and I was successful in the end.

Jack – I really enjoyed it and think mine and Reiss’s was the best one because we did a side bump.

Viggo – I understand reflective symmetry much better because we learned it with the dance and music.

Enterprise

We have had a very busy week making gift bags to sell at the Christmas Fayre on Saturday the 29^th. Our bags will be sold for 80p which we think is a bargain!

Writing

This week we have been learning how to stretch a sentence. We started with a basic sentence, The cat sat on the mat, here’s an example of one of our stretched sentences- Last night the fat cat called Minky sat nervously on the threadbare mat in the kitchen because she was in trouble. We started by adding adjectives to describe the nouns then we used an adverb to describe the verb. Next we used who, why, where, when and what to make the sentence more interesting.

P.E.

This week with Mr Jeffries we were learning about increasing our stamina. In outdoor P.E. with Mrs Drummond we have been learning to play rounders. We all thought it would be easy but it turned out to be quite tricky. After a couple of weeks practicing we are now able to play as a team and Mrs Drummond is very happy with our progress.

Have a great weekend!

We have had a great week in P5d!

Writing

This week we worked very hard to write a poem about our favourite place in Scotland. It was a different poem to the kind we are used to because this one didn’t rhyme!  Here is an example of one of our poems. This one was written by William Knox –

My Wee Piece of Scotland

Callander

Me and my two brothers going fishing,

Having fun,

Play fighting on the grass,

Staying there for two days,

A place where I feel happy,

Callander will always be My Wee Piece of Scotland!

Maths

In maths we have been learning to make a symmetrical pattern. We found it tricky to begin with but in the end we all managed to produce a symmetrical picture, some of us with one line of symmetry and some of us with two lines of symmetry. Next week we will be learning about grid referencing.

Music

In music this week we were learning about Johannes Brahms. We listened to ‘Brahms Lullaby’ then had a discussion about how the music made us feel and what images it conjured up in our heads. We then had to close our eyes and without lifting our pencil from the paper transfer the music into a picture. Here is a picture of how relaxed we were during this activity –

Assembly

Today we had our class assembly ‘Rhythm Rocks’ where we were able to show the whole school how we use the drums in our learning. Mrs Drummond was very proud of the whole class and we all got a smelly sticker for our efforts!

Have a great weekend everyone!

This week we have been working particularly hard in maths and our class topic.

 In maths we have been learning to identify lines of symmetry. We were tracing different shapes and then we folded them in half to see if they were symmetrical. Some of us found this a bit tricky but we all agreed it was a fun way to learn about symmetry.

We have started our new topic A Slice of Scotland and before we focus on specific parts of Scotland and how the landscape was formed we are learning about our place in the world. Here are some facts we have learned –

Jamie – the world has seven continents

Aidan – I have learned the names of the seven continents they are North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Antarctica and Australia.

Aaron – I have learned the difference between Great Britain and the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom includes Northern Ireland.

Meadow – I learned that the continent I live on is Europe.

David – I have learned the three countries that make up Great Britain are Wales, Scotland and England.

We are now going to learn about West Lothian and how the landscape of Scotland was formed.

Haver a great weekend!

Pupil of the week – Kari Nixon

Table of the week – Jamzi – Zoe, Jamie, Iona and Meadow.

Busy,busy,busy!

We have had lots of fun this week with our problem solving challenges. In maths we did a dice challenge and we had to use all four operations to complete the challenge. We had to roll three dice then write the numbers at the top of our sheet. Next we had to make as many sums as we could from the three numbers using addition, multiplication, subtraction and division. If any answer you got appeared on the number grid you shaded it and repeated the process until all your numbers were shaded.

Jamie – it was really fun because it tested my skills using the four operations. I found it tricky but I actually know a lot more than I thought I did!!

Another problem solving challenge this week was working in pairs and using only one hand each we had to tie a shoelace.

Iona – I liked this and if you wanted to tie the shoelace you had to talk a lot with your partner.

Zoe – I liked the shoelace challenge when we had to do it alone because I had to really concentrate to get my fingers to do what I wanted them to do!

We have been doing lots of times table practice and really enjoy using the loop cards. Our best time yet is 1minute 45 seconds.

Music has been really tricky the past couple of weeks but everyone has learned how to create a rhythm, write it down in the correct format and then perform their rhythm reading from their music. We used body rhythm and percussion instruments.

One more week to go !!! Have a great weekend.

A great post camp week in P5d!

Pupil of the week this week goes to EVERYONE in the class as I was very proud of each and every child in the way the conducted themselves at Lowport. They are a credit to the school and their families.

We all returned to school on Monday excited to be back together again. We had a fantastic time at Lowport and would like to share some of our highlights.

Aidan – I really enjoyed the woodland adventure.

James – Canoeing was harder than I thought it would be and I was surprised how well I did.

Evie – The people in my group got to have a little bit of a water fight when we were on the canal canoeing!!

Zoe – I had a great time on the woodland adventure. There was a bit of a steep scramble up some muddy rocks and although it was a struggle I didn’t give in and I did a victory dance when I got to the top !!!

Daniel – It was really scary when we all had to get into the one canoe but it was fun as well. It was really fun when Mrs D put some music on and we all sat around in the girls room and just chatted and had fun.

Aaron – I really liked the swimming especially because Mrs Gray was in the pool as well. We were all splashing Mrs Gray and she splashed us back.

Topic/Writing

We have been continuing our topic on the Scottish Wars of Independence. This week we are learning about writing a recount. Our focus has been how to use our writing planners effectively and how to uplevel our use of time connectives. We are going to write a recount of the death of William Wallace.

Science

This week we were learning about dissolving. We carried out a few experiments with sand, salt and sugar. Here is what we found out –

James – we put some sugar into hot water and gave it a stir. The sugar dissolved. We found out that sugar takes much longer to dissolve in cold water.

Viggo – We mixed sand with hot water and the sand sank to the bottom and didn’t dissolve. I think this happened because the sand is made upof hard crystals and the sugar is made up of soft crystals.

That’s it for another week. Have a great weekend!

Maths

Mrs Drummond gave us a quiz this week about all about measure. We were able to demonstrate that we can identify the correct unit of measure to use when measuring different sized objects and we know how to calculate parts of a metre. We also had great fun outside with maths this week. We are learning about problem solving and went outside to do Sudoku in the playground. Calum Nicol had a great idea, he suggested that some people in the group should stand up by the flag poles looking down onto the Sudoku grids and we found that really helped!

Writing/LATC

We have been learning about the Battle of Stirling Bridge and used this as a focus for our writing this week. We were going to write a newspaper article about the battle so we had to look back at what we had learned in P4 about how to write a headline. Mrs Drummond was very pleased as we remembered some of the key elements that we had learned with Mrs Gafoor. We are beginning to understand how important it is to ‘take our learning with us’ when we go to a new class! We had great fun making headlines up about something that had happened in school this week. Almost all of us chose to write a headline about Mr Jeffries. He took Mrs Drummond’s Alan Shearer match attack card and pinned it to the wall hoping she would think it was missing. Here are some of the headlines we made up ….

P.E. Teacher pins Alan Shearer to the wall.

Class Teacher assaults P.E. Teacher!

Alan Shearer kidnapped!

We then used our headline writing skills to make a headline for or Battle of Stirling Bridge article ….

David – Wallace makes Edward think again at Stirling Bridge!

Lucy – Scots defeat English at Stirling Bridge!

Viggo – Victory to the Scots at Stirling Bridge!

Daniel – Scots trick the English at Stirling Bridge!

We are looking forward to learning more about William Wallace next week!

Science

We did the mentos eruption experiment this week. Quite a lot of the class predicted that nothing much would happen when the mentos were dropped into the cola. Ryan suggested that we make a funnel and stick a pen through it then we could put the mentos into the funnel and pull the pen out and they would all drop in properly. If the teacher does it by hand she gets covered in cola !!!! Here is what happened …..

Remember – No school until Wednesday!

Have a great holiday weekend!!

Maths

We have been looking back at what we have learned about how to measure things. We used different no-standard units of measure some of the things around the classroom. We used pencils, rulers, people and our hands to measure things.

LATC/Writing

We have been learning about the death of the Sheriff of Lanark this week. We used the story as a basis for writing a cartoon strip. We had to decide which part of the story to draw in each of the six frames. Then we learned about the difference between caption boxes and speech bubbles. Next we discussed with a partner which would be best to add into each of the frames. We now have a nice wall display in class showing our work!

HWB

In P.E. we have been learning about teambuilding through a variety of games and activities.

We’re back!!!!!!!
What a great start to the new school year. We have been doing lots of fun things during our ‘All About Me’ week. We are excited about the new topics we will be doing and can’t wait to start our first topic about the Scottish Wars of Independence next week. We really are enjoying our morning circle activities and look forward to including lots of singing and music in our class.
Emma – I really enjoyed making the buckets for our bucket fillers.
Jamie-Leigh – this is my first week at BPS and I have enjoyed meeting my new class and have already made lots of new friends.
Evie – I like being in P5 and like my new teacher.
David – I really enjoyed the drumming.
James – I like being with my new teacher.
Millie – I really like the morning circle.
Rebecca – I am looking forward to doing science experiments next week.
Zoe – I am looking forward to going to camp at Lowport.
That brings our first week in P5d to a close! Have a great weekend everyone!!

Busy, busy, busy!
Maths
This week we have been working hard to improve our division skills. We have been doing lots of different activities to help us with this.
Ava – we did an activity where we wrote down things like sixteen divided by four is four then we wrote this is the same as four times four is sixteen. This really helped me and I really understand now. I know that if I am dividing and it is hard I can work out the sum using the times table instead.
Lily – I am much better now at setting down and working out a dividing sum this way …..

Shaun B – when I was writing out the dividing sums and times tables I noticed a pattern and now the dividing sums are much easier to do.
Health and Wellbeing
We had a great time on Thursday morning when we went to the TA Hall for wrestling. Unfortunately Mrs D forgot to take the camera so we can’t show any pictures.
Emma – we had to kneel down and face our partner then we had to both hold on tight to a space ball and wrestle it off of each other. It was great fun.
Rebecca – I thought it looked really easy but when I had a go it was actually really hard to wrestle the ball off Kelsey because she was really strong and had good balance.
On Thursday afternoon we had a rugby training session. We all had a great time and learned loads. Here are some pictures of us working hard and enjoying ourselves at the same time!

Enjoy the gala weekend and remember it’s a Monday holiday. Enjoy!!!

Another week bites the dust!

We have faced some tough challenges in maths this week however we do know that if our brain feels like it is hurting it’s because we are using it! We are all getting much better identifying inverses and we do all agree that identifying the link between multiplication and division is particularly hard.

Dave – When we were doing the harder co-ordinates I thought it was going to be too hard but I did it because I listened hard to the instructions.

Sam – We used triangles to help us learn that we can use times tables to work out division sums. I get it now.

Our Tools for Writing workshop this week was all about overused adjectives. We used a thesaurus to help us find alternative words.

Shaun B – the thesaurus helped me to understand that there are lots of different words I could use instead of ‘nice’ or ‘great’ in my sentences.

This morning we played a variety of games in class. We have been learning to take turns, share, wait and have patience. Some of us are finding it a little tricky to wait our turn. However we are getting better and will continue to work on this until the end of term.

Lewis and Carter worked together to build a vertical jigsaw. The needed lots of patience!

We  played frustration. We had to take turns and be patient.

We played connect four. This is a game of strategy and concentration.

We had a special moment this week in class. We all know that Jay is good at drawing but we were really surprised with his 3D drawing of a living room. It was amazing. He really understands the complexities of 3D drawing. Others in the class have tried to add a 3D perspective to their pictures and Jay has taken an advisory role which he thoroughly enjoys. Jay would like us to wait until his drawing is complete before posting a picture here on the blog. It’s nice to have an expert in class!

Have a great weekend!

Another great week in P5D!

In our tools for writing workshop this week we were learning to use the apostrophe to show when something belongs to someone. Some of us found it very tricky but with a bit of hard work and determination we got there in the end. Lily’s work was particularly good. Did you spot the possessive?

In maths everyone is working extremely hard to beat our best time with the loop cards so we’ve all been practising hard at home to sharpen our recall of the times tables. Hopefully we will be posting a new ‘best time’ soon! We have also been revisiting what we learned about the relationship between division and multiplication. Mrs Drummond says it’s amazing how much some people can forget in a short space of time and because of this we will now be getting a random check-up on this at least once a week for the foreseeable future.

In P.E. we have been learning about developing our ball handling skills. We have really enjoyed having Mr Gibson and Mr Collins teach us for the past few weeks.

We were really lucky this week to visit Bathgate Bowling Club. Here are some pictures from our time there-

Socialising at the bowling!

We were happy to learn that we will have a one hour session each Wednesday for the next three weeks.

Fun problem solving –

Ray has been trying for weeks to solve this puzzle. He had to match all four sides of each square to complete the puzzle. After several tries he was finally successful!

This was good fun but frustrating as well. Especially when I got to the last two pieces and realised they didn’t fit and I had to start again. I felt really proud of myself when I did it though. Ray.

Finally, yesterday in school we were celebrating success. Here is a list of words that we used this morning to describe the afternoon –

Anais- exciting                                                                                                               Shaun B- brilliant                                                                                                         Joe- phenomenal                                                                                                             Rebacca- proud                                                                                                               Catherine- awesome                                                                                               Sasha- successful                                                                                                         Ava- fun

We would all like to say huge congratulations to the following pupils in P5D who received awards –

Head Teacher’s Award – Anais Peel

Effort and Improvement – Lewis McCallum

High Standard of Work – Ray Jamieson

School Values – Lily McKenna

P.E. Champion – Ray Jamieson

Have a great weekend!

It’s been a short week but we have still been busy!

We are really enjoying our Scottish topic and building on what we were learning about last week we have all produced an A5 mini poster showing a Scottish landmark or something traditionally Scottish. Here are some of our efforts –

A  Scottish Thistle by Rachel.

Scottish things by Rebecca

The Scottish Flag and some Scottish words by Ray

The Loch Ness monster by Sophie

When we finished our mini posters we swapped them with a partner and had to give feedback about something we liked and something that could improve the poster.

In maths this week we have been learning about co-ordinates. Some of us are learning about quarter, half and whole turns while others are learning about identifying the position of an object on a co-ordinate grid. There’s also a group working on co-ordinates using the ‘x’ and ‘y’ axis.

Ava – Doing the co-ordinates was really fun and I think I am much better now.

Eve – At first I thought it might be hard but I had to refresh my memory of what I had learned before about co-ordinates and that helped me.

In music this week we have had lots of fun practising our song for the celebrating success event in school. We are focussing on dynamics and trying to use our voices to convey the emotive and rousing elements of the song.

Rebecca – I am finding it tricky to control my voice and not shout when I am singing the rousing bits.

Have a great weekend!

This week we have been busy learning about our place in the world. We played an interactive game with a globe that helped us pinpoint where we live.

Rebecca – I learned that the globe is the 3D version of a 2D map.

Ray – I know that Scotland is in the United Kingdom along with Northern Ireland, England and Wales.

We have also been learning about things that are traditionally Scottish. Working in our table groups we had to record as many things as we could that we thought were traditionally Scottish. Here are some of the things we came up with –

Josh – Shortbread and tartan.

Eve – Bagpipes and the Scots language.

Anais – Irn-bru and whisky.

Dave – Scotch pies

Sam – Porridge and the Thistle.

Rachel – Highland cows and Shetland ponies.

Maths –

We have been learning about the decimal point and how to convert from pounds to pence and vice versa. In our mental maths we were quite disappointed when tried the loop cards for the first time this term …..our time wasn’t as good as we expected ! We are all keen to work hard to improve and get back to our best!

Language –

We are all enjoying our Tools for Writing rapid fire game. Mrs Drummond throws a football at someone (it’s a sponge one !) and we have to be able to say what type of word she said. Was it a preposition/adjective/noun/proper noun/connective/verb/adverb ? It keeps us on our toes and helps us with our writing.

Well it’s the holiday weekend so that’s it for now. Have a good one everybody and remember to stay safe no matter what you are doing!