This week in P6a we have been writing diary entries about life in the rainforest.

In P.E this week we learned about the three basic skills, travelling, balance and object control. In outdoor P.E we were learning how to dribble a hockey ball.

With Mrs Innes in drama we have been preparing a showcase for p4/3. We are performing the president’s bodyguard, a dance drama piece and a dance piece.

With our P1 buddies we were teaching them to count forwards and backwards to 20. We drew numbers on the playground with chalk and played games with these numbers to help them learn.

We have started to prepare for our Open Afternoon on Monday 12^th October at 2:30pm. Your  invite should be with you soon!

The best bit about my week was at drama when we were preparing for our show for P4/3 children. – Clara

The best bit of my week was when we did PE with Mr Jeffries as I loved playing the statue game. – Casey

By Clara and Casey

Last Friday we went to Deans Community High School to do drumming in front of a huge audience. We played different rhythms on the djembe drums. We were feeling really nervous but we have lots of fun.

This week in Maths the Hexagons learned how to find the mean, mode, median and range of a set of data. The Pentagons and Triangles have been learning to mentally subtract 2 digit numbers by counting back in tens then ones.

For vertical learning this week we had the challenge of making a rainforest in a box using our knowledge of the layers. We also started different activities with different teachers. Some of us were learning about deforestation and the effect humans have on the rainforest. We had a vote to see if our group were for or against deforestation. Others were learning about aboriginal art and we had to make a story on our art work using symbols and dots.

The best part for me was doing the rainforest in the box. – Roan

I liked when we went to Deans to do the drumming because it was lots of fun! – Madeleine

Roan & Madeleine

Callum from Cool Creatures came to our class on Monday to tell us about his trip to the Amazon rainforest and show us some of his animals.

We learned lots of interesting facts about life in the rainforest and even found out that some of the houses float or are built on stilts because of all the rainfall! We learned that a lot of the houses don’t have any electricity at all. After we saw some of Callum’s photos we did our handling session. We got the chance to hold a tortoise, tarantula, millipede and snake if we wanted to and Callum let us all see his new baby African rat that is already almost full size!

Here are some pictures of our amazing afternoon…

This week in Maths we were learning to calculate the missing number. We played a game where we had to wear headbands with a number on it and then had to try and work out which number we were wearing  by looking at our partner’s number and counting up in hundreds, tens and ones.

In Writing this week, as part of our rainforest context for learning, we were describing the setting where our characters lived. We had to use our 5 senses and some great adjectives to make our piece exciting. Some of the adjectives we used were exotic, screeching, thundering, chanting, rough, slippery and vast.

Also, on Wednesday we did our first vertical learning challenge where we had to work in mixed groups of P6 and P7 children to make leaves for our rainforest display. We had to co-operate as a group and work to a time limit which was a challenge for us! 🙂

Here are some pictures of us working as part of our team…

Sc0tt- My favourite thing this week was making rhythms for our drumming exhibition with Mrs Drummond.

Lexis – I loved getting my double bass home from Mr Horvace. I am learning how to press my second finger when playing a piece of music.

By Scott & Lexis

This is a second week back after our summer holidays which were great fun. We have written about our holidays and started one of our context for learning which is Rights Respecting Superheroes. This is what we feel some of the best things we have done since we have been back in school are:

Charlotte “maths number bonds.”

Hope “I liked maths tig.”

Maisey “I liked writing our superhero stories.”

Guy “the magic e song was good because it was funny.”

Emma “the superhero stories were fun.”

Luke “the P3/4 gathering was fun because people were jumping out of planes.”

Ben “yoga was fun because you got a good stretch.”

Elliot “counting the marbles. It was exciting to see who won!”

Aryan  “golden time because you get to choose whatever you want to play with.”

Rose “ painting our class superhero was fun.”

Callum “golden time because I like cars and I got to bring in and play with my car.”

Katie “robot maths was good because we got to build robots”

Lucy “superhero stories because they were fun.”

Mr. Cunningham “As you can see we have been very busy in our first weeks. I have enjoyed my summer holidays but am happy to meet my lovely P3 class.”

P6s would like to thank all our friends and family who came along to support us today with our assembly. We had a fantastic time and really enjoyed taking a magical mystery tour through our P6 year. We have learned so many exciting things throughout the year and this brought it all back to us.

Here are some pictures of our fantastic performance:

This morning we all had a think about our best bits of P6s. There seemed to be a common theme…

Ross: My best part of P6 was when we did Olivia, Grease and when I got my buddy.

Emma B: My best part of P6 was when me and Sasha sang ‘If There’s a Star’ in Olivia and I also enjoyed getting in to Golden Club.

Becky: My best part of P6 was when in term 1 we had a balloon party on a Friday and Olivia.

Kerry: My best part of P6 was when I walked on stage at Olivia. I was proud.

Shaun: My best part of P6 was when we done Olivia and we did Art.

Erin: My best part of P6 was when we done Olivia and when I got in to Golden Club.

Kelsey: My best part of P6 was when we had the Olivia party.

Ava: My best part of P6 was when we performed the show ‘Olivia’.

Liam: My best part of P6 was when I did the football tournament.

Robbie: My best part of P6 was when I got in to the Golden Club.

Josh: My best part of P6 was when we done Olivia and Grease.

Travis: My best part of P6 was when I was in the Olivia show. The best song was ‘Good Times’.

Leon: My best part of P6 was when I learned how to divide with higher numbers in Maths.

Sasha: My best part of P6 was when we went to Dynamic Earth for our school trip.

Lisa: My best part of P6 was when we done the curtain call for Olivia.

Teigan: My best part of P6 was when we walked out on stage at Olivia and saw all the people clapping for more.

Katie: My best part of P6 was when we done our P6 show Olivia and my favourite song was ‘Charity Rag’.

Ray: My best part of P6 was when we did Olivia.

Aaron: My best part of P6 was when I did my part in Olivia.

Mhairi: My best part of P6 was when we did Olivia because it was really fun.

Lily: My best part of P6 was when we done Olivia. The best part was the curtain call.

Abby: My best part of P6 was when we done Olivia.

Emma T: My best part of P6 was when we done the curtain call in the Olivia show.

Anais: My best part of P6 was when we done Olivia because I had a speaking part and it was fun practicing for it at the Academy.

Jamie: My best part of P6 was when we did the Olivia show because my mum thought it was funny. My best part was ‘Good Times’ because I had fun.

Eva: My best part of P6 was when we were practicing for Olivia then we got to perform it. My favourite part was the curtain call.

Lewis: My best part of P6 was when we went to Dynamic Earth.

This week we were part of Snape’s Potion Class. We had to test different materials to find out which ones would have the biggest chemical reaction for our potion. We tested salt, aspirin, baking soda and sugar in water and then in vinegar. We found that aspirin and baking soda both reacted the most but the biggest was with the vinegar and baking soda which flowed over the top of our cups! To complete it we added some food colouring for effect!

Here are some pictures of us doing our investigation:

Also this week we have started preparing for our P6s assembly on Friday 19th June. You should have received your invitations by now 🙂

The best bit of our week so far was on Wednesday when we got to become Primary 7 for the day and meet our new teacher Miss Bollen.

This week in Hogwarts School of Science we were learning about the terms soluble and insoluble. We learned the meaning of tricky terms such as solute, solvent and solution. We then set up experiments where we were trying to find out which materials fitted in to each category. By adding the material to warm water we found out whether chalk, sugar, coffee, gravy granules, rice, flour and  sand were soluble or insoluble.

Here we are trying it out:

We then recorded our results in our jotters and wrote a summary of the experiment.

As a Home Learning task we had to make up our own magical potions with different ingredients. We got some interesting concoctions which are now on display in our classroom alongside our very own P6s Book of Potions. We think they look great! 🙂

We have had another great week turning our classroom in to Hogwarts.

We painted wall panels for our display to make it look like the Great Hall and started to make Harry Potter themed letters to go above them.

In Maths we have been learning about area and perimeter. We were given areas of different magical shops on Diagon Alley and we had to create a map to display these.

We have also been building on our team working skills. We had to work together to design a broom for our first year at Hogwarts that was no longer than 1 metre. We then had to include 3 exciting parts that no other group would have. We had great fun making the brooms and worked really hard to make sure that everyone in the group was taking part.

We are off to a flying start after the holidays in P6s. When we got back to school on Monday we had a letter waiting for us from Albus Dumbledore! We have all been invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and are feeling very excited!  We wrote letters back to Dumbledore and then made owls so that we could send them via ‘Owl Mail’.

We then did the ‘Sorting Hat’ to decide which house we were all going to be in. We have Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. In our houses we are working hard to receive gems for our team and the winning team will get to choose a prize from the box at the end of the week.  In Writing, we looked at examples of recipes and then created our own potions. These are looking fantastic and are displayed in our ‘P6s Book of Potions’. We have also started to read ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ as our class novel.

We are looking forward to finding out what our new context for learning has in store for us…

The children in P6 had a fabulous time last week when they performed their ‘Olivia’ show at Bathgate Academy. It was an experience we will never forget! Here are some pictures from the both nights:

On Monday afternoons P6 and P7 children go to Bathgate Sports Centre to do different sports that they would like to get better at. Some of the sports include football, dance, futsal, badminton, swimming and athletics. Also some of us stay in school to do Musical Theatre with Mrs Innes. We are doing the play ‘Grease’ and we are going to perform it at the end of the 10 week session. We are going to audition on Monday coming for different parts. I would like to be Kenicky or Danny because I love singing!

by Josh C

Here are some pictures from the Sports Centre:

It has been full steam ahead with our Olivia show this week. We have had a full dress rehearsal in school which went really well and next week we will be going to Bathgate Academy on Friday to do a run through on stage. If you have not yet returned your permission slip for this please do so by Monday.

On Wednesday we held our Fundraising Day and raised a total of £272. Thank you so much to everyone for all your help with this! We were all very proud of our achievement.

Thursday was World Book Day. P6s celebrated by having a ‘Book Swap’ where we brought in a book from home and swapped it with someone in the class. We also wrote reviews of our favourite books and conducted a whole class survey to find out favourite authors. Our results will be displayed outside Miss Henderson’s office next week.

Sports Electives start this Monday 9th March so remember to bring suitable PE kit with you.

Here are some pictures from our week…

These are our new books from the ‘Book Swap’

Creating graphs with the information we collected on favourite authors

Gathering information about favourite books

Counting the money raised from our Olivia Fundraising Day

Today P6 organised a fundraising day to raise money for our show Olivia. We brought in lots of home baking and set up some games and a raffle. Emma made a fantastic Olivia cake at home which was amazing and helped us raise lots of money! We are going to count all the money we have raised during Maths tomorrow. This will then go towards getting costumes and resources for our show. We would like to thank everyone who helped us out.

The children in P6s have been busy making our own movies. First of all we had to brainstorm the plot of our movie and decide on who the characters would be. After that we created a story board to show what would be happening in each scene of the movie. Using the story boards we have now started to write our scripts with the skills we learned during Writing. We learned that all scripts must include actions in brackets, new lines for each character speaking, colons after each person’s name and have a list of characters at the beginning. We have included all of these things in our own scripts. Once we have finished we plan to present our script to the class and then begin recording our movies with the characters we have brought in from home. Here are some pictures of us busy at work…

We look forward to updating you with our progress soon…

Emma B and Lisa P6s