This week we have been checking up on how well we understand division work. Our maths mentors really helped us when things got tricky!

In Maths we have continued to learn about area and we looked at measuring the area of shapes which didn’t have a regular shape. We learnt that the shape covered half the square or more we counted it as one and if it was less than half we didn’t count it.

Can you work out the area of this shape?

In cricket we learnt to bowl using straight arms and bowling towards the stumps. Lilyrose got a brilliant stumping and Artjom mananged a full toss wicket!

In Science we planned and set up an experiment to see if the area a plan needs to grow affects growth. We chose 3 pots of different sizes and added the same depth of soil and the same amount of grass seed. We will water them the same amount too to make sure our test is fair.

In STEM we made cardboard boats which we water proofed with foil. First we had to see if they floated and then we had to see if they could carry cargo of 250g salt.

We were treated to a fabulous performance from the woodwind students who played the flute, clarinet and saxophones. We really enjoyed hearing them and were so impressed with the standard they had achieved in such a short time (they’ve only been learning since Christmas!)

Table of the week – with 720 points – 

(This week’s table of the week was a very close run contest with the oranges just edging out another table by 10 points!)

We were so proud of Rowan who got our values certificate at our Celebration assembly today.

It’s been another very short but busy week.

On Thursday we went for our swimming assessment at Bathgate xcite. We had to swim two lengths of the teaching pool using front crawl and back crawl. Lexi and Luke had to do butterfly and breaststroke too!

In science we are learning about how much water plants need and have set up an experiment to test this. We have 8 basil plants in the classroom which are receiving different amounts of water. We are observing the plants to see what happens to them with their different watering. We have one plant which is not receiving any water. This is the control plant. We need to see what will happen if we don’t water the plant at all.

With Mrs Mackenzie we made a map of Scotland to learn about the climate. We have a temperate climate in Scotland which means that we have cold and wet weather in the winter and we (sometimes) have nice sunny, hot days in the summer.

In PE we learnt close catching and then used these skills to play caterpillar cricket where everyone in the team runs to score points when the batsman hits the ball.

In Maths we have been learning about Area. When we measure the area, we measure in cm². The area of something is how much flat space it takes up. We found counting whole squares for area quite easy so our next challenge will be to look at shapes with half squares and even rounded shapes.

Table of the week: with 450

This week has been back to normal. Almost!

On Tuesday we went to Bathgate Xcite to compete against other schools in a P4 benchball festival. The other schools were Boghall, St Columba’s and St Mary’s. We were split into teams and played on different courts against other teams. Balbardie did well and we think we won!

On Wednesday we had a very special visitor. Joan Lennon, author of the Leif Frond books, came to talk to us about writing and her books. She told us that the 2 books were published at the same time so it doesn’t matter which order they are read in. She is Canadian but has lived in Scotland for 41 years. She read an extract of one of the Leif Frond books which was lovely. We were able to ask her questions about being an author and what she enjoyed most about reading and writing.

On Thursday we completed a hiit workout and tried doing the triangle dance. It’s surprisingly difficult, although looks very easy here…….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DB-PEEywc0

Table of the week – red with 560 points.

Children need PE kit on Monday and Thursday and should have appropriate footwear as well as warm clothes for going outside.

Primary 4 have had a busy few weeks learning lines, making props and organising costumes for our show with Primary 3.  Thank you to everyone who came to support us in our performances this week. It was lovely looking into the audience and seeing lots of happy faces.  We hope you all enjoyed the show as much as we did.  Don’t forget to order your DVDs so you can watch it over and over again at home!

Don’t forget to bring P.E. kits on Tuesday as Primary 4 will be taking part in the benchball festival at the sports centre.

P4a – table of the week – red with 830 points

In numeracy we have been learning to subtract using number lines and some concrete materials. We also learnt to count up from the smallest number to the bigger number. In Maths, we have been learning to copy symmetrical patterns on squared paper. It was quite challenging. We also played a game where we had to help Caleb rescuing him from roboids. You can try it here.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/Flash.aspx?a=activity19

In writing, we wrote a diary entry pretending that we were a Viking child. We had to think about the activities that the children would have done during the day. Girls would have helped mum in the longhouse, taken care of the baby, cleaned, cooked, sewed, spun wool and made cloth. Boys would have spent their day hunting, fishing, collecting firewood and practising their warrior skills in case they needed to go into battle when they were older.
With Mrs Mackenzie, we have been learning our songs and practising for the show ‘Eddie the penguin saves the world’.
We also listened to 2 more class talks. Daniel told us about Viking food, including dagmal and natmal which are breakfast and dinner. The Vikings had no lunch!  Artjom told us about longhouses and made an amazing longhouse for us out of real materials!

In PE we had a taster session for netball and hockey which was great fun.
This week we have spent some time with P4b practicing for our assembly. We hope that some of you will be able to join us next Friday morning.

Table of the week –
with 650

Learning partners of the week – Elena and Kyle.

On Monday and Tuesday we had a brilliant start to our fantastic class talks about Vikings. We have heard five already and they have been full of great facts. They all had a wow factor! We can’t wait to hear the rest.

This week we have been learning about symmetry. We did a carousel of activities where we coloured in different coloured squares that had to be mirror images of each other. We also played a symmetry game on the smartboard and we looked at the alphabet to see if we could find symmetrical letters. We especially enjoyed creating symmetrical pictures out of wooden shapes with a partner. We had to put a ruler between us, create a pattern and copy the pattern that our partner had made, making it perfectly symmetrical on either side of the ruler.

In our writing we made adverts for selling a longship. We learnt about the features of persuasive writing and then had to include these in our adverts. We used alliteration, adjectives, details of our ship (often exaggerated!) and many of the eye catching features seen in adverts to try and make them stand out. Mrs Graham and Mrs Collings were super impressed with them! Did you want to buy a longship for 50 silver arm rings cause if you do, we know where to find them!

In P.E. we are coming to the end of our circuits fitness block. We are steadily improving our scores and are hoping to smash them in our final week next Thursday!
We have started thinking about our show and our assembly. It’s going to be a busy second half of the term for P4a (and P4b) with rehearsals and performances to look forward to.

In numeracy we are learning to multiply in 10s and 100s. We are working really hard using a variety of strategies to support our learning.

Table of the week – 830

We have had a wonderful week of learning.  Here are some of our highlights:

Table 1 (Sophie A, Evie, Ryan, Fearne, Grace Mac): We learned about Viking Gods.  We know that some were good and others were bad.  Some had special.  Odin was the chief of the Gods.

Table 2 ( Keira, Jess, Luis, Grace Mar, Brandon, Lacey, Eilidh): We enjoyed working with our partners to draw a birds-eye view of a Viking Longhouse.

Table 3 (Tiana, Archie, Isla, Sophie M, Dionne): We enjoyed using the strategy of grouping to help us with multiplication.

Table 4 (Nina, Lily, Scott, Max, Esther, Freya, Sophie S, Ava): We enjoyed learning about symmetry and using the mirrors.

Table 5 ( Eden, Emily, Keegan, Marley): We enjoyed using play dough to make symmetrical patterns.

This term has started with a bang! We started learning about the Vikings. We drew a cartoon Viking and then wrote a letter to Gunnar, a character in our story, whose Dad is a very important man in his village. We told him a bit about ourselves and asked him about himself. We also wanted to find out a bit more about the story and what might happen to him. We will fill you in next week when we have read a bit more.
In French we started learning the colours. We played some fun games and then listened to a song where we had to match the colours to cubes. We had to put them in order of the song. It was quite tricky.

In PE we started a block of fitness work thinking about keeping fit and improving our performances in a series of short exercises. Next week we will try to beat our scores. Hopefully by the end of the 6 week block we will be super fit!
In health and wellbeing we started our programme ‘Cool in School’. We learnt about cool, aggressive and weak responses to situations. When learnt that when we use an aggressive response, the problem gets bigger. If we use a weak response, the situation continues. If we use a cool response, the problem should be solved. We hope that this will help us to deal with difficult situations in school and at home too!
In numeracy we have started learning about multiplication. We made arrays, groups of and drew simple number stories to show our calculations. In Maths, we were learning about compasses and direction. We made compasses and used them in the playground to direct our friends from spot to spot.

In reading we started learning our Scots poems for the Burns Poetry competition at the end of the month. We are looking forward to hearing everyone’s performance so that class representatives can be chosen.
In handwriting we learnt how to join a ‘ay’. We are hoping that the presentation of our work will improve a lot!
In assembly, Mr McCabe told us about the men who invented the Fortnite game. He explained that they had presented their game to 7 different companies before it was produced. From this, we learnt that we need to strive for what we believe in and to have a growth mindset to achieve our goals.

Table of the week – with 490

On Tuesday we arrived in our classroom and Mrs Mackenzie had found an alien in the cupboard! He’s a bit shy so he didn’t want to come into the classroom but after a while he came out and showed himself to us. We voted on his name so that we can communicate with him. He is called Echo and he comes from Planet X. At the moment we don’t know why he’s come and what he’s doing on earth!

In Maths, we learnt to match digital and analogue times. Many of the children really challenged themselves with the hot work from our Chilli Challenge and Mrs Collings was very impressed with the work produced. Please continue to practice this at home with the children especially looking at 5 minute intervals on the clocks.
In Science we are designing magnetic inventions to make people’s lives easier for our ‘Dragons’ Den’ challenge next week.
We also made our first trip to the school library to choose books to read. On a Thursday, we will be visiting the library to celebrate reading and our enjoyment of books.
We also learnt the months of the year in French. We made wheels which move to help us learn them.
Please remember that P4a have Futsal on a Monday and PE on a Tuesday. They will need indoor kit for both these sessions.
Table of the week –

with 380 points

It was a busy week of getting to know you in P4a and we enjoyed bringing the children together to talk about the year ahead. With Mrs Mackenzie the children talked about what makes a good pupil and a good teacher. These ideas will help the children to formulate our class charter, ensuring that everyone enjoys a happy and secure learning environment in P4a.

We talked about the things we are looking forward to in P4. These include; science, gym, art and craft, maths, PE, achieving of their best, topic work and of course, golden time. Questions the children had to ask included the teacher’s favourite colour and subects to teach as well as what their new topic would be. Things that the children already enjoy in school are; Big Start, Science, Art and Maths. Some things the children would like to learn this year are Science, weather, earth and space, Mary Queen of Scots and history. We also talked about the ways we like to learn, how teachers can help us to learn best and the things we like to do outside school. Some of these really surprised Mrs Collings!

For information, PE will be on Mondays and Wednesdays. Please ensure that the children have appropriate indoor kit for Monday and outdoor kit for Wednesday. Thank you.

The table of the week was the blue table with 350 points and Mrs Mackenzie will announce the learning partners of the week on Monday!

It was lovely to welcome the children back to school after the forced break for the snow days. We hope you all managed to keep warm and safe and also had some fun during the days away from school.

This week we’ve hit the ground running catching up with all the things the children had missed!

In French, we did colouring by number, colouring in a very colourful toucan! We learnt that there are special words to help us with dark and light colours such as vert clair, vert foncé and bleu ciel.

We also had class talks by Ellie-Rose, Ruby, Eva and Shaun. Ellie-Rose talked about Viking longhouses. She taught us that the fire was in the middle of the single roomed house. Ruby spoke about Viking weapons. She explained that the Vikings swords were their most expensive weapons and that they usually had names – such as Death Bringer in our class novel, Viking Boy. Longships were the topic in Eva’s talk. She used some Viking language at the end of her talk. Shaun also talked about longhouses and provided a fabulous wordsearch for us to complete.

In our NYCoS session we started learning about the universal language for learning musical notes and we even learnt some signs to help us pitch our voices. Afterwards we watched the scene from ‘The Sound of Music’ where Maria teaches the children to sing.

In Maths we are finishing off our work on coordinates. We are trying to remember that to find a coordinate we go along the corridor and up the stairs. We used this game to help us.

https://www.mathplayground.com/space_graph_jr/index.html

Our learning partners of the week AND our supportive friends this month were Annie and Lewis. Well done, you’ve worked hard together this week and worked hard to be really good classmates.

This week’s highlights from P4b!
I had fun doing my class talk –Charlotte
I enjoyed listening to the class talks – Holly
I enjoyed NYCoS because we did music and the beat – Shaun
I enjoyed Maths – Liam
I enjoyed learning my French colours – Ellie
I enjoyed all of the class talks because they were all very good and gave us good facts – Rory
I enjoyed Multisports– Aaron
I enjoyed Maths – Jamie
I enjoyed Maths – Kaycee
I enjoyed learning about the Vikings – Ellie-Rose
I liked Maths and the Vikings – Alfie L
I liked NYCoS because we were learning how to make our own rhythm stories. – Olivia
I liked doing my class talk – Dylan
I liked Futsal – Alfie B
I liked Viking Boy, our class book – Owen
I loved Dylan’s class talk because he gave me good ideas – Alistair
I liked Futsal because my team won – Max
I liked Futsal – Ruby
I enjoyed NYCoS – Kyle
I enjoyed Maths – Brandon
I like NYCoS because it is good for your voice – Eva

Table of the week – green 490

Learning partners of the week – Kyle and Olivia

It’s been a short but busy week. We finished off our work on symmetry working out how to reflect shapes and pictures across a line of symmetry. We used the squares to help us show where to plot our shapes.
We made Jewish Kippahs which are special hats for Jewish men and boys. A lot of Kippahs have a Star of David on them which is a common symbol used in a lot of Jewish synagogues too. (pictures to follow when the technology allows!)
In French we have been learning our numbers from 20-50. Some of the children have found this quite hard but this song is helping us to learn them……..

In our Viking topic, we learnt about the daily life of the Vikings (when they weren’t out raiding and pillaging!) The children had to work hard on the farmstead, growing crops and doing homework or fishing and hunting. We also found out that the Vikings had a fairly boring diet and most importantly that they had NO LUNCH! They only had breakfast and dinner.

Table of the week – blue with 240 points
Learning Partners of the week – Alistair and Ruby

This week has been a really busy Viking week!
In Learning across the curriculum, we made animations about a Viking Saga. A Viking saga is story which the Vikings told about their families and these were passed down from generation to generation. We had to make characters and scenes for our characters to move on. They had shields and axes. We used an app called StopMotion on the ipad on which we took a series of pictures which the app then runs together to make a short film.
We also learnt about Viking longhouses and how the whole family lived together with their animals. They had long benches for beds which had skins and animals skins for covers. The toilet was a hut outside the longhouse,
We also designed and painted Viking shields. We had to make them symmetrical which is harder than it looks!
Learning partners of the week – Kyle and Ellie-Rose
Table of the week – red with 130 points

We have had a fun week and have enjoyed playing in the snow. We started our new topic on The Vikings. We have learned that they didn’t really have horns on their helmets. To relax they liked to swim, wrestle and play football. They made ice skates out of bones to play in the snow. The boys learned to fight from an early age and the girls learned to cook, spin and weave.
In maths we have been learning about shape. We thought about lots of different uses in everyday life for 3D shapes. For example, a ball is the shape of a sphere so that it rolls and a toblerone is the shape of a triangular prism!
In numeracy, we learned about area. You can count the squares of a shape to measure its area.
We enjoyed Scottish country dancing with Mr Jeffries in P.E. and the girls had to dance with the boys!
Have a lovely weekend.

This week was a week of firsts! P4b had visiting specialists for Futsal and from NYCoS (the National Youth Choir of Scotland).
Futsal is an indoor game based on football but developing skills for passing and moving. The ball is smaller and more solid than a normal football. We learned how to move through the cones without being tug. We learnt some basic moves to get used to the ball.
Mrs Gray from NYCoS came to start a block of singing games and music with us. We learnt that pulse is a rhythm which goes through all music. We played some clapping and moving games to learn how to keep a steady rhythm. We liked the coca-cola rhyme. We also liked the train game!

The children are keenly learning their words for the assembly and are thinking about costumes. Vikings need plain coloured trousers (tracksuit bottoms, cotton trousers) and plain t shirts, women Vikings need long skirts and a plain shirt. We have some costumes in school for the monks and long skirts for the girls if required.

Learning Partners of the week – Ellie-Rose and Eva.

Table of the week – blue with 700 points

This week has been really exciting as we have started using learning partners in class. Each week, we have a new partner chosen by pick-a-sticks and we work with our partner all week. We are hoping to make new friends, learn about new ways of working and develop new skills of working together.

We have started learning about the Vikings. We are reading a very exciting book about a Viking boy called Gunnar. The story started with Gunnar’s dad being killed by raiders and taken off to Valhalla by the Valkyries, the servants of Odin. In writing we wrote a letter to Gunnar telling him a little bit about ourselves and asking him about life as a Viking.

With Mrs Mackenzie, we started looking at the different ways to response to situations and ow these cool, aggressive and weak responses affect the situation. We hope that this work will help us when we experience difficulties in the playground and with our classmates and friends.

We also looked at multiplication and how making an array can help us work out multiplication calucations. In maths we also learnt about the compass and the different points around the compass. We are learning to follow directions using compasses and turns.

In the coming weeks, we will be rehearsing for our assembly and starting to learn some songs so we hope that you will be able to come and share our learning on the 1st February at 2.30 p.m.

Our learning partners of the week this week are Florence and Alfie B.
Our table of the week is: Blue