This week we enjoyed class talks from Charlotte, Rose, Jaime-Lee, Isaac, Jack and Dani.
Ben – I liked Jack’s talk because he had prizes for his quiz.
Emily – I like the end of Isaac’s because he said ‘That’s all folks!’
Jacob – Rose’s talk was good because it had really good animations.
Ela – I liked Jack’s quiz because he asked questions about everything we have learnt, not just longships.
Dani –I liked Charlotte’s picture of the house.
Callum – I liked Dani’s powerpoint because it was cool.
Hope – I liked Dani’s class talk because it was obvious she had done it herself.
Yesterday was World Book Day – we enjoyed a book scavenger hunt, lots of storytime and we had a very peaceful 15 minutes at the end of the day when Balbardie Stopped to Read.




We also enjoyed part of Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat on DVD as part of our RME lesson.
Pupils of the week –
Lucy for offering well thought out and positive feedback during our class talks
and
Jack for offering useful feed forward advice during our class talks.

Table of the week – with 640 points

Article 28 – the right to an education

Writing

This week we used our Viking theme to create five different Viking families within the class. We then had to decide who had what role within the family and create a character profile for the person we were. We used some of what we already know and used text books to research information as well.

Maths

This week we have been learning about compass points and clockwise/anti clockwise. We also learned about half turns and quarter turns.

We also learned about 3D shape and how to use 3D nets.

World Book Day!

We had a fantastic day on Thursday celebrating world book day. We had several opportunities throughout the day to read quietly, read to each other, build a reading corner and share excerpts from our books. Here are some of our pictures –

HWB

We were demonstrating how to use a cool, weak or aggressive response with Mrs McKenzie.

Suvi – it’s really helping me to learn how to react to certain situations

Campbell – aggressive response isn’t the best to use

Liam – if you use an aggressive response it could get you in trouble

Kiara – I understand how to respond better now

Have a great weekend!!!

Short week!

Writing

Our writing this week was a recount of our trip to the museum. We used our writing planners to help us. We are getting much better at taking notes and using them to help with our writing. Here is an example –

Maths

This week we were learning about centimetres squared and found it quite tricky! Mrs Little put a task in our home learning to see if we can remember how to work out the are of a shape in cm squared.

LATC

Last Thursday we went on our class trip to the National Museum of Scotland to learn some more about Vikings. We all had a great day. Here are some pictures and some comments –

 Mia – I really liked it when we went to the theatre to learn about Viking life from two actors

Teighan- I really liked seeing the Viking grave

Sophia – I learned that a Viking pot was found in Bathgate 

Megan- I learned that there are three alphabets

Jason – I learned about how the Viking paid for things using ring money

Kiara- I really liked going to the room where we got to hold Viking artefacts and had to guess what they were

Have a good weekend!!

Language

This week we have been learning about different types of sentences.

Sophia- there are four different types of sentences

Suvi – the four types are command, question, exclamation and statement

Liam – Suvi went to the shops (statement)

Euan – “Pick the litter up,” said Tim (command)

Teighan – “What is that?” said Suvi (question)

Megan – “I love this ride!” said mum (exclamation)

Maths

This week we have been building on our previous learning about coordinates. We all had the opportunity to make a grid and position objects on it and ask our elbow partners to identify the coordinates.

Denholm – I really liked it when Alfie had to try and solve my grid questions

Connor – it was fun swapping sheets and trying to find what the coordinates were

We also had a fun time using games to consolidate our learning of the four operations. This was also a good time to evaluate how well we work as part of a team and how well we can follow instructions. Some of the games we played were shut the box, nine snap, what number am I and speed tables. Here are some pictures –

HWB

We are all learning a lot about how to react appropriately to different situations.

Suvi – This week we were doing drama. We got a card either saying aggressive, weak or cool and we had to act out what it said on the card with our partners.

LATC

We have started our Viking fact files. We had great fun using the books in class to research where the Vikings came from and what places they raided. We discussed the difference between fact and opinion before beginning our task. Here is a picture of us using the books –

Science

We were looking at different materials and predicting if they were magnetic or non-magnetic. We discussed our predictions with our elbow partner and recording them. We were then able to test our predictions using different magnets.

P.E.

We have been learning about good teamwork and what the qualities of a good team member are. Our challenge was to cross the playground ‘swamp’ using 3 hula hoops per team.

Have a great weekend!

We have three new members in P4b!

Their names are Mild, Spicy and Hot. They live near our Maths Wall but can visit all curricular areas. They remind us that everyone can achieve when working at their level. They also encourage us to challenge ourselves by trying a trickier level, perhaps with the support of a friend.

This week we have been problem solving using our knowledge of multiplication. Which level would you try?

Mild

Jasper had 4 plates. Each plate had 3 cakes on it. How many cakes does Jasper have?

Spicy

Toby bought 5 doughnuts which cost 10p each. He bought 7 cupcakes that were 5p each. How much change would he get from £1?

Hot

The choir has 6 boys for every 4 girls. There are 12 girls in the choir. How many children are there?

Pupil of the Week: Luke – for persevering with tricky maths. Well done you have mastered multiplying multiples of 100.

Great week!

We are very happy to have Mrs Caddell in class working alongside Mrs Little until Easter.

Language

This week we have been developing our use of similies in our writing. Here are some examples of similies –

Megan – as flat as a pancake

Alex – as slow as a snail

Joshua – as warm as the sun

Murray – as fierce as a tiger

Hannah – as quick as lightening

Maths

This week we have been developing our ability to find the coordinates of an object on a grid. We have also been learning to find the position of a point using grid lines which was a little tricky to begin with. We have a little saying that helps us to remember how to use a grid –

Mia – along the corridor and up the stairs

P.E.

We had great fun with Mr Jeffries this week! We were learning a Scottish dance called the Gay Gordons.

Kiara – I was a bit uncomfortable at first then I really liked it

Suvi – I enjoyed the part when we had to swing our partner round

Amy – it was a bit tricky at first but I got the hang of it

LATC

This week we have been learning about Viking longboats. Here are some of the facts we found out and some pictures of us making our boats –

Mia – the other name for a longboat is a dragon ship

Megan – they have shield on the side to protect the men and women on the boat

Campbell – at the back of the boat they used a big oar to steer the boat

Alex – 50 or 60 people can fit on a longboat

Alfie – they carve a figurehead on the front of the boat to scare off their enemies in battle

 Fun Stuff

 On Wednesday we were lucky to have a dance taster session. here are some pictures-

Have a great weekend!!!!

This week we have been learning about the Vikings. Here are some things we have been finding out-

Mia – there are five Viking gods

Suvi – Odin is the chief god and the most important

Megan – Loki is the god of mischief

Kiara – Freya is the god of beauty and war

Lauren – Thor is the god of thunder and he is the most popular god

Jason – Frey is the god of fertility

Alex – Vikings travel in a longboat

Suvi – Vikings came from Scandinavian countries

Megan – they invaded parts of the UK

Mia – the countries they came from were Sweden, Norway and Denmark

In maths this week we have been doing algebra! We have been learning to identify the missing number in a sum. Some of us have been working with function machines and although it was tricky at first we soon got the hang of it.

In HWB this week with Mrs McKenzie we were learning about being cool in school. We learned about the different responses we can have to situations. Here are some examples –

Denholm – an aggressive response is when if someone kicks you then you kick them back instead of going and getting a playground supervisor

James – a weak response is when you let people hit you and you do nothing about it

Alfie – a cool response is when someone hits you and you ask them to stop and say that if they do that again you will tell an adult

In P.E. this week we played the bubble game. It helps us to learn about spatial awareness.

 Have a good weekend!

LAC

This week we began exploring Viking life. We took notes as we watched a video about Viking longships. We were amazed at the number of facts we were able to jot down! We then used our notes to create a labelled diagram of a longship, trying to include as much information as we could. We also began to prepare for our Viking assembly; we were learning songs and discussing parts, props and costumes. We hope you’ll enjoy watching us on 3^rd February.

Numeracy

This week we have been focusing on multiplication and using arrays to help develop our understanding. We are becoming very good at creating multiplication stories to match our arrays.

We also investigated what happened when you multiply a number by 10, 100 and 1000.

Health and Wellbeing

We began our Being Cool in School focus and explored, through drama, how to deal with tricky situations that may arise in school. We discovered that there are three types of response we can choose to use:

Aggressive

Weak and

Cool

Our drama sketches showed the negative consequences of using an aggressive or weak response. We’ve all decided that we’ll work hard to use cool responses when dealing with difficult situations.

From the Blog Post Box

This week I learned…

…that 120 Vikings could fit in a Viking longship.                  Nathan

…to have a cool response when something goes wrong, not an aggressive or weak response.  

Jaime-Lee

…how to make an array.               Jason

…joined up writing and I find it quite tricky!          Jacob

…how to do hard cheerleading stunts.                     Lucy

Pupil(s) of the Week: Ela and Rayen – for making such a positive start in their new school. We’re delighted to welcome you both to Balbardie.

Just a quick blog to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The winner of the school fayre Christmas hamper was Amy Lawrence from our class. Well done Amy!

Merry Christmas!

On Wednesday, the p4s started the Balbardie Party Season! The party was exciting because we had fun games to play. We played Christmas limbo, best girl dancer, best boy dancer, musical statues and pass the parcel.
It was really fun and in the end we had a dance competition – Skye Morris & Sophia Anderson were the 2 winners of the dance off.

Table of the week p4b……. blue with 410 points
Table of the week p4a….. Pugs
Pupil of the week p4a Lauren Park
Pupil off the week p4b – Jaime-Lee for making good use of her feed-forward information to produces a fantastic piece of imaginative writing.

Thank you to our guest editors – Sophia, Suvi and Callum.

From Mrs Collings and Mrs Little – we hope you all have a lovely weekend and look forward to seeing all the children bright and cheerful next week!

Article 31 (leisure, play and culture)
Every child has the right to relax, play and
take part in a wide range of cultural and
artistic activities.

This week’s guest editors are children from the Green Table.
Ben – I like PE because we do creative stuff.
Lucy- I liked outdoor PE.
Camaron – I love playing.
Katie- I liked outdoor PE because we were practising throwing and catching.
Isaac- I like outdoor P.E.
Louie- I like doing shapes
Hope-I liked doing maths
Emma- I liked doing the Christmas story.
Emily – I like outdoor P.E.
Maisey- I liked doing the Christmas story.
And from Mrs Collings
The children’s thoughts…..
Hayley – I’ve learned about flight, balance and control.
Jaime-Lee – I learnt about St Andrew and what he did.
Skye – I liked indoor P.E.
Dani – I liked doing the St Andrew’s story.
Rose – I liked doing the Christmas story because we made it with Lego.

It’s been a busy week again with a lot of different activities in the run up to Christmas. We started thinking about the Christmas Story and drew or made our own pictures/ models to show a different part of it.

This children have really enjoyed doing hama bead pictures in golden time. These are some of their efforts from today.I think they are pretty awesome!

We would like to thank all the parents and children who came to the fair and helped or played on the games on the stall. We hope you all enjoyed it.

We are very much looking forward to sharing our Christmas party with 4A on Wednesday. Don’t forget to bring your party clothes to change into!

Table of the week – yellow table with 960 points (apologies for putting the wrong colour up on friday!)

Pupil of the week – Camaron for making good progress with big number, little number work

Article 28 – the right to an education.

Writing

This week we completed part three of our Alien adventure. We were able to compare the three pats and see how we have improved over the past few weeks. We are now more confident using writing planners and sentence stretchers to make our writing more interesting for the reader. We are definitely becoming more confident using adjectives and adverbs in our writing.

Maths

This week we have been revising what we know about division. It quickly became clear we had forgotten quite a bit and we are really beginning to understand what Mrs Little means when she says we need to learn to take our learning with us as we begin to make links between skills and concepts. We have been learning about the link between multiplication and division before we move on next week to setting out division sums.

Ranna – doing the multiplication and division was very challenging but fun

Kiara – division is just like times tables

Denholm – we were writing the times tables and doing the division opposite

Music

Following on from last week we learned about timing and pace. We used glockenspiel and sleigh bell instruments to play along with the song that we have been learning. We are finding it challenging as this requires good hand eye co-ordination whilst learning to play by ear before we progress to reading basic notation.

Suvi – I liked the activity where we listened to Blame it on the Boggie and we compared it to the song we learned last week

Teighan – I found it difficult to play the glockenspiel and not look at the screen for the notes

Have a great weekend!

Guy-I enjoyed Reading Comprehension.
Rose-I enjoyed SRA.
Emma- I enjoyed gymnastics in PE.
Jason- In PE, I learned how to jump into a bigger space.
Aryan –I like making the cardboard car.
Maisey – I enjoyed PE.
Emily – I love PE.
Lucy – I like making the cars and monsters.
Katie- I liked drawing my monster.
Isaac- I liked making the cars.
Ben –I like the cars that we are making.
Luke-I liked making the rubber band car.
Charlotte-I liked making the rubber band car.
Hope-I liked making the rubber band car.
Jacob –I liked making rubber band car.
Jack –I liked maths.
Nathan –I liked turbo tables.
Jaime-lee- I liked drawing my moshi monster.
Thank you to the red table who were are guest editors for this week.

From Mrs Collings
It’s been a busy week, getting ready for the Christmas fair and starting to think about the festive season.
Emerald’s purpose on earth is a little clearer this week – please do ask P4b why she came!
The children enjoyed making rubber band cars in Technology. We learnt that energy can be stored in the elastic band as it is wound up (potential energy) which is then released to make the wheels go around (kinetic energy) The race wasn’t a long one but the cars did move!

We are very proud of all our class who are making big strides towards the golden club. We now have 4 children in the golden club with another handful edging ever closer.
MVP – Jason

Pupil of the Week – Elliot

…for persevering with his Maths and making good progress with his subtraction skills.

Table of the week
–

Article 28 – the right to an education

Writing

In our writing this week Mrs Little was very happy to see that we are all using adjectives and adverbs correctly. We have writing about an alien who visits earth to learn about how we look after our planet. He asks us to go back to his planet to help him teach them how to reuse, reduce and recycle. This has given us plenty of opportunities to show how and when to use adjectives and adverbs correctly.

Maths

This week we have been learning about deconstructing two and three digit numbers to help us add mentally. First we started with the written method before moving onto calculating mentally. If we had to add 47+32 we know to add the tens numbers first then add the units and finally add them together.

Music

This week we have been learning to follow the pulse/beat of the music. First we listened to a piece of music then we discussed what type of music it was. Next we did some vocal warm ups then we sang the song. We also had fun doing actions to the song and because we did them in a set pattern this made it easier for us to identify the beat pattern.

Enterprise

We have been making posters and setting out rules for our Christmas enterprise at the school fayre tomorrow. We are working with P4b to raise money using fun games. We had to learn the rules for the three games and decide how much to charge. We also have been learning about giving change as we might need to do that!

HWB

This week with Mrs McKenzie we were learning about what to do if we get hurt or if someone else is hurt. We discussed who could help us and what the number 999 is used for. Lots of us thought it was just for the police so it’s good that we now know if ever we need to call an ambulance or the fire-brigade that’s a number we can use.

Have a great weekend!