We have been continuing to learn about the Victorians, and this week we focused on Thomas Barnardo, who helped thousands of homeless Victorian children. We wrote fact files and drew a portrait of him. In Numeracy, we are continuing to work on 24 hour time and angles. We also had another Jazzamatazz session which we really enjoyed!
Some other highlights:
Hannah – I’m enjoying drawing landscapes in Art.
Ranna – I won the Burns’ Poetry Competition!
Connor – I really enjoyed Mental Maths this week.
Kiara – I liked learning about Victorian children this week.
Suvi – We almost finished learning the Dashing White Sergeant in P.E and I am really enjoying it.
Lauren – I really like doing problem solving with my learning partner Kiara!
Snow Spelling – P5B took advantage of the snow on Tuesday and wrote our spelling words in it, which was fun.
We’re off to a flying start with our Victorians context for learning. As part of that learning, we are doing a book study on the ‘Chimney Child – A Victorian Story’ by Laurie Sheehan and we’re hooked on it. If you can, ask your child what the big twist in the story has been so far. The story has generated lots of quality discussions and comparisons of past and present living. We are developing reading skills such as prediction, characterisation and summarising key events. Next week, we are going to do role play activities based on the book.
We have also been looking at a timeline of the Victorian period and discussion all the acts that were passed and inventions. We have researched the life of Queen Victoria and begun writing a biography of her life.
We have also been practising for our assembly and looking forward to seeing you next Thursday.
In Maths, we are learning to tell the time, which is going well. The children have worked well with their learning partners during warm up activities, with the clocks. We have finally nailed division!! It’s a really hard concept to understand but everyone has worked really hard to master it and we know that if we are finding something hard or challenging it means we are learning!!
Well done to everyone who recited a poem. Lots of children were nervous but it didn’t show. Well done to Katie, Rose, Emily, Luke and Emma who were our class finalists. Katie, Rose and Emily will take part in the Burns poetry competition on Monday. Good luck!
We have been learning lots of new things in our first couple of weeks back at school. In Numeracy we are learning about Time and have been using clocks to test our learning partners. We started our new topic, Vile Victorians, and have really enjoyed learning about Queen Victoria – in pairs we made photo albums of her life. Here are some other highlights!
Mia – I really like Scottish Country dancing in P.E.
Alex – I liked Science this week because we got to make cakes!
William – I really like the Mental Maths lessons this week,
Alfie – I liked playing in the snow!
Kiara – I really liked my violin lesson this week because we got to use the bow for the first time!
Teighan – I have enjoyed everything this week!
Suvi – I liked finding out about Queen Victoria and writing a biography about her.
Although it hasn’t even been a week, we have hit the ground running with our learning!
We are trying something new in the classroom to support and develop our learning. We have ‘learning partners’. This is someone we will sit beside all week (picked randomly using lolly sticks) and discuss our learning with. This will change every Monday. On a Friday we will say ‘goodbye’ to our talking partner for that week and say something positive about having them as a talking partner. It’s been a great success so far (although makes the class a bit noisier – but it’s good noise)!
We have started our new LAC which is Victorians and will have our trip to New Lanark (date tbc).
It’s that time of year again when poems are given out to learn for our Scots Poetry Competition. The poems chosen are; Crocodile by J K Annand, Heron by J K Annand and The Ballad of Janitor MacKay by Margaret Green.
We are finishing of our science and continuing to investigate States of Matter. Today we investigated water changing from a solid to a liquid (ie ice melting to water) and we investigated temperatures and how we could get our ice to melt faster.
We had ‘exit passes’ (another new thing – everyone has to write what they’ve learned on a piece of paper to hand to the CT before going for break)! Here is some of our learning…
I have learned that ice can melt faster by putting it on a warm radiator and lots of other ways.
That water needs to be heated to 100 degrees centigrade to evaporate.
If you hold ice to long it hurts!
I learned that water turns into ice when the temperature is below zero degrees centigrade.
I learned that jelly is both a liquid and a solid! (we got a bit side-tracked)
I learned that when you melt ice on a radiator it will create a beautiful pattern on the inside!
I learned that ice melts faster if you put it in warm water.
Here are some photos of us carrying out our investigations…
We have had a great last week of term and now we can’t wait till Christmas! On Monday we used shaving foam, scrabble letters, playdo and whiteboards to practice our spelling words. We also made Christmas cards and decorated Christmas baubles to hang on our trees at home. Here are some other highlights from this week:
Campbell – I loved the Pantomine!
Teighan – I’m sad to go home but I have had a really fun week!
Hannah – I loved using the shaving foam to practice Christmas spelling words.
Lauren – I liked watching Hook!
Amy – I enjoyed decorating the Christmas tree baubles
Miles – I liked making the Christmas cards with paint and cotton balls.
Suvi – I loved the Winter Craft Club!
Kiara – I liked giving everyone leaving hugs today 🙂
(Thank you for all of the lovely and thoughtful gifts. I hope you all have a lovely Christmas and New Year! – Miss Carrera)
We have been learning about Fairtrade in our Caribbean topic and have enjoyed reading about how Fairtrade helps farmers. We have been continuing to learn about adding and subtracting decimals in numeracy. Here are some other highlights from this week:
Connor – I enjoyed practicing addition with the Christmas mosaic worksheet.
Euan – I liked playing musical bumps at our Christmas Party.
Catriona – I loved having breakfast with Santa!
Teighan – I thought the Christmas Lunch was delicious.
Ranna – I was so happy to win Christmas socks for being the best dancer at the Christmas party.
Mia – I liked helping at breakfast with Santa and I also really enjoyed P.E. this week.
Suvi – I liked making up a dance with Kiara at the Christmas Party.
Amy – I have enjoyed practicing carol singing for carolling at Morrisons on Monday.
Miles – I really liked playing team games at P.E. this week.
We had the best time at Rookie Rockstars and really enjoyed performing in front of our families. In literacy last week we wrote a personal piece about Winter and this week we made pamphlets advertising a Caribbean holiday. We have also loved reading in our animal themed class library. We are continuing to learn about the Caribbean and have been focusing on the coral reefs and the damage being done to them. We made posters with information about how to help save the coral reefs. In numeracy we have been learning about co-ordinates, decimals and multiplication with large numbers. Thank you to the parents who came in for PATPALS last week – we really enjoyed showing you all of the different activities we do for numeracy (some of us especially enjoyed eating all of the Cheerios we were supposed to use for making arrays!).
Thank you to the families who came to see our assembly. Enjoy the weekend!
We have had a really busy and active week in P5a. On Monday we got a chance to try out Judo and we all loved it! We also went to the Handball Festival and we really enjoyed meeting and playing against other schools. After this we got to dress up in our Halloween costumes and we learned about the history of Halloween. We are also continuing to learn about our new topic, Caribbean Island, where we have been looking at the key features of a map. In Numeracy we have been learning about perimeter. We used straws to create our own shapes and then calculated the perimeter of them. Have a look at our pictures to see what we got up to.
This week in numeracy we have been focusing on the properties of 3D shapes and multiplication. We learned the correct terminology for the properties of 3D shapes and we worked in pairs to solve multiplication challenges. We also really enjoyed RME with Mrs Spence, where we discussed our opinions on our moral code today compared to the 10 commandments in Moses’ time. For literacy we collected leaves and wrote an acrostic poem all about Autumn. We have also started learning Futsal which we really enjoyed.
Thank you to all the parents who came to the class this morning for PATPALS.
We have learned about the Ragman’s Roll in Freedom! and have started to make our own Ragman’s Rolls in Art & Design.
In numeracy we have been learning place value to 1,000,000’s and multiplying 2, 3 and 4 digit numbers by 1 digit. The Whizz Kids are multiplying 4 digit numbers by multiples of 10’s, 100’s and 1000’s.
We wrote thank you letters to the Zoo Bus who came to visit us last week to talk to us about Endangered Species in Scotland.
In grammar we were learning about pronouns and writing in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person.
P5 have been creating a display about the author David Walliams for the library.
A very well done to Jaime-Lee who came first and received a gold medal in Rhythmic Gymnastics at a competition in Edinburgh.
We have had another great week in P5a. We really enjoyed painting this week with Mrs Thomson and RME with Mrs Spence. In numeracy we have been trying to beat our score in Big Maths Beat That, as well as building 3D shapes using sticks and card – have a look at our pictures to see what we made! We also had fun drawing David Walliams’ book covers and doing research on him for our library display. Finally, for drama we read the Twits and worked in groups to create a short performance as Mr and Mrs Twit and we loved performing this in front of the class.
We also had a lovely time at the Macmillan Coffee Morning and want to say thank you to everyone who helped organise it.
We’ve thoroughly enjoyed taking part in Inspirational Maths Week. We started the week off by reinforcing the key message – everyone can do well in Maths. This message builds on our growth mind set about Maths.
We revised rounding numbers to the nearest 10, 100 or 1000. There were ‘mild’, ‘spicy’, ‘hot’ and ‘extra hot’ activities. Mrs Laidlaw was impressed by the number of children willing to challenge themselves. They were all successful learners so should feel proud of their achievements.
We know that when children think about Maths visually as well as with numbers and symbols they are crossing the brain, using different pathways. That has been found to increase the power of Maths learning. We enjoyed investigating a really interesting representation of numbers; to think visually about them and to explore patterns in numbers.
We watched a short video about how maths is not about speed. This was a good message to the class…it is not about who gets their work done fastest, but about understanding it!
We then did a paper folding activity. Children were given a square of paper and fold it into different shapes. They then had to convince a sceptic that their new shape was what the said it was. Eg they were asked to make a square ¼ the size of the original square and then convince a friend that it was in fact a square that was a ¼ of the original square. Some of the arguments were:
It has four equal sides.
It has four corners.
It has 4 right angles.
The ¼ square fits into the original square exactly 4 times.
We finished with a dot activity which demonstrated that we all work things out in different ways!
The next Inspirational maths activity was about finding patterns in maths! We watched a clip about Fibonacci’s sequence which creates a spiral and spirals can be found in nature.
We then explored Pascal’s triangle by finding the different numbers, adding the rows and colouring the odd numbers to see patterns. This was challenging but very interesting.
It has been great to look in maths in a different and interesting way. It has challenged the class and the children have learned a lot.
Here we are hard at work figuring out Pascal’s triangle!
Last week we had the best time at Low Port and we have some things we want to share with you!
Alex I really enjoyed canoeing!
Liam I loved getting muddy at Beecraigs!
Euan I enjoyed having my birthday at Lowport
Suvi My favourite parts were the rain and canoeing.
Ranna When I had to put mud on my face I was absolutely devastated!!
Lucas My favourite part was going to Beecraigs and building the little houses
Kiara I enjoyed going to the Loch because we got to jump in puddles and get soaking!
Lauren I had fun canoeing
Campbell I loved the canoeing because we got to have a water fight
Catriona I liked jumping in the water
Murray I liked playing hide and seek when we did the Loch Walk
Miles I liked going to the chippy
Megan I liked getting Kelly’s ice cream when we went on the Loch walk
Joshua I liked going swimming
Amy I fell into the canal but it was fun!
Connor I had lots of fun soaking Teighan and Hannah on the canoes
Mia I really enjoyed sleeping after a busy, fun day
Here are some pictures!
Thank you to Mrs Aitkin and all other staff who made our time at Low Port “legendary” (Murray)
This week we really enjoyed continuing a story called The Tunnel using drama and instruments. Ranna I liked having the star role of Captain Hook!
Jess and Alfie made an excellent spelling game called Spelling Snakes for the class to play.
We really liked Art with Mrs Thomson when we got to draw lots of different shapes and use paint.
We played a game in maths called Splat which was really fun and exciting.
Lastly we got to tell spooky stories before writing our own stories called the Haunted House. We are really looking forward to Halloween now! Robert I really Kiara’s spooky story.
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