This week we have been learning more about animals and extinction. Did you know that the Passenger Pigeon was the most common species of bird in the world? Unfortunately people liked to hunt these birds and their numbers very quickly dropped. The last bird of this species died on September 1st, 1914 (her name was Martha). This species is the only species that we know the exact date and time it became extinct (1pm to be precise).

On Wednesday we had an important visit from Education Scotland and the Scottish Government. They came to observe how we are using iPads (and other ICT equipment) to support our learning. During this visit we learned about Ospreys in Scotland. In 1916 ospreys were extinct in Scotland. Since then there have been laws passed to protect ospreys, and to try and encourage them to return to Scotland. We were very pleased to learn that humans can use positive actions to promote conservation and to prevent extinction.

There are a few webcams that show nesting sites of Scottish Osprey – although the ospreys will not be back until the end of April.

Miss Anderson, Miss Walker and P5a 😀

What a quick week this has been!

We are developing our skill with coordinates and played games of finding characters from ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ on our ‘map’.

We looked at part of a story from ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ and then tried to change it into a script. Mrs. Ghafoor was impressed by how quickly we understood how to do this!

We are ‘attacking’ our project from two angles! We are looking at people in the 16th century and focussing on writing a biography for Mary Queen of Scots. We get to write a biography about a person of our own choice once Mrs. Ghafoor shows us how to do it. This week we completed the front covers for our biographies and next week we will be highlighting important information so that we can write about our Famous Scot.

We also learned that before the Chinese New Year, the Chinese hold FIFTEEN  days of festivities finishing with preparation of the ‘Lantern Festival’.

This Sunday is the beginning of the ‘ Year of the Snake’, sooo

Gung Hei Fat Choi!

This week we finished our topic on the senses with us looking at smell and touch.  The children were eager to carry out our experiments on smell!  There were lots of ideas about all the things we were smelling, but as we could not use our sense of taste some of the smells were really hard to guess.  We all loved this topic and are a bit sad that it’s over, but we are really looking forward to our castle topic.  We have been writing all the things we know about castle and giving Ms Gavin some ideas of what we want included in our learning.

In maths we were learning about number lines and how to use them to help us add and subtract.  We made some really nice number lines and we’ve got frogs to help us jump up and down to find the right answers. 

Pupil of the week is Tobin Witt for his wonderful sentences using nouns, verbs and adjectives.  Tobin’s sentences included … ‘The orange door swan.  The green book played.  The brown mat danced.’ Well done Tobin!

Well done P2pg.

This week we commenced our new topic ‘Treasure Island’.  Throughout this topic we will learn about pirates and complete related activities.  On Wednesday we made our own treasure maps!  We made them look really old by dabbing them with tea bags and leaving them to dry.  The following day we added images and symbols to our maps.  Kayleigh enjoyed this activity very much and everyone is pleased with their efforts.

We also made parrots to dislay in our classroom.  Keira had fun sticking on real feathers to her parrot image.

Have a lovely long weekend,

P1b

This week we were learning about rich and poor Victorian Houses with Miss Clark.  We enjoyed an interactive CD ROM which helped us to see what Queen Victoria’s house looked like.  We also watched a video that showed us what a workhouse looked like.  People went to the workhouse when they were really poor and had nowhere else to live.

This week Mrs MacKenzie also handed out our Victorian Class Talk Projects.  We have to research important Victorian inventions using iPads, computers and books.  We are looking forward to sharing what we have learned.

We have also started to bring clothes and props into school to use in our Assembly about rich and poor Victorian children.  We can’t wait to show our Assembly to our families and the whole school.

Who’s raving about reading this week?

Flyn and Adam were enjoying reading a book about Dinosaurs.  They were able to tell us some fascinating facts about Velocisaurus and Velociraptors.  Flyn also wrote his own story about dinosaurs.  Well done boys!

From the Blog Post Box

The area I’ve made the biggest improvement in this week is…

“…Judo as I have learned to flip someone over my shoulder correctly.”               Lauren K

“…getting up early.”           Kai

“…learning more about the Victorians.”              Lauren U

“… I got better at Maths this week.”         William

A mysterious chest has appeared in p7b. It is believed to have been found in the deepest part of the Amazon River. Only the bravest, most hardworking and resillient pupil will be able to complete all ten challenges and open the chest…

Lyndsay: “I enjoyed the Twinoo challenge on the Ipad and I’m getting really good at it!”

Murray: “I’m enjoying writing the 250 word essay because it’s challenging.”

Connor: “Reward 8 was really tough at first but got easier as I practised.”

Ali: “I’m enjoying doing the task book from River Reward 5 because of all the different puzzles in it.”

Jack: “I’m having to work hard for the Twinoo challenge. It’s tough to keep going but if you give up then you’ll never get there!”

Billie: “I enjoyed writing the Lost story because I made it very exciting.”

Kyle: “I’m enjoying the writing task because it is challenging.”

Adam: “I like the whole idea of doing the Amazon Challenge because it’s cool and really challenges you.”

Aqsa: “The Amazon Challenge is really addictive because you don’t want to stop until you’ve completed every part!”

We have now finished out Katie Morag topic. Our highlitghts have been:

– Transforming our role play area into a Post Office (Emma)

– Making a huge collage of the Isle of Struay to display on the wall (Grace)

– Learning to write postcards for delivery (Robbie)

Just a reminder that our Katie Morag assembly will be this Friday at 9.45am.

Lastly, we have collated ideas on how to transform our classroom into a Pirate theme  for our new topic which is Treasure Island. We are very excited about it! Have a look at the photo to see our spider diagram of ideas!

P1g

Natalie and Jennifer had exciting news to share with us this week.

On Wednesday 29^th January David Carry, a famous swimmer visited Swim West Lothian Masters. David Carry is a double Commonwealth gold medallist and Olympic finalist.  His best event is the 400m freestyle.  He showed us some front crawl technique.  He also asked us what we think about when we swim.  Afterwards he showed us more technique, it really helped!  We also got his autograph and picture.

All of the swimmers including us had a fantastic time with David Carry.

Our sports electives start in a few weeks, maybe in the future a class will be writing about one of us!

This week we have had fun in maths with our giant coordiantes floor grid. We learnt about coordinates and played connect four!

We have painted fireworks in the footsteps of Georges Seurat. Your eyes blend the primary colours and this is called pointilism.

We also wrote a poem about shortbread using our senses, but  only after tickling our taste buds with shortbread.