P5b have been very busy this week.

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.

In numeracy this week we have been learning about rounding.  Rounding means making a number simpler but keeping its value close to what it was. The result is less accurate, but easier to use. Example: 73 rounded to the nearest ten is 70, because 73 is closer to 70 than to 80.  We also played a fun game to improve our times tables mental recall.

We have been using different strategies to help us learn our spelling words and playing games to help us remember them.

We completed our rainforest explorer stories, making sure they all make sense and include thoughts and feelings as well as VCOP.  We have also learned about similes and metaphors and created some of our own!

We have been learning more about animals of the rainforest and how they adapt to their surroundings.  This is called adaptation.

During Health and Wellbeing lessons we have been discussing the fact that we all go into the learning pit and we know strategies we can use to get ourselves back out again.

We have been enjoying our French lessons where we have been revising numbers, colours and greetings.

Au Revoir,

Mrs Knowles and P7b

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 have been working hard this week learning lots of different skills.

James T – I like comprehension, I got to challenge myself.

Breanna – I enjoyed outdoor p.e. I got to play with friends.

Grace – I enjoyed maths this week as I love addition and showing my strategies.

Baillie – I enjoyed Comprehension.

Isla – I enjoyed doing the art stuff for our new school library – our wall is about Michael Morpurgo.

Rachael -I enjoyed art with Mrs Thomson and we drew a new picture for our windmill.

Daniel – I enjoyed P.E. it was fun playing castles.

Demi – I enjoyed using similes in my poem.

Alfie – I enjoyed writing as I was using different strategies.

Lucy – I liked learning the violin.

Eva – I enjoyed art.

Olivia – I enjoyed finishing off my story.  I wrote about the different layers of the rainforest.

Karys – I enjoyed maths as I discovered I am ready to be challenged more.

Reece – I enjoyed helping others at Reflection time.

We all loved the Mac Millan Coffee Morning especially the slimey putty which we bought!

Another great week!

Literacy

We have been learning about contractions. First we looked at the root word of contraction to help us figure out what a contraction might be. We then played a fun game with pieces of paper that expanded and contracted to help us understand. Here are some pictures of our activities…

We continue to develop our ability to use a writing planner to help us structure our writing. This week we had to make notes in our planner to help us structure a newspaper article. We also had great fun making up newspaper headlines about the death of Lord Darnley. Here are some of the ones we came up with….

Maisie- Suspicious Death of Darnley

Ellis- Darnley’s Mysterious Death

Luke- Murder or No Murder?

Cameron- Darnley’s Suspicious Death

Callum- Explosion Kills Darnley

Niamh- Darnley’s Mystery Death

Zara- Mary Queen of Scots ….Suspect!

Maths

Once again there’s been lots of hard work this week. We continue to work hard to improve our mental agility. We have been practicing our tables using an online multiplication game which makes learning fun! We have been learning to convert analogue time into digital time. Here’s a picture of the result….

HWB

Continuing on the theme of friendship from last week we made our own little friendship balloon to decorate our classroom door. We are all able to discuss what a good friend does and how a good friend makes us feel. Here is a picture of our door….

P.E

In P.E. this week we were learning about the importance of teamwork. We played the game of castles to help us learn to work together to defend our castle.

Last week we had fun celebrating inspirational maths week.  Each day we watched inspiring videos to promote a growth mind set in numeracy and maths.  Key messages included; don’t give up, believe in yourself, speed is not important and mistakes help us learn.  We learned that our brain grows every time we make a mistake and learn from it!

We were reminded that maths is all around us and completed a maths trail in our front playground.  A maths trail is an organised walk through an area where pupils can experience maths in the real world. A trail helps to highlight the huge use we make of number in our everyday life and how maths surrounds us in even the most unusual areas.  We were asked to measure distances within the playground, solve calculations regarding the number of cars in the car park and recognise patterns within the garden etc.  We then created our own maths trail for our P1 buddies to support their learning in numeracy.

P7b

Kyle – We went into the zoo bus and we saw fake animals. We got to feel the different furs of the animals.

Akasha – I liked watching the video and also I liked the wildcat. I liked the video of how they were feeding themselves, grooming themselves and washing themselves. They were also eating branches.

Sarah – We got to feel skulls and the best thing about it was we were talking about beavers and wildcats. It was amazing and I loved it.

Hollie – The animals were so cute and the best thing about it was how sad it was when they told us some animals were extinct or endangered. I thought it was really good though.

Elena – My favourite part was feeling the teeth and also the beaver’s fur was so fluffy.

Rosie – The beaver’s fur was very nice, but I didn’t like it when they poked out the eyeballs.

Daniel – We got to find out if they were meat-eaters, plant-eaters, or both.

Archie – I liked when we were learning about the omnivores, herbivores and carnivores.

This was inspirational maths week and we investigated colour and patterns. We were given the challenge to build as many 3 block towers as possible with three different colours. We found it quite tricky to begin with but then we got really good. We built the towers in different shapes too. We could have six combinations if we stacked them one above the other. We then had to do the same with four colours. We guessed how many combinations we could have but when we started making and recording the combinations, we found there were a lot more! Can you work out how many combinations there would be?

In Literacy and LAC, we were writing about what problems we have in our community. We found three problems; littering, broken glass and dog poo being left around. We decided that we could only tackle one problem safely and that was littering. We wrote about the problem and how we could solve it and who could help us.

In science, we investigated the absorbency of material and found that not everything is absorbent. Some things are more absorbent than others. We made artificial snow! This was the most absorbent thing we looked at.

Enjoy your long weekend!