In our topic work this week we learned how a lighthouse works and we designed and then made wonderful lighthouses for our class display.

In drama we made dragons we made castles to use in our work.

In P.E this week we learned how to play Chaos Tig and did different kinds of class races.

We have been busy practising our handwriting and we are improving on our presentation and writing using capital letters and full stops.

Well done to everyone who attained a certificate at Celebrating Success yesterday-you are all stars

Achievements this week

Brooke got a Celebrating Success award for effort

Jamie has been very helpful at home

Farrah has moved up to level 5 in swimming

Sophie is now on level 5 in swimming

Ruby has been a super helper at home

Charlie got a Karate medal

Erin moved up a level in swimming

Maisie and Tamsyn won golf medals, gaining second and third place

Shared start for P2 is on Wednesday 18th May-we hope to see you in our class

P5a Blog Entry – 13.5.16

English and Literacy

This week in English we were focussing on note-taking. We had to read a passage in pairs and then make notes under subheadings and did very well with this task! We now know that notes are used to record information quickly and use key words, rather than full sentences.

We then applied our knowledge of note-taking when we began to create a fact file of our own new species of animal. We selected appropriate subheadings: habitat, diet, description, and then took notes under these headings. These notes helped us when we began to design a leaflet on our new animal and had to write out our notes in sentences.

We are really enjoying the book that we are reading together in class: ‘Rat Burger’ by David Walliams. We get through about a chapter per day and love to make predictions about what might happen next in the story! We are also developing our summarising skills when Miss Brown asks us to explain what has happened in the story so far!

Pupil comments:

Alanna – I liked making the leaflets and drawing our new species on the front of the leaflet.

Ty – I am enjoying our class book, it’s full of suspense!

Maths and Numeracy

This week we have been making connections between our previous learning of fractions and our new topic of percentages. We now know that the whole amount of anything is recognised as 100%. We have been looking at equivalent percentages and working out fraction, percentage and decimal conversions.   Next week we will move onto finding the percentage of an amount using various strategies.

Pupil comments:

Sophie – I didn’t realise how many things used percentages, like in shops and when downloading music. It has been fun to learn about percentages!

Tom – I found maths quite tricky this week but I think it will get easier as I learn more.

LATC Topic

We have been continuing with our topic ‘What a wonderful world.’ This week we have been learning about food chains! We have been classifying animals into different groups: carnivores, herbivores and omnivores, and working out what animals eat and if this makes them predators or prey.

We have also been following the progress of our caterpillars which have now turned into chrysalids! We have moved them into a netted enclosure so that they can continue to grow and eventually turn into butterflies. We have found this process very exciting to monitor each day!

Pupil Comments:

Lucy – I didn’t know how caterpillars made their chrysalid themselves and enjoyed watching this happen.

Zoe – I found it interesting to learn about food chains and what animals eat other animals!

Have a great weekend everyone!

On Monday we had a tobacco workshop where we learned about the risks of smoking.

Here are some facts we learned:

• there are over 4000 chemicals in one cigarette.
• cigarettes are addictive.
• One of the main substances inside a cigarette is tar- the same tar found on the road!
• Smoking turns your lungs black and can cause lung cancer.
• If you smoke, your lungs will get filled with tar.
• If you buy a 20 pack of cigarettes every day, it would cost approximately £2920.
• If you get a lung infection, it can feel like you are drowning as your lungs are filled with phlegm.
• If a woman smokes when she is pregnant, it can damage the baby.
• Second hand smoking is called passive smoking and can be very dangerous.

Our job for next our next workshop is to give up something we enjoy for one week and to research harmful chemicals found in a cigarette.

This week we have been learning about the EU referendum.  This is a vote which will take place on the 23^rd of June 2016 to decide whether Britain stays part of Europe.  We have been researching the pros and cons on being in the EU and have made posters to display this information.  For writing we also wrote debate speeches to persuade others to vote a certain way.

Here are some advantages of being in the EU:

• Britain is stronger together- if there is a future war, we will have support from other EU counties.
• We have good trade links and are able to easily buy and sell products from other EU countries. If we left, businesses would have to pay tax to do this.
• We share police information with other EU countries that can make Britain safer.

Here are some disadvantages:

• Britain pays 118 billion pounds annually to be part of the EU.
• We don’t have full control over our own laws/legislation.
• Currently we are not able to secure our own trade links.

From P7b

Article 28- Right to an Educations

Article 24- Right to health care and information to help you stay well

Article 12- Right to have an opinion and be listened to.

This week has been very busy in P6b.  In writing we created our own poems about space. We did this by working cooperatively in groups to come up with ideas.  Our poems included rhyming words, similes, personification and adjectives.

In maths this week we have been working on algebra by solving equations and learning how to use number machines.  We also challenged ourselves during maths stations by simplifying equations.

In French this week we created our own PowerPoint including how we say our name, age and where we live.

We celebrated success in P6b by singing “Sit up and learn with me”- we really enjoyed this.

We completed our space mission posters and presented them back to the class.

Some pupils from P6b took part in the cross country event this week and did extremely well by winning the following;

Polina- Bronze and silver medal

Ryrie- Bronze medal

Kari- Silver medal

Aidan- Bronze medal

Reiss- Bronze medal

Jack- Bronze medal

Meg- Silver medal

Iona- Two silver medals

Well done P6b!!

A reminder that our trip is on Tuesday 17th May to the National Museum of Scotland.

We hope you have a lovely weekend!

This week in P3

English: we have completed reading routes practiced our spelling and written posters on different types of farms after doing research in groups.

Hayley: I like doing rainbow words and using different colours.

Hope: I liked doing spelling words on the I-pad

Louie: I liked learning about pastoral process it is a farm with animals.

Lucy: I liked doing spelling on the I-pad

Jaime –Lee: I liked building the words in Lego.

Maths: this week we have looked at division by 10, 5, 3 and 4! We used strategies we learned to do one sum and then applied it to others.

Guy: I like doing division because when I was doing division by 5 and 10 it was hard at the start then it got easier and easier.

Elliot: I like playing maths game, I liked the division in the desert board game.

Nathan: I liked division because it is fun.

Maisey: The last few weeks of doing division because it has helped me learn more.

Skye: I liked finishing off my sums yesterday and today.

Hope: I enjoyed dividing by 4 because it’s a little bit tricky.

LAC:

Lucy and Skye: I liked making jam

Guy: I liked making the jam because Camaron and I got to wash the jars.

Callum: Outdoor PE was fun, my favourite was long distance running.

Aryan: I liked outdoor PE because I liked doing the triple jump.

Katie: I liked filming the video it was funny.

Louie: I liked learning the body parts in French.

Jay: I liked doing outdoor PE because I liked to do a hop, skip and jump.

Rose: I liked doing outdoor PE and I enjoyed athletics.

Isaac: I liked doing long distance running it’s really fun.

Elliot: I liked learning brand new French words of the body.

Nathan: I really like outdoor PE because I like doing athletics

Hayley: I liked doing sprinting and hop, skip and jump in outdoor PE.

Mr Cunningham would also like to add how proud he was of the class for their fantastic performance during celebrating success, and a big well done to the four winners, Katie Armstrong, Jaime- Lee Martin, Camaron Wood and Maisey McAlister.

P7 took a 3 hour trip to Oban with no wifi for 4 days but no wifi was worth it. P7 done 6 activities, we were split into four different groups and there was a lot of teamwork involved and the activities were coasteering, climbing and abseiling, canoeing and bush craft and gorge walking  and archery p.s gorge walking was super duper cold.

We just started looking at the Scottish election and we learned about all the different parties. SNP won in our constituency. We also learned about manifestos and we read the manifestos of Scotland’s main political parties. we wrote our own manifestos detailing the changes we would like to make in Scotland.

We have also been learning about debating and have held some class debates on interesting issues. Next week we are going to be learning about the EU referendum and write a speech to read during our class debate.

In writing we have been learning how to edit and re-draft our writing. We had a challenge to write a mini-saga. We had to write a short story with a beginning, middle and end. We then had to use our editing skills to cut our story down to only fifty words. The story still had to make sense and we had to check our spelling and grammar. We found it quite challenging.

See you next week!

Jamie and Sam

We have been busy bees learning about sharing and grouping in our division work.  We look forward to learning about fractions next week.

We had a fantastic time at the P2 show and we have been busy watching the DVD of Tadpole Rag-We were BRILLIANT actors, actresses and singers.

We have been busy learning about The Lighthouse Keepers Lunch and we made super puppets of Mr and Mrs Grinling, seagulls and Hamish the cat.

In PE with Mr Jeffries we have been learning how to play Shadow Tig, we think it is really fun.

Achievements this week

Luke is Swimmer of the Month in his swimming club

Mia got Dancer of the Month

Charlie is starting Tae Kwon Do lessons

Cameron moved up a level to level 6 in swimming

Murray is on Soccer 4 in football

Samuel is now on level 6 in swimming

Well done to Nathan who is now on step 4

Reminder to all parent that Celebrating Success Assembly for P2,3,4 is on Thursday 12th May at 1.30pm.

English and Literacy

This week in English we were working in pairs to complete a reading comprehension on a written passage.  We had to use lots of different skills to do this, including finding evidence in the passage to back up our opinions, and using our ‘context clues’ to work out the meaning of tricky words.

We have also been working on developing our writing skills and were writing about the long weekend.  We had to remember to include capital letters, punctuation and paragraphs.  Some of us used ‘wow’ words to impress Miss Brown!

Ty – I enjoyed the reading exercise, it was really fun but tricky as well.

Lucy – Doing our writing regularly is helping me to improve!

Maths and Numeracy

In Maths this week we have been working on fractions word problems, which we found a bit tricky at first but we were beginning to understand be the end of the week.  We can now simplify basic fractions and find a fraction of a quantity.   We are still enjoying the game ‘Exterminate’ and ask to play it in every maths lesson!

On Thursday we did something exciting in maths!  We had 5 different stations and 15 minutes at each station.   There was an ICT station with a game which required us to use our division strategies, and a fractions card game to improve our speed and accuracy.  There was also a ‘Mild, spicy, Hot’ station where we got to choose the difficulty of our fractions worksheet and give ourselves a challenge!

Rhia – I’ve really enjoyed division, I think the games are helping me with this.

Lennox – I’ve really enjoyed doing fractions, especially simplifying fractions!

LATC Topic

We have found our topic very interesting this week as we have been learning all about evolution and what animal characteristics help them best to survive! We have discussed the kinds of things that can lead to an animal’s extinction, such as other competition and changing climates.  We have identified the features of animals that help them to survive, adapt and reproduce within a natural environment.

As part of this week’s topic, we really enjoyed creating our brand new species of animal!  Firstly we designed our animal, thinking carefully about how it would look like and what colour it would be.  We then labelled our new species, identifying the features we had given it that would help it to survive in its habitat.

We have also been monitoring the progress of our classroom experiments – we have been growing runner beans and recording our observations.  We are always very excited to see how they are growing every morning!  Our other experiment has been watching our tiny caterpillars get bigger and bigger.  We are looking forward to them changing into chrysalis’ and eventually butterflies!

Abbie – I really enjoyed creating our species this week and combing different features of animals.

Lucie – I have learned about evolution and how animals can become extinct.

Have a great weekend everyone!

On Wednesay we had a visitor called Jenny who visited P7 to discuss our transition to high school.  During this, we recorded how we can celebrate leaving primary school and what we are excited about.  We also talked about our worries regarding high school and suggested solutions to solve/deal with these issues.  Lastly we rated ourself on a scale of 0-10  to show how confident  we feel about changing schools and we will refer back to this in our next session

We have started to prepare for our class assembly which will take place on the 20th of May.  We shared our ideas and have begun to rewrite a famous song in our own words.  Practises will continue next week.

This week we learned that democracy means ‘ruled by the people’.  Therefore, everyone has a say and the prime minister cannot become a dictator.  We had a look at how the Scottish election system works and identified the main parties.  We also learned that a manifesto is a set of promises that a candidate promises to carry out if they win an election.