P4 have been very busy learning all about the Learning Pit. The Learning Pit is a process that you go through when you are learning. We made our own mini pits and discussed how we were feeling on the way down to the bottom of ‘the pit’ then strategies we could use to help us learn and climb out of ‘the pit’.

We will be using these strategies every day in class when we are stuck with our learning.

“The Learning Pit is when you can struggle when you are learning and it makes you feel bad. The Pit helps you learn more and gives you ways to keep going.”  Josh P4

The Learning Pit helps you use strategies to help you get out of the Pit. I feel happy at the top.”   Brooke P4

P4 have been very busy learning all about learning!

First of all we learnt all about how the brain works and how to keep it healthy. Then we focussed on growth and fixed mindsets. A fixed mindset is where you think you can’t do something and give up easily or where you think you are the best you can be and stop trying. A growth mindset is where you keep trying and continually keep learning and building upon your skills and knowledge. It’s where you can’t do something….YET!

We watched this video clip about the Hare and the Tortoise

This week has been mistakes week. We have been learning about the importance of learning from our mistakes. ‘It’s ok not to know but it’s not ok not to try.’ We have a marvellous mistakes wall that we add to to show any mistakes we make and what we learnt from them.

Watch this space to hear all about the learning pit in the next couple of weeks.

Brooke really enjoyed learning about our growth and fixed mind set. She likes that a growth mind set is one where you keep on trying and don’t give in. Logan enjoyed trying out his HTU subtracting work and really wants to get better at it. Zoe enjoyed group work for enterprise because she liked organising the list of things that the group are planning on doing for advertising our Christmas venture. Laura liked letting her imagination go when deciding what to do in the crafts group for enterprise- lots of great ideas! All of the groups liked talking together and making decisions about what we are going to be doing. Some of us have started sewing and Alexander really liked this as he didn’t know how to sew. He thinks that it’s not that tricky now. Mrs Balfour is loving the positive attitude in P4.

Exploding and twirling fireworks glowing through the star filled sky.
Flashing multi-coloured rockets shooting up to the glistening, magnificent and sparkling sky.
Thundering and flashing Catherine wheels exploding all over the place while I eat my spicy and chilli hot dog and some hot chocolate- yummy!
Shooting stars shining in the bright light and the sparklers are sparkling and sparks coming off them and magnificent and beautiful fireworks.
Bonfire night.

By Samantha

Flashing fireworks with spectacular colourful colours,
Deafening rockets shooting with multi-coloured sparks,
Sparkling sparklers making mind blowing noises,
Flaming hot dogs and delicious bonfire food,
Whizzing Catherine wheels exploding everywhere
– Bonfire night.

By Brooke

Everyone enjoyed visiting the C.D.T. department at James Young High School on Thursday 26^th February. We learned about the different types of saw- circular saw, jigsaw, band saw. We also learned about how a pillar drill and a belt sander worked. There are lots of different types of wood that you can work with- lime, oak, spruce, birch and pine. You can also work with M.D.F. which stands for medium density fibreboard. This isn’t wood but it is made from sawdust and other things and is mixed and glued together- a bit like mixing tablet. Thanks to Mr MacMillan and Mr Leishman for letting us have a look around the department. We were very lucky to get a souvenir from our visit. We actually watched the laser cutter cut out dinosaurs from a sheet of plastic and were lucky enough to get one each. Thank you very much. We are now looking forward to designing and making our model Viking boats.

Gabriel is enjoying working on drawing his Viking ship. “It is quite tricky to do,” he said. We had to follow instructions carefully. This week Armand has been learning to multiply a two digit number by a single digit. He thought that it was quite tricky and so did Ailsa and Xander. We are working on getting better at these. Emma P enjoyed reading for information to find out about Viking boats. Gerald the dog quite liked that too!!!! (Eric’s pet dog mascot!) We have been doing a writing assessment this week and Jade enjoyed it!! We are working hard to improve our writing by adding in more openers and connectives- tricky stuff but we are doing a good job. Alfie enjoyed his handwriting and we are all getting much neater with the presentation of our work. Mrs Balfour is impressed! Nearly everybody has started on their points homework. We are looking forward to having parents in some time in March to see all our our hard work on the Vikings.

Alfie enjoyed taking part in gymnastics in PE this week. The girls and boys from Miss Henderson’s maths class have enjoyed learning about the 6x tables! We have had fun learning about how to measure with a ruler in maths. Katie enjoyed writing about her Viking travels! We made some blop pictures in French this week as well. Mitchell had fun making the Chinese dragons and hearing a song in Chinese. We have made some fantastic Viking jewellery at the start of the week – it got very messy! We also enjoyed our taster session of handball on Tuesday! Gabriel has enjoyed improving his handwriting this week.

We have just started our Vikings topic and P4 enjoyed working on developing mapping skills last week. We used our atlases and marked the countries that the Vikings came from on a map; Armand really enjoyed this work. Did you know that Denmark, Sweden and Norway are Scandinavian countries? Another Viking favourite this week was researching the different types of jewellery that they wore and finding out about the different types of materials used to make them. Ailsa brought in a model of a Viking boat and that is now forming part of our display.

In maths, we have been working on the 6xtable. Xander says that the 6X table song has really helped him to learn it. It’s very catchy!!! 5xtable song, here we come!!!!