This week we have been finding out about showed what we learned in group presentations in different ways: powerpoint, TV programme/ game show, fact file, model, poster and painting. Through these different things we found out about different Jewish festivals, Shabbat, synagogues, Jewish homes and the Torah which is the Jewish holy book. Sonny said, “I thought it was quite fun doing all the different ways to show what we’ve learned.” Nathan said, “It was easier working in a group because you can get lots more information.” Joshua enjoyed his role in the game show and the rest of the class particularly enjoyed this.

Leon really enjoyed division work with Miss Kennedy. He told us that it’s important to remember that you always start with the biggest digit and that division is just like multiplication backwards. Nathan liked working with protractors in angles work. Thomas said, “It was quite hard to start with because there are two lots of numbers on the inside and the outside and you need to try to make it that you know which ones to use. It got easier after a bit.”

In reading, we have been working on summarising. Jak said, “It was quite good because we were working with different people. At the end we got to design a task on what we read. It was quite fun cos we got to see what other people wanted to do.”

In health, we have been finding out about what we need to help us have a good night’s sleep. This week we learned about the body clock. There are two hormones that we have- melatonin and cortisol. Melatonin makes us feel sleepy and cortisol wakes us up. There is blue light in the sun and that is what makes us up because the light on our eyes tells us that it’s daytime. When the light goes, the receptors in our eyes tell us that it’s time to sleep.  We are keeping a sleep diary. You shouldn’t play on your ipod, phone, tablet, tv or anything with a screen that has blue light because that tells your body that you should be awake so it makes it hard for you to sleep. Did you know that primary school children should get about 10 hours sleep every night???!!!

This week, as part of our World War 2 work, we have been making model gas masks. The key learning for this was following instructions. ‘It was really hard,’ said Joshua. Leah found the measuring for the aspirator part hard. Sarah thought that it was fun but challenging. We’ve also been working really hard on making posters to inform people about the dangers of gas. We looked at information on Glow to help us make good posters. We needed to have good colour, find out lots of information, think about headings and white space around our work and use team skills to make it as it was a group task. Jak thought that it was hard to space the work out well to make the poster look good. In our writing, we were doing a newspaper article. Jack said, “It was difficult because we had to write it in the third person and in the past tense and use the right style too!”

Well done to everyone for learning their Burns poems. Our class representatives were Hannah-Beth and Jack who performed very well. Congratulations to Jack who was chosen to represent our school at  the local level of the Burns competition in the spring.

Mystery is an exciting genre of writing.  Mysteries usually have clues and red herrings, a problem or an unexpected event, an investigation, culprits, suspects, detectives, twists or cliff-hangers to name just a few.  We have been writing mini mystery sagas with each of these features and we wanted to share them.  Katie said, “It was hard but fun.”  Kylie said, “Before we did the writing, we had to do some homework which helped.” Taylor thought, “Mystery is an exciting genre to write in because you can fool the reader.” Chloe said, “I really enjoyed trying to get people into the story.” 

 Read on for some of our ‘myterious’ writing!

“…but just as she was about to head to the movie theatre, some footprints caught her eye.”  Chloe

“Just then he found a newspaper on the ground marking the 100 year anniversary of a horrific fire that had happened at the very theatre he was in front of.”   Taylor

“Leila saw the dark silhouette and she was scared….”  Katie

 “Cautiously Tina crept over to where the scream was but was grabbed from behind and was dragged into a human sized burrow….”         Chloe

 “They ran as fast as they could but Tara was snatched by a silhouette…”                    Emily

 “As Jade took a drink of her tea, she heard a scream and a bang but, it had been an ordinary morning until then.”   Kylie

 “Leila looked over.  She didn’t see Isabella.  She heard an extremely nervous scream.  Leila was grabbed from behind.”        Elise

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Writing an investigation in a mystery needs some action to keep it interesting.  Writers use lots of techniques to do this like ,sentences of 3, adverb openings, powerful verbs, short sentences, unexpected noises and verbs at the start of sentences.

“Suddenly I screamed.”   Amber

“As he crouched, rolled and peered into the shed, he suddenly felt something on the back of his head.”  Craig

“Sam ran behind a boulder, went through a shelter and behind a crane.”   Haydn

“Worryingly, he chewed the loose skin on his thumb.”  Carrie

“Silently, he crept around the large steam engine.”  Shaun S

“Jumping over a high wall, Sam looked over at a house and saw a light flickering though, no-one was home.”  Emma

“Nervously, he sprinted to the sheds.”  Elise

“Cautiously, nervous Sam crept up to the huge shed.”  Katie

“Nervously shaking, Sam slid into a prickly bush, tucking his knees up to his chin.”   Chloe

“Cautiously he crept into one of the buildings.  Then he heard a thud behind him.”  Taylor

“Sam shivered.”  Aysha

“She stopped.”  Emily

“Sam stumbled down the hill.”  Aaron

“Sam crouched down.”   Dylan

“He ran towards his friend.”  Kylie

“He walked in.”  Shaun S

“Shivery air floated around.”   Chloe

World War II continues in P6, at least the learning about it does!

We have been finding out what evacuation meant to people during this time.  Children were sent away from cities to keep them safe from the bombing.  This sometimes meant brothers and sisters being separated and lots of children were very homesick.  We used our discussion and problem solving skills when we acted as Billeting Officers for an evacuation.  We had to match children up with new families from a village. This was much trickier than it sounds!  Erica thought it was difficult because you couldn’t always match the sisters up with the brother as some people would only take one child.

We continued as journalists this week as we continued with our newspaper reports about the outbreak of war.  We have found another use for tea leaves this week…Did you know they are great for making paper looking old?  Just what we need for our 1939 newspaper articles!

On a more serious note, Monday 27^th January is Holocaust Memorial Day and this week we used our reading time to read and discuss some diaries written by Jewish children during this time.  Chloe said, “It was upsetting to look at the diaries and hear what happened but I think it’s important that we know about it.”  Ian said that he thought “we should remember to stop history repeating itself.” 

Lots of Scottish things are also happening in school at the moment.   We are working very hard to learn our Scottish poems and in music we have been learning Tam O’Shanter.

Next week, we are going to investigate the effects of bombing during WWII and start some art work inspired by these events.  We are also going to be starting a fitness programme in PE and, we are looking forward to a visit from Mrs Ferguson so that we can show her what we have been learning about writing in the mystery genre.

This week P6 started their new topic WWII. 

We learned about the leaders of the countries involved in WWII.  We know that during the war Winston Churchill became the Prime Minister of Britain and that Adolf Hitler was the leader of Germany.  We realised that although Hitler was elected to be the leader in a democratic way, he was a dictator because he even put his opponents in concentration camps so they couldn’t stop what he wanted to do.  We used our mapping skills show which countries were allies, axis countries and which were axis controlled.

We have also been journalists from 1939 this week and have been writing a newspaper article announcing the outbreak of war.  Life in the 1930s was very different from today.  Houses in towns and cities were back to back, they had tin baths in front of the fire and everyone in the family shared the same water….YUK!  Most houses didn’t have inside toilets and only some electricity.  Hot water bottles were made of china and were VERY hot and then VERY cold!  Families listened to the wireless, a radio from that time and children liked to listen to ‘Children’s Hour’ which was on at 5pm.  At the weekends some children liked to visit the Picture House to go and see the latest serial.

In PE with Mr Muldoon we started work on gymnastics.  We have been improving our gymnastic skills by practising forward rolls, lazy backward rolls, cartwheels and pencil rolls.  Chloe said “I found it really fun and I was trying to improve my lazy backward rolls”.

In drama we have a chance to teach our welcome dances to the rest of our class.  Emily thought it was a bit hard to learn other people’s dances but quite fun in the end.  Emma said “It was amazing because you get to learn other people’s dances and get to share yours with others.”

We also started to research the Jewish religion.  We discussed the 10 Commandments and thought about whether any of them are still relevant and useful today. 

The P6 Garden Groomers were back out in the garden areas this week.  Katie is glad to be back at work as she has missed it.  She said “Mrs Thomson is perhaps going to return next week to give us a hand because we are really missing her support”. 

We’re all working towards our fun day reward for this month as we all like the idea of a hotdog and ice cream at the end of the year!

Next week, we’re going to do lots more WWII and Judaism research and Elise is going to bring in some WWII medals for us to have a look at.  Another busy week to come in P6!

P6 have had a great first week back.  We have been to West Lothian Collage. This week we were doing Athletics which was our last activity. We were so sad. We have included photo from our rugby week so that you can see how much fun it really was!

We also started a new topic, WWII. Amber thought that WWII was exciting to start and can’t wait to find out more about WWII. Abby thought that WWII was very interesting and can’t wait to find out more about Adolf Hitler.

We were finishing our old topic our world! This has been great. Isra thought that our world topic was amazing! We talked about our holidays which sounded great. We all can’t wait for June because for good girls and boys they are getting a fun day!!

We are getting ready for P7 next year. Erin says that getting ready for P7 is exciting, scary and it feels like just yesterday we were in P1. Zoe thinks it is exciting and scary.

By Amber, Abby and Zoe

It was a bit of a shock to the system being back to school this week- setting the alarm, getting up earlier to come to school and getting back into the learning groove. .  Leah enjoys our check ins/ outs in class where we talk about how we are feeling and what we have been doing.

We finished off the science work connected with the ‘Our World’ topic. Leon said that he enjoyed learning about the different types of rocks that we have on Earth and Sonny brought in some of his dad’s rock collection from home. Jack really enjoyed making the rock posters because you learned about the different rocks that you see in everyday life but don’t know about. Did you know that slate is a type of metamorphic rock?

Joshua found the division work in maths really satisfying. He said, “I really liked doing the great big division sum. It was easy when you knew how to do it.” Shannon thought that this work was fun and challenging too.  Caitlin liked our Countdown warm up in writing where we had to use the letters to make a word. ‘It was a good way to warm up and it was fun. The teachers always make our learning fun.’ Hannah- Beth said the she enjoyed writing ‘Into the Future’  because it makes you think about how you feel about going to High School

We are looking forward to starting our WW2 topic next week, especially Jak who is really keen to get going.

Messy (but productive) was the key word in p6 this week!  Everyone loved creating their centre of the earth artwork using pastels and managed to smudge their pastels everywhere!  Chloe thought it started off as being tricky but when she got into it, it was easier.  A lot of us weren’t keen to smudge and blend colours but as Katie said, “it turned out really well when I did”.  Look out for these pieces of art when you come to visit us on our points homework sharing day on Thursday.  Sean really enjoyed painting the rovers on his Mars landscape.  We learned how to blend colours, create shine and a 3D effect.  Our festive crafts started this week when we attended the ‘Bubblegum and Fluff’ event at the Lanthorn.  We made tiles to represent images of Christmas.  If you’re wondering what bubblegum and fluff has to do with Christmas, it was a story about a piece of bubblegum with fluff all over it.  Although it was icky on the outside, it was still a good piece of bubblegum on the inside.  The little piece of bubblegum on the inside represented Christmas and the fluff is all the things that are added on like chocolate, lights, presents, trees etc.  Overall, P6 enjoyed their week and still have the bubblegum and fluff story stuck in their heads.