Category Archives: Uncategorized
Eco and Health Week
Our last term at Bankton
It’s hard to believe that we are now in our last term at Bankton. This week we have started reading over the script for our show ‘Pirates of the Currybean’ and are attempting to get to grips with our roles. We’ve finished our WWII project and are now beginning our work on The Commonwealth which is our transition topic. Next week we are looking forward to health/eco week and have lots of interesting activities planned like street dance, acro gymnastics, fencing, a waste audit and we will even be trying out our cheerleading skills! We would also like to say a big congratulations to Maria in our class who was selected as one of 9 winners in the West Lothian ‘My Scotland Now’ competition. Well done!
Destination goals…
With only one week to until the holidays, we managed to squeeze in a huge range of learning this week.
We were visited by Nathan MacQueen this week as part of the Champion in schools programme. He talked about his career in sport but also how he came to be a wheelchair athlete. He taught us about setting goals for our future and about how we might get there by setting journey goals to reach our destination goal.
Elise – “I thought it was inspirational because despite all the injuries he has been through, he keeps going.”
Sean – “I found it very interesting because he has tried a lot of different sports.”
Megan – “I found it amazing that he had broken so many bones but was still able to take part and do well in sport.”
We are all now working on our journey and destination goals.
On Friday, the cricket festival took place and Bankton came second out of five schools. It took a lot of energy and it was a really fun (and cold) morning!
We have all prepared class talks this week and we are sharing them with our class, one by one.
Louis “The class talks that I heard were very interesting.”
Erica “It was very nerve wracking and it was very hard to fill the time we were given in the success criteria!”
Declan “All the class talks I’ve heard were very detailed and I’m sure everyone else’s will be too.”
Katie “some people were able to talk with a clear loud voice but others found that more difficult.”
Since Spring is here, we decided to celebrate by enjoying the beauty of the spring flowers, daffodils and then…….tearing them apart or rather in science language, ‘dissecting’ them!
We managed to see the structure of the daffodil and we could then talk about the life cycles of the flowers.
During class maths we have been using our data handling skills to ‘interpret’ information from tables and present it in bar graphs and pictograms.
Declan “it was quite hard to find a scale without making it too simple and not precise enough for the big numbers we were working with.”
Chloe “I found the pictograms the hardest because it was hard to get precise numbers.”
Dylan “it was tricky because we had to use big numbers of deaths during WWII.”
WWII (in P6) is finally coming to an end and victory is in sight! We are finding out about VE day and how Britain celebrated.
We look forward to seeing you on Wednesday at the Blackout Café where we will be sharing some of our learning with you. Bring your singing voice with you, we can’t let morale drop, especially now that the end is in sight!
P5’s Spectacular Day Out
P5swent to Edinburgh to visit Holyrood Palace and The National Museum of Scotland. We all enjoyed the day. When we arrived we spotted bullet marks on the old tower, they might be there because the English tried to kidnap Mary Stewart, Queen of Scots from the Palace. Holyrood Palace is very fancy, the Great Staircase is outstandingly regal. We also saw a 500 year old crime scene. In the corner of Mary’s bed chamber we observed the secret staircase that Lord Darnley used in the murder of Riccio. In the next room and on the staircase we discovered the blood stains from the murder, some people think it is fake!!! A short time later we entered the dining room which contained about 3000 pieces of silver. In the gallery, on the pictures, we saw evidence of sword damage to the pictures. The slash marks were cause by English soldiers who were angry that they did not beat Scotland in a battle. By P5B.
After Holyrood Palace we went to the museum. Here is what the children enjoyed.
“I enjoyed looking at the technical section of the museum.” Jamie.
“I liked putting all of the Tudor clothes on!” Robbie.
“I enjoyed looking for the information to answer the questions in my workbook, at the museum.” Rachel.
“I enjoyed looking at the animals, my favourite was the tiger!” Emma K.
“I liked visiting the space area. My favourite thing was the meteor.” Kai.
“At the animal section there was an activity to find out which animal we weighed the same as, I was the Boa Constrictor.” Alexander.
“I liked looking at the old coins from the time of Mary Queen of Scots.” Lewis.
Primary 4 Weekly Review
Supermarket Radio Adverts – Which one would you visit?
In class, P6 & 7 have been inventing a new Supermarket chain and have designed a logo and slogan for their supermarket. They then worked in small groups to create a radio advert for their supermarket. Wait until you hear these!! Which one would you go and visit?Radio Advert a Radio Adverts
P6 & 7 Supermarket Capers
Some people from P6 & 7 were luckily enough to have the opportunity to go on an exciting tour around parts of Asda that only staff usually have access too. We were given lots of facts and learned lots of things that we didn’t know. It was very interesting and our tour guides, Donna and Karen, were excellent. They even gave us some pancakes and a pizza to bring back to school and eat. Mrs Reilly kindly heated up the pizza in the afternoon and we all really enjoyed it! Here are some photos of our exciting tour:
Leeks and tomatoes and kale…oh my!
It’s been a busy time for P6 recently. We needed time to get over the excitement of World Book Day where we were visited by Katniss Everdeen, President Snow, Effie Trinket, Ceaser Flickerman, Prim Everdeen, Ginny Weasly, Hermione Granger, Gangsta Granny, Just William, Greg Heffly, Joanna Mason, William Beech and many more just in our own class.
We have been lucky enough to play cricket for the last few Fridays and we have been learning all the skills we will need for the cricket festival at Livingston Cricket Club next Friday. Katie says “We were all active at the cricket and we are enjoying it.”
Obviously WWII still continues here in p6 and in case of gas attacks we made sure that we were prepared by making our very own gas masks. We had to use careful template and cutting skills and then we had to work out a way to attach the filter to the main mask using technology skills, not as easy as it sounds! We are all prepared now to ‘KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON!’.
Using our maths skills in area, measure and perimeter, we have also been making sure that we will have enough to eat and even extra to add to our rations. We are following Government Advice to ‘DIG FOR VICTORY’. Our Victory Garden challenge was to find as much space in our gardens for growing vegetables as possible while keeping space for our Anderson Shelter, rabbit hutches, chicken coops, compost heap, fruit trees and a greenhouse! However, that wasn’t all. We were given another challenge to sow vegetables and make sure we have something to harvest every month of the year. Amongst other things we decided on leeks, onions, kale and tomatoes.