20 students from primary 7 had the chance to take part in a transition day to St Margaret’s Academy. First of all we went to science the teacher was called Dr McAllister, she explained the names and uses of the scientific equipment for example Bunsen burner, beaker, test tube, boiling tube, measuring tube, tripod stand, heat proof mat and thermometer. We conducted an experiment to find out which material – cotton wool, felt and bubble wrap – provided the most insulation. We found that the cotton wool provided the most insulation. We also went swimming, first of all we did a swimming assessment then played some games and did handstands etc.

Miss Norman came into our class on Thursday from St Margaret’s maths department to do a maths starter challenge with us. We had a certain amount of numbers to either subtract, add, multiply or divide to make the numbers from 1-24. However, we did not find out the answer to 22!

We started our World War 2 project by creating a wall display. We drew and cut out silhouettes of bombs, paratroopers, planes and zeppelins.

We also created some autumn tree art we had to draw lines and used yellow,orange and red paint to paint the background. We added glitter and painted on the tree with black paint we think they look very effective!

BUSY, BUSY, BUSY!

We have been practising our times tables, mainly the 7 and the 9 times tables. We have also been journalists for our paper ‘The Broxburn Bugle’, it was fun pretending to be a journalist covering an event and interviewing people for our reports.

We have been learning and practising songs (we also discovered that it’s really important to do a vocal warm-up, just like we warm our muscles up before PE, we have to warm our voice up before we exercise it!).

There was great excitement at the book swap today and now lots of us have a new book to read over the holidays. Our Literacy Circle groups reviewed the novels that we have been reading this term and we gave our honest opinion, with evidence, of these books.

Have a great holiday everyone and see you in the new term!

(Written by: Hanza and Gaby P5b / Zofia and Umaima P5a).

We have had another busy week in Primary 1. Here are some activities we did.

Marcel sorted all the different ways to make 2 and 3. He was working hard on his cutting skills too.

Eliza – ” we had to move the letters to sound out words”

Ava P – ” I listened to little red riding hood and then I drew a picture of the woods.”

This week was very exciting for some primary 7 pupils who were the first to visit St Margaret’s Academy for a transition day. We were lucky enough to visit the science department and use the bunsen burners to conduct an experiment by using a copper can, pouring hot water in it half way and putting different materials around the copper can to investigate how well the materials insulated the water. We also learned about the different equipment used in science and how to illustrate scientific diagrams. We found that the cotton wool was the best material for insulating the water. We were also lucky enough to go swimming in the pool. We did lengths of the pool and were set challenges to do tricks and flips. This was very fun!

On Wednesday we had a circle time and shared our emotions about moving to high-school, problems within the classroom and any worries that we had. We learned that everyone has different problems that we might not know about so to be kind to everyone and include them. It also helped to clear our minds and get things off our chest.

In maths we learned different strategies for multiplication including the grid and formal method. We found that different people found different strategies easier to use highlighting differentiation in our learning journey. We also started a Daily 10 Maths Challenge on multiplication – we have under 7 seconds to answer each question and anyone with 10/10 gets a house point!

(Written by Lara, Matthew, Cameron and Haroon )

In P5 we were learning to write a newspaper report, it was about a basketball match, we were being sports journalists! It was fun to pretend to be a real member of the Press.

We also made posters to advertise the Coffee Morning that we were hosting today, we hope that we have raised lots of money for the Macmillan charity. We will let you know how it goes!

P5a and P5b have been focusing on Money in maths this week. We learned how to budget, calculate different amounts of money using notes and coins and we played money games with a partner.

We are looking forward to visiting St Margarets for our first transition day next Wednesday.

On Thursday we created some poems on a magical garden. We had to include similes and metaphors, for example the river was a ribbon of moonlight and we also drew our moonlit gardens using oil pastels. We also created magazine articles on different topics such as dogs, football, the future and swimming. We also created simile and metaphor posters to show our understanding of this figurative language.

In maths we created tessellation posters, we drew lots of different shapes to create a pattern leaving no gaps. In PE we toke part in a pre-tennis tournament in preparation for our end of topic tournament.

P1 have to complete a “star job” everyday for both literacy and numeracy. After completing their star job, the children take a picture of their work. We look at these pictures on the board at the end of each lesson.

Here are some of the pictures the children have taken

Amy- “We were finding different ways to make 6”

Marcel- “I was doing letters”

Nela- “I used yellow and purple to make a pattern. A pattern has to go in an order”

Adrian- ” We made a house”

Jenson- “It had a chimney”

John- ” Mrs Brown came along  to visit our house”