All posts by Miss Miller

Christmas is Coming! P7’s week.

Curriculum Areas

This week we wrote letters to The First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, we chose a world problem and we tried to encourage her to help solve these problems.

We created a Christmas Quiz for other children in the class.

We created snow catcher art work.

In P.E. we did a sports quiz – it was tricky!

In Numeracy we were working on budgets. We had to plan a party with a specific budget.

Opportunities for personal achievement

This week Iga was our star of the week for excellent WW2 homework.

We took part in a Sumdog competition.

Ethos and Life of the School

We have been working on our Christmas Concert – we have chosen our hosts and been practising hard.

We have made our St Nics Come Dancing videos for the live final!! We can’t wait.

Interdisciplinary Learning

We brought in our WW2 homework and shared out learning.

We presented our learning and gave one another feedback.

 

We are looking forward to our last week!

P7’s Week

Outdoor Learning

We have been working on our team work by playing rounders. We are improving all the time!

We did a skills competition with Ross from Active Schools. We had to do things like dribble, jump, step ups. We hope we win!

We have been continuing to do our Daily Mile. We are trying to improve our time.

Maths and Numeracy

We have been learning about decimals. We have been adding them and subtracting. We also had to work out missing number calculations.

Literacy

We wrote an imaginative story. We were given a door as a stimulus and you had to write a story about what was behind it. It allowed us to be very creative.

We wrote another story about a girl in a jar. We were working on character development.

World War 2

We began our world WW2 topic. We learned about the Blitz, Blackout and evacuation. We also learned about the battle of Britain. We also learned about Pearl Harbour.

We are looking forward to another busy week next week.

Primary 7 Space Surprises!

Space Week

We learned that the Earth has been changing – it’s patterns. We found out these interesting facts:

  • 80% of the Great Barrier Reef has been bleached and lost its colour
  • Some squirrels fly
  • Plankton Blooms provide 50% of the worlds oxygen
  • We lose 260 billion tonnes of ice every year
  • Flamingos are not born pink it’s a chemical in algae that turn them pink.
  • Forest elephants fight if there are more than one male to prove their dominance.

We made videos about everything we learned!

Numeracy

We designed our dream house using area and perimeter.

We also started using our SumDog accounts to practise our numeracy skills.

Outdoors

We were outdoors lots. We loved doing our daily mile and playing rounders!

Creativity

We created inventions to present to the Dragon’s in Dragons den. We are using our creativity, skills for work, business and public speaking. We can’t wait to do our pitches for our products!

An amazing week in P7!

Maths Week

We took part in lots of maths challenges this week as art of Maths Week Scotland 2020. We did John Swinney’s challenge every day.

Outdoor Learning

We took lots of our learning outdoors. We made up our own games, took part in challenges and created outdoor art work by creating patterns with natural objects.

Digital Learning

We had a visit from Miss Gibson to teach us even more digital skills. We used Scratch to make animations, OneNote to answer questions and Photoshop to edit pictures.

P7 Weekly Roundup!

Literacy

We wrote letters to Miss Morgan – we are missing her lots! We wrote to tell her all about our favourite bits in P6 and how we are getting on in P7. We also wrote our own Macavity poems we used the original poem and adapted it to make it our own.

Maths and Numeracy

We learned doubling and halving strategy in number talks. We did lots of practice on this. We also worked on a lot of multiplication strategies.

RERC

We learned about the four evangelists – Mark, Luke, Matthew and John. We had to answer questions all about them to see what we remembered from our learning last week. We also had to find stories and quotes in the bible.

Spanish

We made our own Spanish videos having conversations in Spanish.

Drama

We began writing scripts for our news reports interviewing one of the characters in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We are looking forward to using the green screen next time.

Outdoor Learning

We did lots of outdoor challenges this week. One was about climate change – the people on the inside were earth and the people on the outside were greenhouse gasses we had to use beanbags to throw back and forth to represent this. In our house tables we went on the wall and had to work as a team to get in order of our names etc. It was really hard not to fall off!

 

 

Primary 7’s Wonderful Week

This week we’ve been learning…

Literacy

We did a story about the Curse of Cogston House – it was a horror story. We started by creating our own plans. We had to use similes and metaphors. We had to use lots of adjectives. We had to describe all of our senses. We had to create a scary setting.

RERC

We learned about Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We learned what they did for other people. Matthew started off as a tax collector and made the first Gospel. Mark crossed the sea to tell others about Jesus. John was very young when he became an apostle.

Maths and Numeracy

We had to think of 4 different strategies to answer subtraction calculations. We played an online game – it was a clock that had letters on it and we had to use clues to solve the problem.

Outdoor Challenges

We made a portrait of ourselves or another person using twigs and leaves. We made dens for a little toy – the toy had to fit inside and be protected. We made a number square with chalk and sticks (3×3) and all of the numbers had to add to 15. We made the alphabet out of things we found outdoors.

We all had a lovely week!

Primary 7’s Wicked Week

Check out our week… We’ve learned lots!

Literacy

We’ve been learning about poetry through the poem MacCavity. We heard a song that goes along with it – it’s from Cats the musical movie 2019. We drew MacCavity and we labelled our pictures using similies and metaphors from the poem.  We also learned about proper nouns, bossy verbs and common nouns. We enjoyed learning this very much!

Maths and Numeracy

We’ve been revising the 6,7,8 and 9 times table. It’s helped us get better with recalling these tables. We’ve also been learning about prime numbers – you can only divide them by itself and 1! In Number talks we’ve been learning partitioning and compensation. We are improving every day!

Expressive Arts

We did some Autumn art and examined Autumn colours and the change in trees losing their leaves. We did drama and music through Charlie and the chocolate factory. We learned about analysing a character and created a role on the wall for Charlie. We also began to learn about soundtracks and how these impact the atmosphere, mood and genre.

We hope you enjoy seeing our work. We are looking forward to next week :)!

Primary 7’s Fantastic Week

Primary 7’s Week

Our sport education teams have written their own statements to tell you about their week.

The Top Servers’ Say…
This week Top Servers decide who goes to the tournament and that is Megan and Maisie, Ethan and Archie. the player of the week is…NIA! This week has been has been busy practising for the tournament. We have also been really busy learning subtraction strategies in Number talks. We have also been learning about the squared numbers in the times tables.

 

The Slazengers’ say…
We have been getting on great.
Our Player of the week is: Alicja 😎
We have been playing tennis matches to decide who goes to the tournament,
Our 4 players going are.. Liam, Callum, Julia & Millie. The teams are Liam and Millie & Julia and Callum.

The Sport 19’s say…
We had a great week. We wrote a poem about are childhood.
We watched a movie with our buddies which was Inside Out for our health and well being.
Our pupil of the week is Freya.

 

The Net’s say…
This week we have been writing poems about our childhood,
We watched Inside Out as a treat and to learn more about emotions with our buddies.
Our player of the week is Melanie.

A message from Active Schools

Would you like to help your school? Do you have an hour a month or an hour a week? Do you enjoy sport?  If so please contact Ross in  Active Schools for information on helping at your child’s school.  As little or as much as you like. If you would like to come and watch a sports club and have a chat about how you could help or just fancy  some more info please just get in touch with me on 07990 565 846 or ross.logan@westlothian.gov.uk .  visit us at www.activewestlothian.com

Primary 7s Week

Primary 7 have had a very busy week.

Maths:
We have been working on data handling this week. We enjoyed collecting data and deciding what graph or chart to present our findings. We also worked on reading and interpreting data.

Literacy:
In true valentines spirit we analysed and wrote our own love poems. They were very creative and we used techniques like similes, metaphors and personification to enhance our writing.

Topic:
This week we’ve been learning about evacuation. We wrote an information text about evacuation and designed ourselves as evacuees which was lots of fun!

Other:
This week we had a visit from Andy Weir who has been teaching us about presentation skills. He left us with a ‘wee gift- WIIGFT’ which taught us when giving a presentation always include what is in it for them to engage the audience.

We’ve also been working on evaluating How Good is Our School (HGIOURS). We self assessed how good our school is at relationships and identified what we could do to improve.

A Message from Active Schools

After the fantastic achievement of gaining the Gold School Sport Award last year the school have continued to go from strength to strength. Instead of sitting back and relaxing the pupils have hit a record number of attendances at after school clubs. Compared to last year when 29% of pupils attended an after school club in term one this year 49% of pupils attended an after school club.

Active Schools have worked closely with Miss Miller to put on a range of after school clubs for all the primary stages. Clubs have included football, dance, hockey and tennis.

This term we have spoken to the Health Committee who requested a number of different sports. From these we have a volleyball club starting soon.

All after school clubs will be starting the week beginning 4 February, keep an eye on school bags for letters coming out.

Follow Broxburn Cluster Active Schools on Twitter, @ActiveS_Bburn.

Active Schools Coordinators, Ross Logan and Libby Harris

SCHOOL OPENING

Thanks to an amazing effort by West Lothian Council teams, contractors and parents/carers, all but 13 council primary, nursery and special schools WILL safely open tomorrow (Monday, 5 March).

They join West Lothian’s 11 secondary schools, which will re-open on Monday as planned.

The following schools will remain CLOSED on Monday:

Blackridge Primary
Connolly Campus, Blackburn
Deans Primary, Livingston
Eastertoun Primary, Armadale
Hopefield Nursery School, Blackburn
Longridge Primary
Our Lady of Lourdes Primary, Blackburn
Our Lady’s Primary, Stoneyburn
Parkhead Primary, West Calder
Pinewood School, Blackburn
Riverside Primary, Livingston
St Joseph’s Primary, Whitburn
St John the Baptist Primary, Fauldhouse

All 13 of these will re-open on Tuesday 6 March.

All other West Lothian Council secondary, primary, nursery and special schools will be OPEN on Monday 5 March at the normal time. Parents/carers will receive a groupcall to confirm if their school is open or closed.

Re-opening nearly 100 schools following severe weather is a major job, with significant checks carried on every building required before it can be safely opened, such as ensuring they are still structurally sound, heating is working and toilet and catering facilities are in good working order.

Snow clearing work in school grounds is ongoing to ensure a safe route for staff and pupils, with up to five feet of snow drifts requiring cleared in some schools.

Due to the amount of specialist work required, it has not been possible to safely open every school on Monday.

If your child’s school is open, we would encourage you to send them if it safe to do so. Parents should carry out their own assessment of whether it is safe for their child to travel to school from their home, depending on their individual circumstances.

Parents/carers should take extra care when travelling to school on Monday, especially as some crossing patrol staff may not be in place.

All school transport will operate as normal.

Parent/carers of pupils attending special schools who receive transport should check with their provider on whether they are able to take their child to school.

There will be no breakfast clubs on Monday, and lunch menus may vary from usual. Wraparound care will be in place as normal, and parents/carers should confirm any after school arrangements with their provider.

WINTER READY!❄️

⛄❄SNOW DAY❄⛄

Here are some suggested activities that your child can do to continue their learning. Activities have been set within stages. Please post any pictures or comments to our Facebook or Blog.

❄️*P1 ACTIVITIES*❄️

– Write a little story about your snow day and bring it into school
– Draw a very detailed snowy illustration of your fun day
– Cosy up with a nice warm drink and read your reading books/home story books
– Build me a snow dog! 🐶
– Build a big snowman and get your mum or dad to help you measure how tall he/she is! Tallest snowman may win a prize!
– Access: http://www.gregtangmath.com/tenframemania and see if you can set a Primary 1 record for highest score
– Access: https://www.topmarks.co.uk/Search.aspx?Subject=16&AgeGroup=1 and practise some addition and subtraction games
– Access: http://www.doorwayonline.org.uk/literacy/speller/ and practise some spelling
– One very helpful thing to do would be to look in your homework folder and practise correct formation of all letters and numbers
– Write your balloon words in the snow
– Make snowballs of different weights and roll them down a hill, see which one travels the farthest/fastest

❄️*P2-4 ACTIVITES*❄️

*write a snowy poem (acrostic, rhyming, repetition) ❄

*build a snowman ⛄ and measure how tall he is (send photos on Dojo if you wish)

*exercise counting 🏃🏼‍♀🏃🏼‍♂- keep warm by doing star jumps, jogging on the spot etc and counting in 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s and 10s. Practise reciting your 2, 5 and 10 times tables

*draw/paint a picture of the view outside your window 🎨 ✏

*use number gym/Greg Tang maths online /Topmarks Hit the Button to work on your number bonds 📱💻

*cosy up with a nice warm drink and read your reading book or library book 📚

*practise writing your spelling words in the snow

*design a cosy outfit to wear in the snow 🧥 👢

*make different weights of snowballs and roll them down a slope – which one travels farthest/fastest?

❄️*P5-7 ACTIVITIES*❄️

*build a snowman ⛄ and measure how tall he is

*write instructions on how to do something you did on your snow day (baking, snowman etc.) 🍰

*draw a picture of a snowy landscape ⛰ ❄️

*use number gym/Topmarks Hit the Button to work on your times tables 📱💻

*read at least 2 chapters of your accelerated/library book. 📚

*write a summary of what you’ve read.

*practise writing your spelling words in a creative way. 🔡

*measure the depth of the snow at 3 different points during the day. Did the depth increase or decrease? ⬆️⬇️

*use your knowledge of the solar system and write a paragraph about why we have winter. 🌍

*use a restaurant menu to create 4 multiplication/division problems. Solve your problems using efficient strategies. ➗✖️

*create a quiz about something you are interested in (include an answer key). 🔑

Again, Please share any pictures of the activities you’ve completed on Facebook or the blog! 📷

Most importantly, stay safe and have fun! ❄☃

Visualising in Primary 6

Primary 6 have been learning and revising lots of different reading strategies. This week we have been working on visualisation. We were very surprised to find out that our own background knowledge effected how we visualise things. We read a story about a Bus Stop and had to draw each character in the correct order. It was very difficult! We all worked very hard and now feel more confident in visualising when we are reading! We can’t wait to try it out in our own reading books.

Maths Minions in P6

 

This week Primary 6 have been working hard during Maths Week. We’ve participated in lots of fun activities here are some things we enjoyed, learned and want to do more of!

Anya – I learned your 11 times table.

Ava – I learned some of my other times tables (2 digit number ones).

Eve – I learned a lot about problem solving.

Stella –  I enjoyed doing the maths hunt.

Hollie – In the maths challenge we got a sheet of paper with lots of letters and numbers. We had to try and find the letter that connected to numbers hidden around the playground. To crack the code we had to solve times table problems.

Adrian – I enjoyed the problem solving task because we worked in groups of 3 and we had 10 problems to answer.

Anna – In the problem solving we were given a maths question. We were given three minutes to discuss and find and answer and write it down on our sheet. We had to write down how we worked it out and if we found it hard or not.

Some of us found the problems harder to solve, some of us found it easy!

Eve – I enjoyed the times table challenge when we had to beat the time.

Riley – I enjoyed the blether stations because it was challenging and I enjoyed working in a group.

Thomas – I enjoyed the times table challenge because I learned my 12 times table.

Agata –  I found the blether stations tricky because the word problems were hard to work out.

Hollie – I found the time table challenge hard because we all raced to see how fast we could work it out.

Sophia – I found the times table challenge hard because I don’t know them all yet.

Anya – I want to do more of the finding answers in a group.

Ava – I would like to do some more times table challenge getting timed and beating my own time.

Leo – I found the number of the day challenges hard because its was hard to work out if it was prime or composite.

Cameron – I enjoyed learning the compensation strategy.

Sarah – I enjoyed learning about near doubles.

Stella – Overall, we all enjoyed learning about different things in maths. We now know different strategies to use!

 

Fluttering Beauties

Today Primary 2 went outside to release our butterflies. We were very excited!

Anna – My favourite part was when we let them go.

Lucia – My favourite part was when they landed on flowers to drink the pollen.

Brooke – My favourite part was when a butterfly landed on me.

Martyna – I liked when the butterfly went on Miss Boyd’s finger.

Matthew – I liked it when I learned that the butterfly ate nectar.

Luca – The butterflies had to open their wings a few times to warm up before they flew away.

Michael – When the butterfly opened its wings I saw orange white and black.

Mya – When the wings were closed it looked grey and white.

Alicia – Some of them didn’t want to come out.

Umaima – The last butterfly flew really high to the trees.

The Very Hungry Caterpillars!

In Primary 2 we’ve been learning all about the life of a caterpillar and the process of its transformation into a butterfly. Today, we transferred the chrysalides  into the special butterfly nets. We are very excited for them turning into butterflies. We are looking forward to learning even more!

into the special butterfly nets. We are very excited for them turning into butterflies. We are looking forward to learning even more!

Kyle – We have learned about it’s life cycle.

Lara- It is called a life cycle because it goes on and on.

Martyna – First, the butterfly lays some eggs.

Mya – Then, a little caterpillar comes out of the egg.

Flynn – Then, it eats and eats and eats.

Freyja – The caterpillar makes a J.

Luca – After that we know it is going to form a chrisyllis.

Lucas Cook – The chrisyllis gets hard.

Tavia – It gets hard to protect itself.

Umaima – Then it breaks out of the chrisyllis and turns into a butterfly.

Lucia – I liked seeing them in their chrisyllis.

Matthew – I liked learning all the facts about caterpillars.

Catherine – I liked when we did the information booklets.

Anna – I liked when the caterpillars arrived.

Santiago – I liked watching them grow.

Niamh – I liked learning about and seeing the caterpillar food.

Minibeast Adventure

Primary 2 have been enjoying the lovely weather. We took our learning outside as part of our ‘Living Things’ topic. We went on a minibeast adventure and searched for any living things. We used our skills in technology to take pictures using the iPad. We even learned how to zoom in and out.

We are looking forward to learning even more this week!

Malawi, Malawi, Malawi!

This week Primary 2 have been very busy! We were lucky enough to visit the library for a talk about Malawi, have a talk about Mrs Renshaw’s trip to Malawi and began to sort all of the items for our Malawi Appeal.

Primary 2 want to share what they have learned:

Lara – the water in lake Malawi is dirty and if you swam in it it could make you ill.

Liam – Moni means hello in Chichewa.

Flynn – Bambo means father in Chichewa.

Catherine – Mayi means mother in Chichewa.

Leon – The weather is boiling hot!

Mya – There is a big mountain.

Thomas – People live until they are around 55 in Malawi.

Safaa – The ladies wear a Chitenji which is a nice dress.

Lucas Curran – The people are poor but they are very happy.

Lucia – The school in Malawi doesn’t have much stuff but they will get some stuff from our Malawi Wee Bag Appeal.

Michael – Malawi is a land locked country.

Oliver – Malawi is known as the ‘Warm Heart of Africa’.

Santiago – Zikomo means thank you.

Martyna – They don’t have walls in their schools.

Adam – The stars in Malawi are really bright.

Freyja – It took Mrs Renshaw 2 days to climb the mountain in Malawi.

Matthew – There is over 17 million people living in Malawi.

We have had lots of fun learning all about Malawi!

P2 Assembly

Thank you to everyone who attended our assembly. We were so excited to share our wonderful work and learning with you. For anyone who missed it here are a few videos of us in action!

Thinking Thursday Tower Challenge

Primary 2 were given the challenge to work as a team to build a tower that was taller than the table and held one pencil on the top without falling over! At first we thought it was an impossible task. However, we worked together in our teams using our logical thinking skills to solve the problem. We evaluated our learning at the end and we even had a winning group who worked very well as a team creating a strong and secure tower.

Check out some of our towers!

Odd or Even!?

Amoungst concert and nativity practices Primary 2 have been learning about odd and even numbers. We’ve been using Numicon, snakes and ladders and ICT to explore these types of numbers. We were very surprised to find some patterns. We even realised if you add two odd numbers together it makes an even number! We are looking forward to learning even more as the week goes on.

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Read, Write, Count

A huge thank you to everyone who attended our Read, Write, Count launch afternoon. The children were very excited to share their learning with their family members. Everyone got the chance to dress up, delve into the bags, try some activities together and explore the Read, Write, Count website. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Thanks again everyone and enjoy working with your new Read, Write, Count bags at home!

Owl Experience

Primary 2 have been exploring the book The Owl Who was Afraid of the Dark. We were surprised to be invited along to see some real owls. We were especially excited to see a barn owl like Plop. The main character in the story. We got to clap the barn owl Cuddles and some children even got the opportunity to hold them!

Huge Halloween Party fun!

Primary 2 and 3 joined together today for an amazing Halloween party. Our costumes were absolutely phenomenal. We had lots of fun dancing and playing games. We even got to wrap someone up as a Mummy! Lots of prizes were won and we had a fantastic time! We are looking forward to dressing up and going guising on Monday.

A huge thank you from Primary 6!

Primary 6 would like to offer a huge thank you to everyone who contributed to our Syrian Refugee Appeal. We are overwhelmed with the generosity of everyone at St Nicholas. As you can see from the pictures, the van could not have stored any more of your donations. All of your donations will have reached Calais and are helping refugee’s right now! We are all very proud.

We would also like to thank all of the parents and children who attended our assembly. We worked extremely hard to put together the appeal, the videos and the assembly overall. We loved sharing our hard work with you all and we hope you enjoyed it too!

 

Primary 6 Assembly