This week primary 7 have been very busy engaging with school camp and fitness fortnight activities. Here are some of the activities we have had fun doing!
Making Dens:
Creating Posters to help us to eat healthy:
Putting on as many layers as we can and making rafts:
This week Primary 7 have been very busy learning and working at home! We had an extra special day on Tuesday as we had a video call with some students from both St Margaret’s Academy and Broxburn Academy. As the primary 7’s are unable to attend their transitions as usual, we were lucky enough to ask the high school students some questions via video call and have our queries answered very well. This opportunity helped a lot with worries about going to high school without being able to attend more transition dates and we are hoping to get more chances like this in the coming weeks.
The first week back to school in May has been marked by tremendous weather, exciting STEM experiments and an interview with an astronaut. Although we have continued to face challenges and missing our loved ones, Primary 7 have made an amazing effort to remain upbeat and positive throughout their online learning – a massive well done is in order!
Throughout the week Primary 7 have been working on their literacy, numeracy and engaging with lots of online quizzes! We have also been revising our Spanish.
On Wednesday, Primary 7 created their own volcano using water and food dye – we have some mixed results but it was extremely fun!
On Thursday we were lucky enough to be invited to listen to European Space Agency astronaut and former International Space Station crew member, Tim Peake. Following on from the recent cancellation of DataFest20, which included STEM events, we were able to listen to an interactive event with Tim – where the winners of the STEM Challenge asked him some very interesting questions about his expedition.
Tim also showed us some amazing photographs that he took from space and explained the details of his expedition.
We hope that everyone has had a lovely week and managed to enjoy some of the sunshine! Take care and stay safe everyone!
From, Miss Fraser & Mrs Bell
This week has been extra busy for Primary 7 with so many Christmas activities going on.
On Tuesday we learned the rules we learned the rules of divisibility.
On Wednesday we had our school Christmas carol concert, it was nerve racking at first but we all enjoyed singing and performing in front of a live audience. We also did choral counting, the mystery of the cinema suspect and number talks using divisibility rules with Mrs Heather.
On Thursday Andy Weir came into to do more presentations. The presentations were about swimming, cycling, bagpipes, World War 2 and Air Fix. We also started learning Christmas songs we are going to perform Run Rudolph Run and Santa Claus is coming to town and record them. We also had a visit from Hannah from the SSPCA who explained how to keep your pets and wildlife safe over the winter, for example, if there is a hedgehog going about during the day you can feed it cat food and phone the SSPCA to get it help. She also told us some interesting stories about a man who tried to sell an alligator on GumTree. There was also a lady who bought a pineapple from Asda, she saw the leaves move and inside was a venomous snake.
Primary 7 went on a retreat to Dunfermline to learn about St Margaret. We visited St Margaret’s cave where she went to pray and spend time with God. We also got to hold a relic of St Margaret (although this was a 3D print) of her shoulder bone which was very interesting. We also had mass in St Margarets church and a tour, the church was decorated with stations of the cross, a statue of St Margaret with a child, Joseph and stain glass windows of St Margaret.
In our WW2 topic we have begun to draw St Pauls Cathedral as it was bombed during the war. Although St Pauls Cathedral was hit by 500 pound bombs twice it did not fall down. We have also been learning about the Blitz (Blitzkreigg) which meant ‘lightning war’. Robbie and Molly brought in some special artefacts from WW2 including photographs of their family in uniform, badges, ration cards, identity cards and a plaque about the Victoria Cross.
Miss Norman also visited from St Margaret’s Academy, she taught us easier methods to use for subtraction sums we found this very useful.
Another group of P7’s went to St Margaret’s Academy as part of their transition program. First of all we went to the science department where Dr MacCallister showed us how to use the Bunsen Burner’s we also conducted an experiment to find out the best insulator by putting boiling water into a copper can and checked the temperature every 30 seconds to find the best insulator. We also went swimming and played the game to find as many ‘sinkers’ as we could for our team to win the game!
For Halloween on Thursday we took part in a maths challenge to find the mystery putrid pumpkin poisoner who turned to be Bailey Butternut! We have also been practicing for our presentations which take place on Monday and Beth’s dad Andy Weir will be coming to watch us. Harris read us a spooky story called The Curse of Cogston house we are excited to find out what happens at the end. We also typed up our learners statements for parents evening explaining what we have learned so far as well as what we have achieved. At the end of the day we had some Halloween fun by eating sweets and doing some just dance!
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!
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!
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.
We did a STEM challenge with Mr Heather on Thursday. We were building catapults to see if they worked by putting a ball in a cup and seeing how far it could go. We only had elastic bands to tie up the poles so it was quite challenging but fun working in teams. We also did escape the room maths challenge with Mrs Heather in which Maisie, Harris, Ethan, Luke and Isla.M managed to escape!
To celebrate European Language Day we created posters which included different flags and ways of saying hello!
We also had a great time at the movie afternoon watching Inside Out!
On Tuesday we started writing a poem about where we are from which was all about our childhood based on the poem ‘Where I’m From’ by George Ella Lyon.
On Thursday, we learned about 2D and 3D shapes in maths, our learning included going on a shape hunt to take photos using the I-pad of shapes in our school environment, naming shapes and their properties and creating shape riddles – can you figure out this one?
‘I have 3 sides of different lengths
I am a 2D shape with 3 sides and 3 vertices, what am I?’
– Scalene Triangle (Maya)
We have been focusing on our Number Talks with Mrs Heather, especially addition. Some of the strategies we used were compensation, partitioning, friendly numbers and rounding up. We also did a clapping game to practice our times tables this was very fun and multiplying 2 digit numbers and 1 digit numbers.
In writing we have been learning how to write a news article these are the things that we need to include: headline, byline, lead, body and tail. Things that might enhance our article are quotes and facts.
We were also introduced to debating this week. The subjects that we debated were seasons that are more fun e.g winter and summer, that school canteens should only sell healthy foods and should students be able to pick their own subjects at school.
This week we used chalk to draw a tennis racket and tennis ball for our tennis topic. Using chalk was difficult at first as in the past we have used pencil or pen to draw. However the more we used it the more comfortable we felt drawing with it. We also found it challenging to get the correct angle and proportion of the tennis racket as it was an unusual shape and was quite big. Although the tennis racket art work turned out very effective – I’m sure you will agree – and it was very fun.
On Wednesday we created number talk posters with Mrs Heather to show different strategies for mental maths. Callum thought this was useful to remind himself of the strategies he had forgotten from primary 6.
We also did literacy circles for the first time in primary 7 which differed from the previous times such as in primary 5 and 6. We have also been designing a news report in Spanish and have been allocating roles for this project.
Ethan, Harris and Jack had basketball try-outs and will find out on Monday if they make the team but think they done very well!
As primary sevens one of our responsibilities is to help our P1 buddies. At break we have been helping them to get ready for break by putting on their jackets, shoes and getting their snacks. Luke found that his buddy Bartosz was very shy at first but he helped to bring him out his shell and make new friends. Amie-Lee helped her buddy Sophie to be responsible by picking up litter but have fun while doing so. Ethan felt his buddy was shy at first but by the end of the week they played together and got along well. Molly helped her buddy Ava to make new friends in her class.
In class this week in art we drew our own tennis players and used paint to create a water colour effect. In maths we did place value challenge and code breakers in order to find out the numbers and break the code. In literacy we wrote our new prayer and learned how to use synonyms and in writing we wrote an imaginative diary entry based on our class novel.
Mrs Heather played a name game with us on Wednesday where we had to remember all of the names of people in our class with an adjective in front of it – Nice Nicola, lovely Laura, Incredible Isla…
Over all we had a great full week back!
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