Halloween week or not Primary 7’s were very busy. We are continuing to study the Ancient Greeks, and our challenge this week was to find out as much as we could about Odysseus and why he is important in Greek Mythology. We had laptops and books as our resources, and had to use them to make our own key notes, to help us create something that we could later present to the class.

We are still busy in Forest Schools and our dens are really taking shape. This week some of us were taught how to use tools safely and responsibly to help us create our shelters. Next week is our last week, and we hope if the weather allows, to learn about fire making.

In our writing lesson, we were discussing different types of writing and the vocabulary they use. We concentrated on using specialist vocabulary to do with parliament, as we were writing a letter to our MSP Mrs Angela Constance. Our letter was a formal piece of correspondence, so we had to ensure it was set out correctly and that correct formal vocabulary was used.

On Thursday, not only did we do French and Music with Mrs Ewing in the morning, but in the afternoon the P7’s from our Ladies came down to join us to form a choir for Christmas. It was good fun to work with them and Mrs Ewing. We are learning some really good songs, some traditional and some modern.

On Friday at PE Mr Tennant set up an agility obstacle course for us. It definitely got our hearts beating faster! After playtime we had house time, where we met together with all the children in our house from the different classes. We had challenges to complete, including designing our own mascot. Each of us had to draw what we thought should be our house mascot and the house captain and vice captain choose the winners. It definitely has been another busy week!

” I really liked using the saw to cut down a small tree for our den. The ranger had found the tree and taught us how to saw safely”-Katie

“I was quite nervous when I saw the agility course that Mr Tennant had set up. But when I tried it, it was great fun!” – Erin

“Our den is actually finished! We have lots of room inside for us all to shelter, and not much rain gets through, so we stay pretty dry!” – Matthew

“The PTA’s Halloween Disco was great fun! My favourite part was dooking for apples!” – Leon

“I used the big saw with Brad to cut down a big branch for our den”- Shayne

“I really enjoyed working with the P7’s from Our Ladies and Mrs Ewing in the afternoon, to form a choir  to sing at different Christmas events” – Sarah

“Doing the weather in French with Mrs Ewing was fun, we are going to do a weather forecast in French too!”- Madyson

” I really loved learning “Somewhere only we know” with Mrs Ewing” – Erin

“The resilience group was great fun, we used origami to make paper penguins” – Keiron H

“Designing our house mascot was fun, especially since it was made into a competition”

– Robbie Mc

Is there nothing our fantastic school can’t do?

We are delighted to announce that Mrs Robley has become the first Izak9 Superuser in West Lothian and the first primary school in Scotland!  She has had to work hard with the children in P4-7, develop plans and showcase to parents to gain this ‘superuser’ status.

The following is taken from the Izak9 website and describes what a ‘superuser’ is:

“Superusers are passionate and innovative practitioners who have made an outstanding contribution to raising standards in the teaching and learning of maths.  They are a source of inspiration for Izak9 users globally, as examples of their leading practice are shared on their own Superuser pages, in our Izak9 blog section and on twitter.

To be certified as an ‘Izak9 Superuser’, teachers must complete school based milestones, evidence of which demonstrates how effectively these teachers use Izak9 to positively impact on the quality of the teaching and learning provision across their school community.

Superusers are certified to provide Izak9 training and workshops to neighbouring schools and to work with Qubizm staff in developing additional resources and training programmes that enhance the quality of the offering Izak9 presents to schools.”

Have a look at Mrs Robley’s superuser link: http://www.izak9.com/article/fiona-robley

We are very proud of Mrs Robley and the work that she has done in this area across Stoneyburn and Greenrigg Primaries and we are delighted that this has been recognised by Izak9.  Well done! 🙂

Maths – Izak9

This week we enjoyed using IZAK9 for some of our maths work.  For one of the tasks we had to use our knowledge of the 8 compass points to help us complete the challenge.  Here’s some pictures of us working in our groups:

Halloween Artwork

We also did some painting this week, but not with paint brushes – we used paper towels instead!  We created silhouettes of bats by dabbing white paint over the bat shapes that we had cut out and stuck onto the card.  Once the paint was dry, we peeled the bats off to reveal the silhouettes.  Here’s our finished pieces:

Sunny Synonyms

Yesterday we worked with a partner to create sunny synonyms.  Synonyms are words that have the same or similar meanings.  We thoughts of WOW words that could be used instead of common everyday words.  Here’s what we came up with:

We hope Miss Eunson is feeling better because we’re all missing her and are looking forward to welcoming her back soon.

Tuesday we came back from our October holidays.  We wrote about the things that we all did.

Owen had a great time at butterfly world.

Adam loved meeting Mickey Mouse on his adventures to Disney Land Paris.

Kaseylee and Shay loved their time at the caravan.

Alexander loved staying at his grans house.

Riley really loved seeing his grans new caravan.

On wednesday we designed our pumpkin faces for our infant competition.  The winner will be announced on Monday.

Thursday we got a very important message from Waxy the Witch to say that her flying potion was running out.  We had to write about making a new potion for Waxy.  We actually had some of the potion in class.

“The potion smelt like mints.” said Billie

Layla added mints to her potion.

Calum used grass to make his green.

Lillie put a cup of blood to her potion.

Lewis added eye-balls and worms. YUCK

All of us loved doing our writing this week.

Netball club will be on tomorrow after school 3:10-3:45!

Looking forward to seeing you all back and ready to train for our next match!!!💪🌟🏀🏆

Another hectic week for P7 with lots of different activities to challenge us and have fun with. Monday started the week well, with us all working in class and having a together time with Mrs Craig in the afternoon. That was a very different together time because it was only ourselves and P6/5 that were there, the others were all away at the wind farm!

On Tuesday it was our turn to visit Whitelees Wind Farm, and what a place it is!! It is huge with loads of wind turbines! It used to be the biggest in Europe but now another wind farm has 5 more turbines! We had different challenges and experiments to do, all about the power of the wind! We used windsocks and anemometers to find the direction and speed of the wind, then we explored a peat bog. In the afternoon we had more experiments this time in the classroom where we had to build our own turbines, picking the number and type of blade to find which ones produced the most energy to light a little light!

On Wednesday some of us were out again in the afternoon with the forest schools. This time we started building our own shelters. We had to gather materials from all around us, decide which shape our shelter should be, and we learned how to tether the branches together to make a strong frame. The rest of us were at a netball tournament with other schools in our cluster. We have been practising with Mrs Warden at the after school netball club, but this is the first tournament we have taken part in. We all enjoyed the experience and cant wait for the next one!

“I really enjoyed the tournament, we did well since this was our first time!” – Leon

“The turbines at the windfarm were amazing and I really liked doing all the experiments!” – Katie

“It was great to welcome Jay into our class” – Madyson

“Madyson got stuck in a swamp at forest schools and had to be rescued! It took 2 people and Tracy one of our leaders to get her out!” – Sarah

“I had great fun at the Netball tournament!” – Erin

“I really liked starting to build our shelters”- Brad

“Jumping in the puddles on the way back from forest schools was great fun! My wellies filled up with water!” – Matthew

“Mrs Loosemore found a frog in the peat bog, I called him Pete!” – Kuba

“Monday was a relaxing class work day before another busy week!” – Erin

“It was awesome standing next to a wind turbine and seeing how big they really are!” – Robbie G.

What a week we have had, we have been on the go all week, not only with our every day work, but with special visits, outdoor learning and welly walking!

On Tuesday we visited the Scottish Parliament. We had time in the classroom there, where we learned more about how the parliament works and took part in a quiz about devolved powers and protected powers. Our guide was very impressed with our knowledge, we got all of our questions right! She said we were the best primary school she had had. She then took us on a tour, explaining lots about the building and the MSPs who work there. We got into the debating chamber too and saw where it all happens! After our tour we went to the chat room, we were about to start another quiz when Angela Constance our MSP came to join us! She told us all about how she became a politician and about the work she does. She also answered all our questions, it was a great end to a brilliant day!

On Wednesday afternoon we had our first session with the Forest School Rangers Hannah and Tracy. We went to the woods behind the school, the rain stayed off for us, but the ground was soaking and VERY muddy, we had a ball!! After setting  the rules for respecting each other and protecting the environment, we then set boundries as to how far we could go. Then we had some free time to explore and have fun. Next week we hope to start building dens! (we hope the rain stays away for the afternoon!!)

Thursday was our STV Childrens’ Appeal Charity Day. We had the opportunity to sing “Always take the weather with you” for Sean Batty and he really liked it! We then had great fun at the disco, designed our own dream wellies and had a weather word search to complete. Soon it was our turn for the welly walk (or should that be mud dance??). It was a great morning, and we hope we have raised lots of money for the appeal!

“I enjoyed meeting and talking to our MSP” – Shayne

” I like finding a frog, and different types and colours of leaves when we were out with Forest Schools” – Kuba

“My Mum used to cut Angela Constance’s Mum’s hair” – Madyson

“My favourite part was in Forest schools when Kuba said to Hannah, “Don’t let me go” and Robbie McC said “It’s not the Titanic Kuba!” -Sarah

“I loved that we got the opportunity to sing for Sean Batty”- Erin

“It’s great to have Alexander back with us in class” – Matthew

” I thought it was great fun playing tig amongst the trees and bushes in Forest Schools” – Keiran McG

” I like that the Pupil Voice groups are now taking place, and that I got taking pictures” – Kieron H

“Angela Constance noticed me, she said it was from the Gala Day, and asked if I was the champion. I told her that it was my brother”- Matthew

We have had another busy week. On Monday we led the school assembly. Our assembly was on Equality and Equity. We explained what each one meant and what the difference between them were. Sarah and Kuba acted in a little sketch to explain the difference too. At the end Rev. Malloch spoke to us all about being ourselves, we might all be different, but that’s okay, we should be happy with who we are, and try to be the best we can be!

We continued with our STEM project. Working on our prototype, we made changes which we hoped would improve the performance of our vehicles! Next week we hope to make bigger models, so we would be grateful for any boxes and bits and bobs that we could use. Any old cars that we could take the wheels off of (or any little wheels you may have) would be very useful too. We hope to finish off our STEM challenge by building a land wind car that we can actually sit on, so any wood and old pram or small bike wheels would be very gratefully  welcomed and accepted!

We continued our STEM experience into our writing, when we wrote out the instructions on how we built our little cars, so that others could try to do it for themselves. We made sure that we set the instructions out properly and used good technical language, including imperative verbs!

As part of our topic work, we were split into pairs and given a research task to do. Each pair had to find out information about a Greek God or Goddess that they were given. We had to make sure that we had enough info to share with the rest of the class so that we can combine all the information to make a fact file about all the Gods and Goddesses.  Later on in the week we heard the Greek Legend of Pandora’s box.

Hannah came in to talk to us about Forest Schools. Next week we are starting a 5 week block on a Wednesday Afternoon, when we will move our classroom outside to learn and use new skills!

Rev. Malloch visited us on Thursday to spend time with us in our classroom. He told us all about Paul and why he is important to the Christian Faith.

“I enjoyed hearing all about Forest Schools from Hannah, and I am really looking forward to working with her and Tracy over the next 5 weeks”- Erin

“I liked doing our assembly, I really enjoyed Kuba’s and Sarah’s drama” – Katie

“I liked gym with Mrs Warden. We got to go outside” Natasha

“I loved doing the drama with Sarah. I liked that there was a comedic side to it” – Kuba

“I really enjoyed writing out the instructions for making a wind powered car.” – Sarah

“Making improvements to our cars was challenging and fun. We got to ‘steal’ other people’s ideas to help our own designs” – Brad

“It was good having Mr Tennant back, I like playing basketball” – Leah

” I enjoyed doing the game part with the rest of the school during our assembly” – Leon

“I though Basketball was brilliant” – Robbie G

“I’m looking forward to our visit to the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday” – Robbie McC

” I liked Mr Malloch’s talk and film about Paul. How he cahnged from hating Christians to becoming one, and how he changed his name from Saul to Paul” – Kieran McG