Miss Quinn

Thistle 2.12.22

This week in Thistle we have been working on using Teams to keep track of our learning throughout the week. We have been learning new skills when using a keyboard and using the Teams app. We are happy to share these assignments at home so parents can see and leave feedback too.

We have been enjoying PE outdoors and have been developing bat and ball skills as well as team work and team tactics when playing field games. We have been gaining confidence when following the rules of a game and taking time to reflect on how to manage our emotions when the game does not go the way we wanted.

In health we are focused on building up our self-esteem. We have been discussing together how negative words and environments can cause our self esteem to spiral downwards. We have been practising talking about the good things in our day and how to find the positives in any situation. We have also been working out how to turn a situation round and discovering that, with the right tools, no situation is too big.

We are very excited about Christmas and have began to learn about Christmas traditions all around the world. We are very excited to learn from other clans and find out what traditions that they have discovered!

Thistle 4.11.22

This week in Thistle we have been really enjoying our exploration of fables, myths and legends. We have been rotating between Bramble, Bluebell and Thistle and learning about Norse gods, origins of Scottish mythical creatures and Greek legends and their themes. We have been creating dioramas, plasticine models and booklets to share our learning. We have also been working on team projects across P5 in Bramble and Thistle. We have been using technology and books to investigate myths from around the world and then have been using our creativity to think of different ways to share these stories. Groups have been creating songs, pantomimes, dances, posters, quizzes and stop motion videos.

In literacy we have been exploring narrative writing. We have been focused on the plot, setting, characterisation and the key grammar of speech marks. We have been looking at how stories have changed over time and we have investigated the origins of Beauty and the Beast. We will begin to retell the story and make our own alterations to the story so that it becomes a unique retelling.

In maths we have been using a variety of materials to help us explore angles. We have learned that a right angle is 90 degrees and found out that bigger angles are obtuse and smaller are acute. We really enjoyed the right angle challenge where we had to use maths resources to make a shape with the most right angles in it.

In PE we have began to develop our skills in badminton, learning forehand, backhand and serving shots. We have been working in pairs to see how long we can rally for and next week we will be introducing a low hung net to begin to learn all the rules of a formal game.

Thistle Maths Week Scotland 30.9.22

This week we have been enjoying Maths Week Scotland. We have been hearing number through stories and then using the number concepts to help us better understand challenges in our own learning. For example, we read “A Million Dots” by Andrew Clements and then challenged ourselves by trying to do our own million dot wall, number ordering to a million and finding the craziest facts around one million. Some pupils enjoyed finding the roman numerals and others tried to work out what could be bought for £1,000,000.

We loved celebrating Calderwood Primary’s first birthday on Tuesday with a conga and a silent disco.

We have been working really hard on a research project on 3D shapes. Pupils have been using the assignment on teams to work to a criteria and then find a new and creative to share their learning. We are really excited to see what they come up with!

In STEM we have been exploring the respiratory system and investigating how our organs all work together.

We have been continuing to work on our Calderwood Cranium Consultants project, this week we have been using oil pastels to create artwork of neurons.

In PE we have enjoyed testing our stamina and balance and have been comparing our skills now to what we could do at the beginning of term.

Thistle Clan 9.9.22

This week in Thistle we have enjoyed moving our bodies and practicing our skills in balance and stamina. We have been using a variety of equipment to help us with static and dynamic balance.

We have also been investigating whole number and have enjoyed using a variety of different materials and resources to help us with numeracy activities and challenges this week.

We also have been continuing to look at different addition strategies in our Number talks. We have been talking about partitioning, friendly numbers and using a number line.

In French this week we consolidated our vocabulary from last week around hair colour and moved on to looking at eye colour. Children took time to ask “Tu et comment?” (What are you like?”) and had a go at answering both verbally and written. We then took a class survey of eye colour using our key vocabulary.

In writing we have been focused on the key features of description genre. We started off by writing a piece without any input to see what we could remember from last year. We have then been exploring a passage called “The Moon” and investigating the key features and vocabulary of a descriptive piece. This week we wrote a model together of what a good description looks like called “The Sun.” We will now use this piece to support us next week as we begin to write independently about the brain – related to our focus of Calderwood Cranium Consultants.

Here is the document we use to support us and help us self and peer assess a descriptive piece of writing. 1st & 2nd Level Narrative_self_peer_assessment_placemat

This Week in Thistle!

This week in Thistle clan we have been exploring our skills in balance during PE. We have been making balancing activities more challenging and then timing ourselves using stopwatches to see how long we can do them for.

We have also been looking at the strategy of partitioning during our number talks. We have been using progressively bigger numbers and have been practicing applying our strategy.

Here are some examples of how we have been laying out our partitioning answers;

In French we have begun to investigate hair descriptions, we have been taking our time to listen and repeat the key phrase “J’ai les cheveux…” and then we have begun building our vocabulary to describe hair colour, length and texture.

Finally we would like to share our health and wellbeing focus of Friendship. This week we have explored how to make and keep friends. We have enjoyed discussing personal experiences and giving advice to others. We created a friendship soup and added the ingredients we think make up a perfect friendship;

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