Month: December 2021

This week in Numeracy we have been doing some Christmas Numeracy which has helped us to recap and reinforce our addition, subtraction, multiplication and division skills.

 

In Literacy we have been continuing our class novel ‘The Christmasaurus and The Winter Witch’. We are really enjoying this. Here are some of our thoughts so far:

Ciaran – It’s very exciting to listen to the second book!

Kayleigh – It’s really exciting because I like how the Christmasaurus helps Santa.

Jessica – It is fun to listen to Mrs Hillan reading the book because when she stops it is good to think of what will happen next.

Lewis D – I liked it when we met a new person called Sub-Zero!

Ariah – I like that we have read the first book and now we are getting to read the second book.

In Writing we have written some Christmas/Winter related narrative stories. Some of these are below for you to enjoy!

 

We also watched a Pantomime, which was Aladdin. Here is what we thought of it:

Chloe – It was funny when the boy dressed up as a girl.

Lewis R – It was a little bit funny because the girl was dressed as Aladdin.

Erin P – It was funny because whenever the mum came in, Aladdin went behind her doing silly things.

Gracie – It was funny because Aladdin was doing Tik Tok dances and the mum tried it but kept on failing.

 

We have also taken part in some STEM activities too. We worked alongside Mrs Hillan to create a snowstorm in a jar. This is what we had to do:

1. Fill the jar about half of the way full with baby oil. In a separate bowl, blend water and a few tablespoons of  white paint.
2. Add glitter and blue food coloring to the oil, and then top off the jar with water and paint mixture.Don’t fill the jar  to the very top, make sure it is only about a maximum of three-fourths full.
3. Drop the Alka-Seltzer tablet into the jar and take a step back. The Alka-Seltzer tablet will activate and you can watch the storm whirl in the jar right before your eyes!

Mrs Hillan has said we will hopefully have a chance to do this individually/in pairs after the holidays when more people have brought in jars/bottles.

Sophie G – I think it was so cool that it looked like there was a snowstorm!

Rihanna – I think it was really fun to watch and to see the paint etc go up and mix.

Holly – It was really cool – it looked really cool in the jar.

 

We also completed a ‘Dancing Salt’ activity where we looked at the effect of vibrations created by soundwaves on salt which was sitting on clingfilm on the top of a bowl and then placed next to a speaker. We also tried this with sugar and rice.

Kayleigh – I thought it was really cool how the salt moved when the speaker was near playing music.

Jessica – It was cool to watch it dance.

Erin R – It was interesting how the rice didn’t dance like the others. This was because it was heavier than the others and more difficult for it to dance.

 

We also had our Silent Disco which was great fun!! Mrs Hillan was impressed with our dance moves!!!

It has been a fun week of learning this week!

Literacy

In literacy, we continued to develop our skimming and scanning skills when answering questions about the text. We are learning to write our answers in full sentences.

In writing, we had to persuade the reader that Christmas is the best! As a class, we brainstormed our arguments. Then, we had to use the correct structure of persuasive writing and add in bossy, powerful language to make the reader to believe our arguments.

Maths

This week, we continued to develop our addition skills. We developed our skills of using the column addition strategy. We were also learning to regroup.

IDL

We have been enjoying being on the stage to practice our nativity. We cannot wait to film it.

Literacy

We have continued to work on our stations during ELF. We were working on our spelling sound of the week, tricky words, sentence structure, comprehension and reading! (Yes, we are very busy!) The children have worked hard in their final week of ELF.

Topic

The boat test!!! We are happy to report that all boats were able to float for the 10-second challenge. The children identified some things that they would like to change so we might revisit this challenge next term.

   

We also created some very colourful Turtles in relation to our topic. The children are very proud of their work!

I hope you have a lovely weekend 🙂

What a lovely week we’ve had!  We had our digital learning day on Tuesday.  We learnt how to use digital technologies to upload documents in glow.

We have been learning to write story plots based on Christmas.  We proofread and edited sentences and for reading, we used the internet to research information for our class talk.

For numeracy and maths, we have been revising and consolidating the concepts we have learnt throughout the term.

We had a great time making Christmas decorations too.

Monday 6th

Maths: continuing our work on algebra this morning we looked at function machines. MM and SU continued their work on word problems. ShP was again pleased with the work he produced.

Literacy: summarising group reading books. MiD was especially pleased with the neatness of the presentation of his work. We finished reading “Macbeth” as a class.

PE: Continuing activities based on balancing, we focused this week on tightrope walking – only about six inches above the ground! AS showed her previous experience gained from doing bar work in gymnastics and MM also excelled.

Tuesday 7^th

Literacy: made notes on “Macbeth” and re-wrote these as a summary. SD, DW, KH, SP excelled in their summary, and especially AS, who has really trimmed the fat off her writing.

Maths: continuing our work on algebra this morning we looked at using symbols instead of numbers and the functions. SJR excelled, and did two sets of work. MM, SD and SU continued their work on word problems.

Wednesday 8^th

Out-door learning and Tuckshop with Mrs D

Maths: practicing instant recall of tables using BMBT, working on the application of tables to problems on Ed. City, with the children able to choose an activity appropriate to themselves. EY significantly improved her score in BMBT.

Literacy: continuing work on “Macbeth”.

Thursday 9^th

Maths: created beautiful posters demonstrating the wonderful maths we have been doing this year. SU, MM, AS and EY all excelled. In fact the whole class excelled in this activity.

Literacy: spelling assessment. Again the whole class were extremely pleased as the great emphasis we have put on spelling recently has paid off and everyone  has progressed really well. We also continued work on “Macbeth”. ShP was especially proud of the fact that he was able to incorporate his learning in this into the next activity:

Art: creating drawings of myths and legends from around the world. AD, SoP, JH, EC, AS and SB were especially proud of the work they did.

Friday 10^th

PE: football, star of the match was MxD.

Maths: algebra using letters instead of symbols and briefly looking at equivalence, which MxD showed a good understanding.

Literacy: looked at some of the best examples of persuasive writing, CB, SB, AD, DW and EY excelled in this.

 

 

We have had another busy week in Primary 5 and we started it off with a very fun day of Digital Learning on Monday! We worked in 3 groups – one on typing skills, one on making Stop Frame Animation and one on coding. We discussed how these skills will be useful for us not only now, but in the future when we are looking to get jobs. Most, if not all jobs nowadays, use digital technologies.

Here are our thoughts on our Digital Learning Day:

Chloe – It was fun playing the typing game and doing the coding.

Ryley – I enjoyed when we were doing the typing skills as we could figure out without looking, where to put our fingers.

Giullia – It was really exciting to do the lego for the coding.

Erin R – When I did the stop frame animation it was very fun, and when I did the coding on the ipad, it was also very fun!

Ciaran – It was really good to know how to type fast as you can get to different websites on the internet faster.

Sophie C – I enjoyed doing the coding with the lego with Rihanna. It didn’t really work out but it was still fun!

Summer – It was really good for a change instead of doing maths, reading etc.

Kullyn – It was really exciting when we were doing the stop frame animation.

 

Here are some photos of us:

In Numeracy we have been back looking at our Division skills. We have been trying hard to remember that we can use our knowledge of our times tables to help with this.

In Literacy this week, we have written a letter to Santa to persuade him to visit us this year with some presents. Here were some of the reasons we gave:

Ciaran – I said I was kind at school.

Erin P – I said that I make my bed every morning.

Ryley – I said I have been feeding my dog every single day.

Chloe – I said I do the dishes every day.

Ariah – I said that I take my dog out every second day of the week.

In topic we have continued our research. Here are some pictures showing our International Space Station drawings and our research so far on what we have learned from space explorations:

We are looking forward to next week when we will have more learning, but also our Silent Disco! We must remember to practise for Deans Got Talent if we want to audition for this on the 17th!