Author: Mr Turner

Outdoor Learning

Primary 4 started the week off with outdoor learning with Mr Turner. The children continued learning about fables and the morals that are a feature of these tales. P4 were given the task of using natural resources in the surrounding area to help them to create a detailed setting for their fables to take place. Using their clay animal that they had made last week the pupils planned their stories and came up with a moral to their story. After the children then confidently performed, their fables and the audience were set the task of trying to guess the moral of the stories.

 

Literacy

Primary 4 have also been sharing their knowledge and understanding of nouns, adjectives and verbs this week. The children were showing confidence while sharing what they already knoe or now know about these and how they could and will now use them in their writing.

“I know that I am a noun” (Derry)

“I enjoyed learning about these and I can now challenge myself to use these in my writing” (Lewis)

Also in literacy this week the children were challenged to show their knowledge of spelling patterns and sounds as there has been a strong focus towards spelling this week at Deans. The children all worked super hard during these sessions and showed great enthusiasm towards the discussion of unfamiliar words and sounds.

Numeracy

We continued to explore addition using chimney sums with 2,3 and 4 digit numbers with carrying. The children found this a challenge and were able to express this during group and individual discussions. They are now beginning to understand the process of carrying over and that it may be tricky at times but to keep going with it.

“I found it a challenge as I got mixed up with where to place the numbers I was carrying over” (Derry)

“It was fun” (Kayleigh)

“It was hard because I had to remember to add in the numbers I had carried over to the next column” (Shay)

Novel Study/ IDL

P4 used their activing skills this week to work as part of a group to act out a scene from what we have read so far in our class novel ‘Billionaire Boy’. The audience had to try and guess which scene it was.

“It was fun because I like performing to the group” (Summer)

The children also used their learning from this week to write a detailed character description of one of the main characters from our novel. P4 were confident in their knowledge of adjectives and could discuss how they could use these to describe Joe Spud in detail.

To round this off the class were to imagine that they were all tour guides and asked to describe Joe’s house. They shared all of the wonderful things he had in his house. After our class discussion P4 then drew detailed maps of Joe’s house ‘Bumfresh Towers’ with all the different rooms, materials and wacky decorations that they were able to imagine from the story.

P.E

For P.E this week, we participated in a series of races. This enabled the children to work together showing great teamwork and support to their peers when racing. They were also able to display their stamina and work on controlling their speed and body movement for each of the different kinds of races.

P.E

We continued with our block of athletics. This week the children were learning about throwing for height and distances. To warm ourselves up we played a game of human skittles. This allowed the children to understand the different kind of throws that are needed in different situations. It also gave the children an opportunity to revise their jumping skills as the balls were rolling towards them.

Maths 

This week the children continued exploring money. The learning this week focused on subtraction from a total amount, this also links in with what we are learning in our numeracy work. This will help the children to deepen their understanding of how money works when we start with an amount and then we purchase something we end up with less. Maybe the children can use this knowledge when spending their pocket money!

Topic

P3/4 and P3 came together this week to rehearse the final run through of their t.v adverts. The children were given the opportunity to expand their skills in listening and talking, collaboration and leadership within this lesson. After, the children then performed their adverts to the class. These performances were recorded and played back to them the following day. The children all done an amazing job convincing their audience why people should visit Glasgow.

Sharing The Learning

P3/4 and I would like to say thank you again to all of the parents/carers that joined us on Tuesday afternoon for our sharing the learning session. The children really enjoyed having you all there. The focus of this lesson was exploring persuasive language and looking at how we can do this in an advertisement. The children and parent/carers were as to create a poster convincing tourists to swap the high temperatures and to spend some time in our beautiful country. The end results of this tasks were fantastic, so a massive well done from me! There was some great taglines using persuasive language and the pictures were detailed and bright of some of the amazing landmarks that this country has to offer.

Another great week P3/4! See you all again on Monday!

 

Well it has been a shorter week this week in P3/4.

Numeracy

In numeracy  this week we have continued to explore different strategies to use in subtraction. Last week the circles were introduced to the inverse rule of addition and subtraction within numbers up to 100. This week they continued to use this strategy to check their answers to an addition problem. They were able to achieve this by reversing the process and using a subtraction sum to see if their answer was correct in the addition sum. The triangles and rectangles were introduced to this strategy this week. They were challenged to use the inverse rule working with numbers up to 20. The children were able to use their knowledge of number facts of numbers within 20 to successfully use this strategy. The children were given an extra challenge, they were asked to try using this strategies

Topic

P3/4 and P3 continued working on ‘Oor Wee Tour of Scotland’ topic. The children worked collaboratively in their groups to create  a dramatatised advert to encourage tourism in Glasgow. The children were to use their acting skilss to show what Glasgow has to offer and why people should visit. The children were also tasked with writing their own script of facts about Glasgow today and Glasgow in the past.

The children were given the opportunity lead their own learning by working in their groups and sharing ideas with one one another. This really helped the children to solidify their idea for an advert and how they would present. The children then were given the chance to do a practice run, this allowed feedback from their peers with a clear picture of any next steps needed to tighten up their advert for when they come to recording it.

Literacy 

We used our dictionary skills to locate this weeks spelling words. the children were asked to find the definition of the word and write them next to their spelling words. The children enjoy using this strategy. Next the children will be asked to use a thesaurus to find words of a similar meaning. This will help them expand their vocabulary and attain an understanding of when and how to use different words.

The children continued their block of athletics in P.E this week. We explored they different ways in which to throw objects depending on their weight and size. We have linked this to our knowledge of force and motion in science.

We have also continued to work with P3 in our ‘Oor wee tour of Scotland’ topic. We worked hard this week to finish our leaflets, posters and fact files that are full of fantastic and interesting facts about these wonderful cities in the past and present. This allowed the children to showcase their collaborative and communication skills, by helping and listening to others ideas and using all these great suggestions in their work.

In R.E this week the children were introduced to the six key beliefs of Islam and also explored the five pillars of this faith. The children did a fantastic job of working in their groups to act out each of these five pillars.

To end our fantastic week we had our participation Friday. We were lucky enough to get a visit from S3 pupils from Dean’s Community High School. They had come in to help the P3/4 children explore ‘My World of Work’. This resource provides children with the opportunity to create a work profile. This links in to Deans Primary Schools focus on work skills 4.0. The children really enjoyed answering questions about their personality and  traits. At the end of this the children are given an animal that best fits them, this is also followed by different career suggestions that the children’s skills would work well in. After the children had completed this on their ‘My World of Work’ profile the children then drew themselves in the career that grabbed their interest the most and they drew their animal logo at the top. Well done P3/4 you were all brilliant during participation Friday and have done Deans proud!

 

I hope you all have a lovely weekend!

 

In PE this week we all tested our stamina by taking part in the bleep test. This followed on from two session of our focus had been on our running and breathing skills.

“It was really hard, but i liked how everyone joined in” Anton

In maths and numeracy this week P3/4 were learning more about money and how we can use different coins to make a certain amount.

“I liked working which coins I could use to make a set amount” Grace

We also expanded our knowledge of subtraction this week. We were focusing on subtracting using multiples of 10 and bridging through 10.

“I really enjoyed challenging myself with these number strategies” Sophie

We also did a carousel of weighing activities in class. We had to predict our answer and then check it out. We used lots of skills in our groups like collaborating and communicating.Good work P.3/4.

This week we continued working on our ‘ Oor Wee toor’ of Scotland with the P3’s. The children were set the task of creating a poster to present facts about Aberdeen that they had researched.

This has been another great week of learning. Well done P3/4! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

We started off our week with Money Monday. We revisted our prior knowledge in this numeracy topic and used our concrete materials (coins) to show different ways of making an amount. The children were fantastic at showing and explaining what different coins they had used to show a total amount.

In PE we continued with our Athletics. This week we put our running skills that we learned about last week to the test. This week we focused on running over objects. the children worked in teams to complete and obstacle rely. The first team to all be seated won the race. Tiring work!

P3 and 3/4 worked together this week to explore another of our wonderful Scottish cities. This week we stopped of in Stirling. The children were asked to research facts about this city and encourage tourism by creating a leaflet full of information and facts about this historical city.

We discussed Robert Burns this week and listened to ‘To a mouse’. After we designed our own kilts using our knowledge of tartan ,colours and patterns.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Enjoy your haggis, neeps and tatties!

We have had another busy week in P3/4 this week.

We started our mini topic this week. Our ‘wee tour’ of Scotland. We worked collaboratively with P3 as we explored the names of the different cities in Scotland. P3/4 helped the P3 pupils use an Atlas to discover and correctly place our Scottish cities on a blank map of Scotland. The children also shared some interesting facts that they already know about this amazing country. We completed mind maps to show our prior knowledge of this topic and also came up with some things that we would like to discover.

Keeping with our Scottish themed topic we looked at how to make Scottish Shortbread in our literacy lesson this week. The children were given the instructions, however, these were all jumbled up and the children had to write these in the correct order. But before that we discussed the language that is used in instruction writing. The children were also set the task to include sentence openers that flowed in a sequence of events. Such as: First, next, then and finally. The children really enjoyed this lesson and to expand on this they will use the instructions that they have ordered correctly to make shortbread next week. Look out for a special delivery next week!

Also in literacy the children were introduced to a number of new spelling strategies this week that will help with their spelling words for this week. One of the strategies had the children exploring alphabetical order and showed them that its not always the first letter that we go by. Ask your child to show you some of these spelling strategies.

The children were continuing to work on addition this week. We were using the chimney sum strategy as this has proved tricky for some of the children in the class, especially carrying over those cheeky 1’s! If the children could practice these at home that would be brilliant as we are moving on to subtraction strategies next week.

Thank you for all your continued support and encouragement. Have a lovely weekend.

Happy New year!

It was lovely to see all the children back happy, healthy and ready for the new term.

To start the week off the children and I shared how we all spent our Christmas holidays. We sat around in a circle and took turns talking. This was a great way to practice one of our 4 skills from our skills 4.0 document. This document focuses on what makes a good work force and this term we are focusing mainly on social intelligence. It was nice to hear that they all had a nice time off and that Santa was good to them.

On Wednesday we explored what New Year’s resolutions were and discussed why people set these for themselves. The children then had a look back at 2019 and shared what they enjoyed the most about last year. Focusing on the feelings skill from skills 4.0 the children then came up with their own New year’s resolutions. The children thought about aspects of their learning  and what it was that they would like to improve going forward. There were some great goals set during this task!

This week we have also worked hard to finish our Viking helmets, it was a lovely task to finish our Viking topic. They have all done a fantastic job with these. 

We also closed our Viking topic with an exciting drama lesson. The children loved this lesson and all are budding performers. The children were asked to act out a scenario in which they played estate agents and had to sell a long house to potential buyers. The children were displaying great communication, collaborative and leadership skills throughout this lesson. They worked well together in their small groups to produce some great pieces of improvisation.

Well Done P3/4!

I hope you all have a lovely Weekend!

What a quick week it has been? The children have been super excited all week. They have worked very hard this week in all their activities.

At the start of the week we had a visitor in class. Mrs Hipsey came in to help us to design our very own Christmas themed plate. All the designs were fantastic. They can’t wait to take them home and start using them over the Christmas holidays. After the children had used the porcelain pens and paint Mrs Hipsey whisked them away to bake them. They have arrived just in time.

We all attended our Christmas party this week too! They all look so smart in their party clothes. We joined Primary 3 and 4 to dance away to Christmas tunes and play some party games. There was a very special visitor at the party and he gave all the children an early gift before his rounds on Christmas Eve.

This week we also began to make our very own viking helmets. This process is still ongoing and will be finished the first week back. We thoroughly enjoyed the  paper mache experience and we especially enjoyed the mess.

The children have also explored visual literacy this week. We looked at two winter themed pictures and discussed how these could be turned into a great story. The children had some great ideas. We made sure to include similes and adjectives to make our story more interesting. We discussed what characters our stories would include and describe what they would be like.

The children have been fantastic this week. They have had an eventful and creative week! I hope you all have a fantastic Christmas and I am looking forward to seeing you all again in 2020.

Numeracy

In numeracy we continued exploring different number strategies to help with tightening our skills in addition. We we using chimney sums again this week, however, this time we had to carry over numbers. The class found this challenging but with plenty of peer and whole class discussion they were off!

Literacy

In literacy this week we were reading pages from our class novel. The children were asked to read through these pages and highlight any adjectives they could find. After, the children were then asked to use dictionaries to find the definition of these words and a thesaurus to find alternative words.

Nativity/Festivities

Our P3 pupils did an excellent job in all of their performances this week. We would like to say a BIG thank you to all of our friends and family for your support during these performances.

The children all looked fab in their Christmas jumpers this week! They also enjoyed their Christmas lunches this week. Plenty of Christmas cheer!

P.E

We continued learning our Scottish dances. This week we focused on the Military two step. The children really enjoyed learning this dance and picked up the steps quite quickly.

Well done P3/4 another fantastic week. You have all worked so hard this weekend! Well done!

12 MORE SLEEPS!

We are looking forward to our Christmas party next week. I’m sure we will all have a great time!