wlemma.hillan@glow – Page 12 – Deans Primary School Blog

This week in Primary 3

Primary 3 have been learning about Time in Numeracy. This week some of us have been showing our knowledge of half past the hour, whilst the rest of us have been sharing our knowledge of quarter past. We have been demonstrating this knowledge through communicating with everyone during the class teach, through recording it and also by playing some online Time games. This is something we will continue to explore and extend our knowledge of. Next week we will hopefully create our own clocks to help us.

In literacy this week we have been discussing the importance of comprehension and why it is necessary that we understand what we read. The children were able to explain how this helps them now for their own enjoyment of a text as well as being able to explain it to others, but also how these skills will be vital in the future when it comes to interviewing for a job as well as within the jobs we may pick. We decided that being able to understand text of any sort would be a key factor in all jobs. We have been using our group reading books to show our comprehension skills and we have been answering different types of questions to demonstrate this. Primary 3 have also started looking at the Blooms Superheroes who help us to use and develop our skills in Remembering, Understanding, Applying our own knowledge, Analysing, Evaluating and Creating within our reading.

P3 ‘Touring’ Scotland

This week we have been continuing to focus on ‘Oor Wee Tour of Scotland’ topic. We have been working individually and collaboratively with our class members as well as the pupils in P3/4 to complete our leaflets, factfiles and group posters; all of which provide information on a different city in Scotland. We have had to use good communication skills in order to gather and record our facts, as well as being mindful of the feelings of others and taking everyone’s opinions on board. We used our ICT skills as well as our skills in researching and recording of information. We discussed as a whole group how our work had to be ‘presentation perfect’, which means neat writing, colourful pictures and completed tasks. Our work is now getting to the completion stages and ready to be displayed for everyone to see! We are looking forward to ‘visiting’ another city soon, and this time we are going to be using our skills in drama to create a TV advert to tell others about our next city!

“I have enjoyed doing the poster because we got to work in groups and we could do pictures and writing.” commented Erin

“I enjoyed doing the leaflet because of all the writing we could put in and it helped me spell words that I didn’t know” said Joseph

“I liked doing the poster because it was nice working with people on this. We weren’t all doing the same but we did it together so it was all of our work!” commented Maisy

“I liked doing the group poster because it had four boxes that we could fill with lots of stuff.” said Daniel

Making Shortbread in Primary 3!

As part of our writing lesson we created recipes for making shortbread. This also linked nicely with our ‘Wee Tour of Scotland’ topic. On Wednesday the children in P3 were very lucky to get to make shortbread with Mrs Wood.

We started off by talking about the equipment we would need and checking we had it all, then we did the same for the ingredients. The pupils were very focused and engaged in the discussion. Mrs Wood picked 3 helpers to help her make the shortbread and the other children had the job of supporting these children to ensure they did everything correctly. We had to use our communication skills, our numeracy skills for adding and taking away as well as telling the time for the cooking time. We also used our maths skills for measuring out the ingredients.

After the shortbread had been made and was put in the oven, Mrs Wood selected some more helpers to help her clean and tidy up. Afterwards, once we had taken the shortbread out and left it to cool, we all enjoyed eating a bit!

Here are some comments from the class:

Kayleigh says “It was fun!”

Olivia said “If you want to make shortbread you use butter, sugar and flour.”

Ryley said the dough was “Really sticky!”

“I washed the dishes and then cleaned all the bubbles out” said Kullyn

“When I was tidying up it was very sticky!” commented Summer

The children gave the shortbread a big thumbs up!!!!!

Update from Primary 3

This week P3 have been demonstrating how well they can read to Mrs Hillan by reading their group readers to her. We have some very fluent readers in P3, as well as some children experimenting with using expression. Keep it up Primary 3!!

In Numeracy this week we have been looking at counting on and counting back. We used some Interactive games online to support this. We had to use our communication skills and collaboration skills in order to work together on these games.

As part of our ‘Wee Tour of Scotland’ we have looked at Edinburgh and Stirling this week. We have worked collaboratively on the laptops to find information to create factfiles and leaflets. We will work hard to complete these next week as well as hopefully looking at another city in Scotland.

Next week we will be making shortbread with Mrs Wood after us writing our own instructions for how to make shortbread last week.

Primary 3 have been enjoying Zumba during our PE time. The pupils were great at following the routines! The children had the opportunity to select which Zumba tracks to follow. Hopefully next week we can maybe try individuals leading learning through our own freestyle Zumba!

Busy Times in Primary 3!

This week in Primary 3 we have introduced our mini topic ‘Oor Wee Tour of Scotland’. We have been working alongside P3/4 which has seen us using the elements of our Social Intelligence Skills – collaboration, communication, leading learning within our groups and being aware of the feelings of others within our groups when listening to and accepting everyone’s answers. We created mind maps of what we already know about Scotland and then came together as a whole group to discuss what we would like to find out Scotland. P3/4 then helped us to locate the main cities of Scotland on a map. We used an atlas to help us.

We also all decided on our own New Year’s Resolutions which have now been displayed in class. It will be good to look back on these to see if we have managed to stick to them!

This week in Number Talks we have been looking at Making Ten. The pupils came up with lots of different sums to do this again this week. We were also very lucky to have Jemma from Nationwide in to visit us during our Numeracy time. She talked to us about her role within the Building Society and spoke to us about saving money. We got to see some of the fancy 50 pence pieces that have been in circulation too! Jemma very kindly brought each of us our own little piggy bank which we got to paint and take home!

Welcome back from P3!

Happy New Year from everyone in Primary 3! We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed the holidays.

Primary 3 have been working with Mrs Hillan at the start of this week and we enjoyed sharing how we spent our Christmas holidays. We had a Circle Time and took turns to share the things we had done over the holidays as well as anything exciting we did on Christmas Day or New Year. This was a good opportunity to refresh our memories of the 4 skills from our Skills 4.0 document, focusing on Social Intelligence, using communication and being aware of our own feelings and the feelings of others. It was lovely to share what a wonderful time we all had!

We began reading the story of Greyfriar’s Bobby as a class. The children have done a super job of recalling the story so far and we have created our own versions of the cover of the book including something we heard about in the story so far. Some children chose to draw Bobby up in the Pentland Hills when he first ran away and met his new owner, Auld Jock. Others chose to draw Bobby following Jock to Edinburgh and visiting the busy city. The children came up with lots of options to choose from.

Primary 3 also revisited our Number Talks in Numeracy this week by finding out how many ways we could make the number 5. The children were keen to share all the different ways they found. Some pupils used addition skills, some used subtraction skills and a number of them used multiplication. There were a few children who even included all 3 skills in one sum!

Mrs Hillan has been very impressed with Primary 3 and looks forward to continuing to work with them whilst Mrs Buntin is absent. Well done P3, keep up the good work!

First News Group

The P7 group working with Mrs Hillan using First News Comprehension are starting to really get into this! They are enjoying looking at a variety of real-life news articles and completing questions on these as well as giving their opinions on certain parts of the subject matter. The pupils earn points with each correct answer and can also gain extra points with their written responses when giving their opinions.

Lewis said his biggest success today was “answering more questions correctly and gaining more points.”

When asked what she enjoyed most, Katy said “I enjoyed the Mouse Deer activity.” This was due to it being a unique creature that she hadn’t come across before!

Jack said “I learned how to read more carefully today!”

P6 meet Nursery Buddies

Primary 6 have been enjoying getting to know their nursery buddies. These will be the children that P6 will work with and support when they move onto P7 and P1.

Primary 6 have spent some time in the nursery itself, as well as having time outside in the playground with their buddies.

Maycee said “I played with my buddy outside with the basketball. We had a nice time together!”

Robbie commented “I drew a picture for my buddy. She is adorable.”

Emma said “My buddy and I played with the doll house in the nursery. It was lots of fun.”

Jessica said “I liked it when I played tig with my buddy.”

Rebecca commented “My buddy is really cute and nice! Me and her played in the house with the baby dolls and we also played outside together.”

P6 Sharing the Learning

P6 invited parents/carers in to share in their learning with them. They gave presentations on what they have learned so far on The Rainforest. The children made up these presentations in their groups, thinking of what they wanted to say and also adding in some good questions for their audience.

Afterwards P6 shared pieces of drama that they had written the scripts for. The children enjoyed acting these out in front of their audience.

P6 did a great job and we hope everyone who came along enjoyed sharing our learning with us! Thank you again for supporting us!

Fractions Fun outside!

Primary 6 enjoyed enhancing their fractions knowledge in the outdoors. A quiz was set up around the playground area that contained various fractions related questions and each question came with a clue. Once all questions were answered and all clues collected, we then had to use the clues to work out the secret message at the end. The children worked well in their pairs and enjoyed taking Maths outdoors.