Author: wlemma.hillan@glow

This week in P5 we have continued with our digital learning. We learned more in coding so that we were able to make several items move on a screen at one time. We were very engaged in this and excited to see how many items we could get moving at once.

Chloe – I liked when we could make our own code because I figured out you could make your own background and I made a house.

Gracie – I liked how we could move all the characters around, it was fun!

Lewis R – I liked the coding because it was fun that you could make your own background.

Giullia – It was really fun how we could tell the little characters what to do. It was really interesting!

Kayleigh – I really liked moving the characters around.

Ariah – I liked how you could make the characters move and decorate the background.

Sophie C – It was really cool how we got to move the characters around and we got to choose where they went. We could also change the background.

Matthew – I liked that we could multiply the characters and could change the characters to get different colours.

Sophie G – It was how we could customise our own background.

In Numeracy we worked on dividing by 9 and 7 in one group and then linking division and multiplication and dividing 3 digit numbers in the other groups. It is still apparent that for many of us, we need to learn our tables as we don’t all know these yet. Mrs Hillan has given us times table and division charts home on a few occasions so that we have these at home to practise. Mrs Hillan encourages us to do this when we can!

 

In Literacy we have made predictions on the next part of our stories. This week, some of our groups were asked to try and find evidence from our text to support our thinking.

In spelling this week we made wordsearches using our spelling words and we also practised them with a partner using Spelling Tennis:

In Writing this week, we used our maps we created last week to write our own adventure stories. We had to remember to include a problem and resolution.

 

In topic we have started creating some Celtic families. In our groups we created a family which contained at least 2 adults and some children. We started drawing these family members and recorded some information about them below their pictures. We decided on family names and had to make sure that they were dressed appropriately for Celtic times. We will continue these next week, ready for our class display.

This week in Primary 5 we have been very lucky to start sessions on digital learning with the help of Mrs Buntin. We are beginning by looking at coding. This week we spoke about creating algorithms and we made some up to make BeeBot move to make a chosen digital number by going forward, left, right or backwards:

We are excited to learn more next time! Here are some pictures of us this week:

In Reading we have gone back to revisit our prediction skills. We did these for our group readers this week. Here are some we made:

Sophie C – Fern is going to go back to the barn and Wilbur is going to be missing.

Sophie G – I think that Fern’s mum is going to start believing the stories that Fern has been telling and she will go to the barn and see Wilbur and Charlotte etc all talking.

Erin R – I think that when all the kids go to see the Queen, the castle is going to stink-bombed.

Ariah – I think crickets are going to wake up Wilbur. He is then going to go to Fern’s house and Charlotte is going to go and look for him, then get lost.

Jessica – I think that when Mr Stofflees is finished painting that the tiger is going to come to life.

 

In Spelling we practised our words by writing them in alphabetical order. This was challenging, especially when some of our words started with the same letter! We also selected some other tasks to help us practise our words.

In Writing we created a new narrative story. This week we took some inspiration from our class novel where one of the characters was briefly taken back in time to when he was born. Then Mrs Hillan showed us part of a story she had created, but this time her character went into the future! We used these stories to then create a plan first, then used this to write our own Adventure in Time stories, remembering that we needed to include a problem and resolution. Please have a look at us hard at work and read some of our stories below:

In Numeracy this week we have continued using our division skills and we have worked hard using the SHM textbooks. One group have looked at dividing by 10, 100 and 1000’s and the other has worked on dividing by 2, 4, 5 and 8.

In topic, we have put our Space topic on hold to do a Scottish Mini topic on The Celts. We have started this week by creating a thought shower together of what we know, what we would like to know and how we can find out. The Blue shows what we already know, the Orange shows what we would like to find out and the Green shows how we might find out:

 

 

Happy New Year from Primary 5! We hope everyone is safe and well!

We are excited to be back at school for a new term and looking forward to learning lots of new things.

This week we have spent some time discussing our New Year’s Resolutions and what these mean. Here are some of the resolutions we have made:

Daniel – To be a better drawer.

Ryley – To feed my dog and play with my dog more.

Erin P – To learn to play football.

Erin R – To play a full song on my trombone.

Lewis D – To take my skills in football to the next step.

Chloe – To spend more time with my family.

Ciaran – To get better at football.

We have also discussed what we really liked about last year and our hopes and goals for this year. Here are some of them:

In our writing this week we have started our new genre of Narrative writing. We discussed how this is where we can really let our imaginations run wild! We have to work on giving lots of details for characters, setting etc. We started off this week by looking at the example in the big book, which was all about a Great BMX Race. We discussed this piece and then thought about races or competitions that we have taken part in and this is what we wrote about. Here are some pictures of us busy writing our stories:

Some of us also shared our stories with the class:

In Numeracy we have been continuing to work on our division skills and started off by testing each other on our knowledge so far. We have also worked on our Number Talk skills, looking at the place value of numbers to work out our answers.

Next week we look forward to some more new learning!

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!

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!

This week in Primary 5 we have been working hard!

In Numeracy we have been busy taking part in the Sumdog competition. We have been excited to see where we are in the leader board, and we have been trying our best to get better and better!! Here is what the children had to say about it:

Ariah – It was really fun and I got on the leader board in Junk Pile.

Ciaran – It was fun sharing the laptop with my friends. I like getting on the leader board!!

Erin R – I like playing Powerboat and right now I am top of the leader board in that game!

Caelan – I was playing Cannonball and I got second on the leader board out of the full school!

Holly – It was fun to see where we were on the leader board.

Lewis R – It was fun playing with my friends.

Sophie C – I liked playing Cannonball and I got third on the leader board!

Olivia – I enjoyed playing Sumdog and as I was playing, it turned out I was in fourth place.

Here we are trying to get super scores on the competition:

 

In Writing this week we have completed our Persuasive writing assessment. We had the topic of ‘Why Should We Look After the World?’. This brought about some good discussion on climate change, global warming, recycling (which linked to last week’s topic) and the extinction of animal species. Here we are showing off our work or busy at work:

 

In Spelling this week we did a task where we wrote out our words, but left a letter missing. Someone from our group had to fill in the missing letter. We could extend this next time by missing out more than one letter!

In Reading we have been enjoying our group readers and also our reading for enjoyment texts. We have tried to continue Stop, Drop and Read when we can, since we enjoyed it so much. We have also completed a comprehension task, which used our skills in answering questions, but also linked to our topic as it was about Planet Earth. Here are some facts we learned from this:

Lewis D – The Earth takes 24 hours to do a full spin on its axis.

Matthew – It takes the Earth 17 milliseconds to increase speed.

Caelan – The Sun is as far away from Earth as 150,000km!

Erin R – The lowest point on Earth is Challenger Deep.

 

In topic this week we completed a STEM task called Fizzy Moon. We needed to use paint, bicarbonate of soda and vinegar. Here is what we had to do:

1: Fill up a small spray bottle with vinegar and set aside.

2: In a few separate cups, for every 1/2 tablespoon of paint, mix with a tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda.

3: Draw a circle on a piece of black card.

4: Use the paint brushes to paint the Moon with shades of blue (the paint needed to be thick). Let the Moon dry and draw a few stars around it with a white crayon or marker.

5: Once the moon painting is completely dry, use the spray bottle to squirt vinegar onto it and watch it fizz.

This was great fun to do, but we weren’t so happy about our classroom stinking of vinegar!! Here are some photos of our STEM task:

Also in topic we have begun researching what we have learned from Space Explorations. We will have some facts to share on this next week hopefully!

 

We have had a busy week in Primary 5 this week.

In Numeracy we have continued looking at Place Value and larger numbers in general.

We worked together on some number talks this week too. We looked at Friendly Numbers. We could see how if you worked out the answer to one question, then you could use this to easily answer a question with similar numbers involved.

 

In Literacy we have been practising our spelling words this week by creating some spelling rainbows and some partner work. We played Spelling Tennis this week, where we spelled out our words whilst passing the ball back and forth on each letter.

 

In Reading we have revisited our predicting skills this week. We used where we were in our group readers, to then make predictions of what we thought might happen next. Here are some of our predictions:

Chloe – Gran, Biff and Chip will make something to stop the builders of the motorway.

Lewis D – I thought that Superdog was going to save everyone he knew and around him.

Sophie C – I think the pig is going to be sad because he can’t make a web like the spider.

Jessica – I thought that there was going to be a thief and the dog will try to scare him.

Erin R – I predicted that dad was going to snap and that would make Jimi-Luke be alive again.

Caelan – Since the pig can’t make a web, he is going to try to get out of his pen and find lots of string to tie together.

 

In Writing we have continued our genre of Persuasive Writing. We wrote pieces this week about why recycling was important. Here are some of our thoughts and some of us working on our pieces:

Sophie C – I think recycling is very important for the environment.

Gracie – I think recycling makes everyone happy.

Kayleigh – I enjoyed writing about recycling so now everyone knows how to recycle.

Lewis R – Recycling helps the environment.

 

In topic we have been creating images of our Solar System as well as doing some research on the International Space Station. We will continue more research next week. Some of us worked with Mrs Hillan on creating a rocket for our display.

We are looking forward to more new learning next week!

This week has been Scottish Book Week and Primary 5 have been very engaged in this.

We have been involved in various activities such as ‘Stop, Drop & Read’ where we would get a signal to stop what we were doing and start reading! Mrs Hillan brought her book too!

PUPIL THOUGHTS:

Gracie – It was fun to do!

Summer – It was a good opportunity to read our books.

Erin R – I liked that we had to drop everything, even writing, and just pick up our books.

Ciaran – It was quite good that we kind of got better at reading from this.

Iona – I found this a relaxing time to read.

Ryley – I found it relaxing how it was nice and peaceful, for everyone to just hear the voice inside their head.

 

 

We also had some time to discuss books we like and our thoughts on reading in general:

Olivia – This week has been fun because I like to read. I really like to continue my book at Stop, Drop and Read.

Kayleigh – I liked when we stopped what we were doing and just read.

Sophie G – I am reading ‘A series of unfortunate events’ and I’m really enjoying it!

Chloe – I’m reading a book called ‘Mr Nobody’s Eyes’ and it is by Michael Morpurgo.

Lewis D – I’m reading a book called ‘Mr Skip’. I like it!

Lewis R – I’m reading a book called ‘Cool’ by Michael Morpurgo.

Ariah – I’m reading ‘Awful Auntie’ by David Walliams and it is really good!

We had fun making ourselves into Professors of Hogwarts too! We had to give ourselves a name, say what we taught, which house we were part of and what our skills were. Here are some of our ideas:

We had lots of fun designing costumes for a book character, which we then recreated using recycled materials we had brought from home. Here are some of our designs in the making:

Here we are creating our costumes:

Here are some of our finished costumes!! We had lots of fun making these!

Another activity we have enjoyed this week, is watching Author’s Live, where we got to see some author’s talk about their stories.

In Numeracy we have continued looking at Place Value. We worked on testing a partner on their knowledge of this. We asked the types of questions Mrs Hillan has been asking us, such as “What is the value of the hundreds digit?” or “What value does the number 9 hold in this number?” etc.

 

 

In Writing we completed some persuasive pieces on Why Writing is Important. As we wrote, some of us read parts of our writing aloud. We also had an opportunity to peer assess each other’s work.

We are looking forward to more new learning next week!