Category: Primary 5

Despite it only being a short week we have still worked hard!

Maths

This week in our ongoing learning about fractions we recapped how to find fractions of amounts and practised finding equivalent fractions.

Monika – Fractions was hard but fun!

Leigha – I enjoyed learning different ways of working things out.

We also played fraction games to reinforce our learning.

After practising the x9 table for the last few weeks we are now going to practise the x3 table for the next two weeks before having a test.

Big Maths – More of us beat our score this week and we were very happy about that!

Literacy 

We have been learning about how to write persuasively.

Princess – I enjoyed doing the advert because I like designing things.

Shantell – I enjoyed the adverts – it was fun.

R.M.E.

Using the laptops we researched the meaning of Christian artefacts.

Health

We found out what would happen to our bodies if we misused alcohol.

Hannah – I enjoyed learning about the effects alcohol can have on the body.

Aleena – It was very interesting.

Art

We continued our learning about how line is important when drawing. The work of Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro was considered before we went on to complete some expressive work. Some of us drew a person with spaghetti, nails or string for hair and then we tried to draw a hairy spider.

Samuel really enjoyed this work. He thought it was fun!

Mason-I liked the art.

Keris – My favourite part was drawing the hairy spiders.

P.E.

Bella – I enjoyed flicking the ball in P.E. when we played hockey.

New Topic – WWII

Next week we will start learning about WWII.

Lewis – I enjoyed the WWII brainstorm. I am looking forward to our new topic.

STEM

In our class some people entered the school design competition and their brilliant designs earnt them a certificate. The overall class winner won a ‘Build a Volcano’ set.

 

Literacy

This week we have been learning about the features of persuasive texts.

In spelling we learnt about how to spell different homophones – words that sound the same but are spelt differently and have different meanings.

Lewis – I enjoyed learning about homophones.

Maths

This week we learnt about mixed number fractions and how to find fractions of amounts.

Bella – I found it tricky but fun!

Aleena – I enjoyed the fractions of amounts because it was challenging but also fun.

Monika – I enjoyed fractions. It was fun but challenging. I hope we can do more on Wednesday.

P.E.

Charlie – I liked doing hockey in P.E.

Art

We brought in fluffy teddy bears to draw and used line for effect.

Keris -I enjoyed drawing our teddies.

Maia – It was challenging drawing the teddies.

Topic

We imagined what it would be like to be Mary Queen of Scots and wrote about how she felt at different times in her life.

STEM

Samuel – I enjoyed finishing off my invention that turns people into villagers.

This week we have spent a lot of time rehearsing for our class assembly based on Mary Queen of Scots.

Hannah – I enjoyed practising the assembly.

Keris – I was nervous at first but then afterwards I felt good.

We have still been busy learning about other things besides our topic.

 

Literacy

On Monday we read the next chapters in our reading books and practised the skill of ‘metalinguistics.’ We learnt how to use various strategies to work out the definition of tricky words.

Numeracy

Some of us practised our table facts and some of us practised using a calculator to help solve tricky problems.

Lewis Douglas – I enjoyed using a calculator. I learnt they use solar power.

We have a new numeracy target – to accurately recall x9 table facts. We can talk about patterns in the x9 table.

Health

We discussed what our ideal jobs would be.

Samuel – I would be a librarian because I like books.

Chloe – A footballer – I like football.

Lacey – A pet-sitter – I love pets.

Eva – A fashion designer-I like clothes and experimenting with colours.

Using the laptops we researched what qualifications were needed for these jobs and what duties were required when you had the job.

S.T.E.M.

We thought carefully about real-life problems and just like engineers in real life we have designed solutions in the form of machines to fix these problems.

Emma – My robot helps people who don’t have arms.

Lacey- My robot helps you with homework.

Keris and Logan designed beds for people who can’t sleep.

Keris – My bed reads people stories.

Music

This week we learnt a new skill – drumming. It was very difficult and we had to persevere and show resilience in order to manage this skill.  Next week is our last ‘Move to the Beat’ workshop and we have decided to invite Mr Turner’s class to come and watch.

Aleena – I thought the drumsticks were really fun.

We are very excited at the possibility of working in collaboration with the publisher DC Thomson on a project about climate change, and possibly incorporating some of their characters, including a boy who sits on a bucket!

This week we have also started to draft to letter to the BBC to seek permission to use a video clip from their excellent program “Climate Change – The Facts”.

We also managed to incorporate this subject into our maths lessons as we had to measure the capacity of different buckets.

Health

In Health we have been discussing the different impacts that jobs have on society and what the salaries of different jobs are. We were surprised how much a pilot earns compared to a mechanic even though people seem to use mechanics more regularly.

STEM

We watched a live online broadcast as part of the Scottish Leadership Engineering awards competition that we are entering. We listened to a presentation by Graeme Ralph, Principal R&D Engineer at Spirit AeroSystems. Afterwards we posted questions which he answered.

P.E. – Hockey

Miss Stanway was blown away by our dribbling skills!

Literacy

One of our class targets is to improve our punctuation and so we have been learning about the use of apostrophes which are necessary when using contractions.

Writing

We finished our Dinosaur stories that we had written COLLABORATIVELY in pairs and then learnt how to peer assess them using a West Lothian writing target grid.

Numeracy

The table fact we are presently focussing on is x4.

We are much more confident at using the grid method to multiply 2 digit numbers by two or one digit numbers.

In addition this week we learnt about factors and prime numbers.

Topic

Our new topic is Mary Queen of Scots. Using her family tree we learnt about who her relatives were.

Using role-play we learnt about key moments in her life.

Eva – Being executed was a sad way to die.

Emma – Marrying Darnley was a mistake because he was mean.

Chloe – She should not have married The Earl of Bothwell as people thought he was a murderer.

Keris – Bella was great at being Queen Mary.

Lacey (The Earl of Bothwell)  – I expressed my meanness through my face and body.

Art

We practised using a variety of tools to create different types of lines.

Class Environment

Having discussed our class layout and how we could improve it we have started to make changes. We thought that it would be a good idea in the library to change our display in order to encourage children to read our new books. Some of us designed book covers and others created book reviews by some of our favourite authors. This is what it now looks like:

Mrs Stewart discussed what changes we could make to the library in order to make it more inviting with a small group of children.

Watch this space!

Dinosaur Park

We are presently reading Dino Egg by Charlie James in class. We are enjoying the novel and have created a role-play station. Here you can be a scientist, park keeper, van driver, dinosaur or tourist!

Maths

We learnt about chance and probability to describe the likelihood of events happening. As a class we discussed certain scenarios and then had to hold up a card describing if we thought the event was impossible, unlikely, likely or certain.

Georgie – It was fun holding up the cards.

We disagreed about some events.

Mason – It is impossible that England will win the next World Cup.

However most of us agreed that it was just unlikely.

Lewis Duckworth – It is impossible that I will eat cornflakes for breakfast tomorrow. His justification was that there was none in the house.

However some of us argued that his mum might go out and buy some!

Eva – It is certain I will have cornflakes.

Some of us thought that might be a problem if they had all been used up. We tried to persuade Eva it was ‘likely’ she would have them.

Liam – We learnt that there could be different answers to the same question and both would be correct.

For example the likelihood of it snowing depends upon where you live in the world.

Numeracy

We continued to practise our tables including making use of loop games.

Literacy

One of our class writing targets is to use a variety of connectives. We played ‘Connectives Blockbusters’ to practise using connectives in sentences.

Writing

Emma – I enjoyed drawing and decorating my dinosaur egg and it has been fun making up the story about what happens to the dinosaur.

R.M.E.

We used our research skills to find out about the life of a famous Scottish Christian – Eric Liddell.

Chloe – We learnt that he was a famous Olympian.

Georgie -He would not race on a Sunday because of his faith.