Category: School Updates

Literacy

We continued to read our group novels and practised visualization skills – drawing a key moment from the text.

We chose an animal and researched using non-fiction books and the internet. We practised taking notes with a partner. Later we wrote an information report about the creature, shared with our class-mates and self-assessed our work using the West Lothian targets.

Bailey – I enjoyed writing the report. We wrote about sharks and I found out that the Whaleshark is the biggest shark.

Jaxson – I liked researching snakes. I found out that snakes use their tongues to smell and their scales help them breathe under water.

Bella – I enjoyed writing about Red Pandas and Pandas – they are very interesting.

PE

In P.E. we continued to practise our gymnastics and tennis skills.

Anton – In tennis I hit the ball to Emily 4 times in a row!

Health

We talked about loss and bereavement and strategies to help us deal with these situations. This was difficult but lots of good ideas were suggested to help us cope.

Numeracy

We have been practising our mental multiplication facts. We have applied this knowledge in order to solve problems and multiply by multiples of 10. In addition we have reinforced how to mentally multiply a 2 digit number by a 1 digit number.

Science

We continued to learn about the life cycles of different creatures.

 

Literacy

We continued reading our group reading novels.

Maths

This week was ‘Data Handling’ focus week. We revised the different types of tables and graphs and then answered questions in order to show our understanding of them.

Health

Mental Health

As a warm-up we used our teamwork and communication skills to pass the hoop around the circle without breaking the chain.

We discussed what makes us feel stressed and strategies for dealing with this. Then we wrote these different strategies on the faces of a cube. We can roll this cube whenever we are stressed and the strategy can help us.

Headstrong

We had a visit from Mark and drew a picture to represent the positive and negative elements of our mental health.

Jaxson – I liked the drawing – it was fun.

P.E.

We practised our throwing, catching and hitting skills using tennis balls and racquets on the field. We greatly improved our skills during this lesson. CI, PJ and K were particularly good.

We also practised our gymnastic skills in the hall using the apparatus.

As a warm up we worked with a partner and played the mirror game. Our partner performed a balance, shape or jump and we had to show the mirror image.

Leo volunteered to show the whole class his run onto the springboard and then his jump off it!

Kyle performs a star jump.

Lily-Elen performs an arabesque balance.

Coding

This week we  practised writing code with a loop, variable and repeat function.

Anton – In my game there are planes and hot air balloons flying everywhere. There is a spider hanging onto the hot air balloon and after  5 seconds it falls off. After 10 seconds the spider shows again and everything is back in the same place – this is the loop.

Oscar – My game is underwater and the fishes move around in different directions in a loop.

Science

Our new topic in science is life cycles. First we did some revision – learning about how animals are classified into groups.

Bailey – I liked learning about animals with backbones.

Kyle – These are called vertebrates.

Anton – I liked researching invertebrates. I learnt about unusual creatures.

K – I learnt about the naked mole rat – it has no hair.

Hope – It looks like a staffy with no hair!

 

Literacy

In group reading some of us practised our inference skills, some of us our prediction skills and some of us worked out what tricky words meant using our context skills.

Writing

This week as part of our descriptive writing we wrote about about a friend or family member.

Joel – I wrote about Fraser. He is sometimes energetic and a technology mastermind!

Bailey – I wrote about Piotr because when he is near the goal in football he passes and doesn’t always shoot.

Debbie – I wrote about my friend who is really nice.

Bella – I wrote about my sister Cara because she is very special to me.

Here we are Group Reading

We read our group novels, listening to each other and use our contextual skills to work out any unknown words!

Numeracy

We practised subtracting decimals to 2 decimal places. We used mental and formal methods.

We also played SUMDOG to practise our general maths and numeracy skills.

 

ICT – Coding

We practised using our coding skills to turn an object, use a loop and a variable. We also debugged when there was a problem.

Health

We learnt about the importance of eating a balanced diet and looked at the ‘Eatwell plate.’

PE

We continued to improve our gymnastic skills. Watching olympic gymnasts online has given us inspiration.

Here is Piotr’s balance.

We peer assessed our work.

Science – The Water Cycle

In groups we acted out the water cycle.

Fraser is the sun and this group have evaporated to become a cloud!

Outdoor Learning

Katie – We planted more trees.

Emily – We had to clear out the compost bins and had to take everything out in a black bag.

Alexis – Debbie said she felt sick because she was holding the bag of compost.

Debbie – The paper came and took pictures of us planting trees with the P1s.

Some of us were still thinking about Ukraine.

 

Deans Primary are trying to create a suitable and exciting outdoor learning space within the school grounds. Unfortunately, we are being hampered by vandals who destroy our newly planted trees, take apart out new Willow shelter and continually damage our bug hotel and newly erected structure that will be part of our area of biodiversity. On the last occasion some of the nursery items were also destroyed. The children and staff of the school would like to ask the community to support our endeavours.

Topic

Jaxson – I enjoyed drawing a WW2 soldier and his equipment.

Silence Day in aid of Ukraine

Well despite everyone thinking we would never manage it…we did! There was the odd blip. (Miss Stanway was the first to forget.)

Anton – I was surprised at how much money we raised.

(So far £71). Thanks so much for your generous donations.

Hope – It was hard but we remembered why we were doing it.

It helped that we spent some time outside drawing and going on the trim track even though we could only communicate on our whiteboards.

We even practised some BSL (British Sign Language). Our favourite sign was for hometime…it was a tough day!

Literacy

On Monday it was National Poetry Day. We listened to a poem and then wrote poems of our own.

Science

Robbie – I enjoyed the water cycle song.

Numeracy and Maths

This week was ‘Mathematics and its Impact on the World Week.’

We discovered how important maths is in the world around us and in the world of work. Using the laptops we researched different occupations and found out what mathematical skills are needed.

Katie – A doctor measures temperature and calculates weight.

Callum – A therapist needs to know the time when a patient is coming.

Alexis – A writer needs to understand money in order to buy their equipment.

Robbie – An artist uses geometry and shape.

We also researched famous mathematicians.

Here is Callum’s poster.

Here is Fraser’s poster.

Katie – I learnt that Isaac Newton got hit on the head by an apple and discovered gravity!

Bailey – Riemann came from Germany and was an expert in physics.

Kaiden – Descartes died in a science lab!

Literacy

Reading

In our groups we read a section of the text and then wrote down our predictions for what would happen next based on what had happened so far.

In addition we took time to read the amazing science-fiction stories we had all written!

Kaiden – I liked the robots in Fraser’s story.

Robbie – I liked the monster in Callum’s story when it crashed into the ocean and scared people.

Naavah- I liked the story I read because it was detailed.

Writing

Bailey – I enjoyed learning about a police diver and writing about them in my descriptive writing.

Health

We talked about alcohol and the effects it can have on your body. We also discussed the difference between responsible and anti-social drinking and the misuse of alcohol.

We also talked about what to do in an emergency and how to put people in the recovery position:

PE – Netball

We practised dodging away from a defender in order to be in a good place to receive the ball.

Naavah – I have got better at netball.

Emily was amazing at catching the ball this week. She has worked very hard at this.

Outdoor Learning

Naavah – We went litter picking, planted more trees and emptied the compost bin.

Hope – We need to start again with the compost bin because a packet was put in which means it won’t work.

Coding

We learnt to write block code and use a loop function. Then we uploaded a link to my app on TEAMS.

Kyle – A race car driver was doing a course but a person didn’t look left or right and so a car hit him! The step forward would be on loop. I put a note up saying always look left and right!

Emily – In mine there are two animals racing, they start at different times and the panda wins. An alert then comes up to say the panda has won!

Participation Friday

We sold our rocks for the first time last week and sold out! So this week we have been busy making more to sell.

Some of us have even used the Ukraine flag on our rocks as part of our designs which have positive messages.

Important Announcement about Next Thursday

We are having a silent day in order to raise money for Ukraine. We will have to communicate using whiteboards when in school. However, we are allowed to talk at lunchtime and break. Miss Stanway will try not to speak during the entire day. We know will be quite difficult but the people of Ukraine are going through a challenging time at the moment so we are going to try really hard!

Literacy

Writing

We have started to learn about a new genre – descriptive writing.

Having studied the structure of a descriptive text about a Rescue Helicopter Pilot we watched a video about the Scottish Mounted Police. Then together we wrote a descriptive piece about their role.

Bailey – They are different to normal police because they ride horses and wear different uniforms.

Cameron – The genre’s structure was title, introduction, characteristics and evaluation.

Reading

We read our group novels and practised inventing our own inferential questions based on what we had read.

Talking and Listening

This week we invented a story which we told to our partner. We looked at a picture stimulus which was an elephant. Here is the link:

elephant

We came up with some great narrative ideas based on it!

Outdoor Learning

Hope – We planted thorn bushes with spikes. Please don’t touch them.

Emily – We planted them because the ones we planted before had been removed. It is also helping us work towards the net zero project.

Numeracy

We have really improved our ability to subtract mentally using a variety of mental methods.

ICT 

This week we continued our coding work with Mrs Buntin. It was quite tricky but we were very proud of our achievements.

P.E.

Once again we have continued to improve our netball skills this week. Maybe in the future one of us might play for Scotland!

Once again Deans Primary have received a donation of saplings from the Woodland Trust. The children are not only hoping this will enhance the look of the school grounds but begin to support a Net Zero Community and improve the environment.

The children would like to ask all children, staff, parents, carers and members of the community to help us look after the saplings so they get the opportunity to grow into large, strong trees. Since they are newly planted and have not yet taken root we would appreciate it if you could stay away from the trees. If you see or hear of any issues with the trees can you please get in touch with Mrs Dobbie.

 

Literacy

In group reading we completed various comprehension challenges.

It was World Book Day on Thursday so we talked about our favourite books and had a quiz. There was also an emoji challenge – we had to guess the title of the book from the emoji clues!

Why not create some emoji codes of your own?

Numeracy

We had  a go at some challenging word problems involving money.

This week we also discussed various subtraction strategies e.g. partitioning, (but we discussed why this doesn’t always work!) and counting on.

Science

Our new topic is the water cycle.

We learnt about the 3 changes of state.

Debbie – These are solids, liquids and gases.

Using drama we all became a molecule of a solid and acted out what happened when it was given heat energy.

Here we are tightly packed together as a solid!

Here we are as a liquid :

Finally we have reached boiling point and here we are as a gas!

We really liked being the molecules of a gas!

The process involved in this are:

Anoton-These are melting, freezing, condensing and evaporation.

Lily Elen – I enjoyed this drama!

Health

As part of our ‘Healthy Me’ topic we learnt about different drugs and the dangerous effects they have on our body.

Headspace/Health

During our visit from Mark we wrote a letter to ourselves which we are going to open in one years time!

Topic / Digital Learning

Bailey – I enjoyed sharing my PopwerPoint about transport in WW2 to the rest of the class because everyone enjoyed it.

PE

In netball we learned about positional play and focussed on attack and defence. It was quite tricky for the first time!

Kyle – I liked learning about the positions in netball. You can only go in certain areas.

Hope – I enjoyed being a crab!

(In this game the children played netball but could only move on their hands and feet which helped them to move into better positions.)

The class agreed their next steps were to practise positional play and reinforce attacking/defending roles.

Numeracy

This week was ‘Expressions and Equations’ focus week.

Emily – I had bever done algebra before but I thought I had done well.

Anton – Algebra is when a letter is put in instead of a number.

Literacy

We continued to practise our comprehension skills in group reading and also our spellings.

On Friday we will be learning about figures of speech.

In writing this week we were very excited to start writing up our science-fiction stories that we had planned with a partner last week.

Bella, Robbie, Joel, Hope and Emily shared what they had written so far by reading aloud to the whole class. We were very impressed!

PE

Cameron – I enjoyed netball and am getting better at catching.

Anton – I was surprised how good I was at pivoting.

The children have quickly developed their skills and have greatly improved their positional play and would like to devlop their shooting ability.

Bella – I am getting better at throwing and catching.

Art

Next week is World Book Day and we started to design a mural for the school library. This is a whole school competition and will be judged by the reading ambassadors.

Bella – I enjoyed this.

Headstrong – Mental Health

Mark visited us this week and we discussed our school values and the importance of these at school and home.

Outdoor Learning

Bella – We completed a traffic survey.

There were lots of vans and cars but no buses and lorries.

Hope – Why don’t people walk to the shops when they can?

Emily – This is part of our Net Zero learning. This is when carbon dioxide and oxygen levels are balanced.

As part of our learning we looked at different types of bins in the community.

Emily – We are monitoring the bins in the lunch hall as well.This is really working very well. There is less plastic in the food bin.