Deans Primary School Blog

Numeracy

In numeracy this week, we have been working on subtraction. It has been tricky but the children have enjoyed our numeracy stations. This is where we spend 10 minutes at each table working in our workbook, games to support our learning, laptops and much more!

Literacy

In literacy this week, we have been continuing with summarising. We have been summarising the key points from our reading books. It is Scottish Book Week, so we picked our favourite word boost book, Manfred the Baddie, and created our own ending for the story.

School Challenge

At the beginning of November, the whole school were set a challenge to collect as many crisp packets as possible. We are then going to turn them into survival blankets for the homeless! I am so proud to say that Primary 2 collected 224! Thank you for all your support and sending them in from home.

Have a brilliant weekend :).

Green Gym

Once again we were outside. This time we were designing habitats for various creatures to keep warm in the winter months. Using natural materials we had to create a place for the creature to stay. Then we tested if it would be warm enough. We did this by placing some hot water which was in a container in the den. Then using a thermometer we measured the temperature change of the water.

Kyle – Our creature was a hedgehog. It was supposed to be kept at 26 degrees celcius and it went down to 23. We think it would have died.

Emily-Our animal was too cold. It was fun.We worked together.

Bella – It was fun.

Numeracy

We continued to practise our addition skills. We learnt how to solve addition problems using our mental maths strategies. This week we added numbers larger than 1000.

We also practised using formal column addition for larger numbers and decimals and discussed when we would use this strategy.

Literacy

On Monday we had a remote learning lesson with Mrs Cochrane and we were able to practise our clarifying skills which help us to understand a text we are reading.

We practised our handwriting skills and some of us showed our beautiful work to Mrs Wallace(Oscar,Hope and Lily-Elen).

We practised learning our spellings by counting the number of syllables in each word.

In writing we persuaded people that school uniform should not be worn!

Topic Work – WW2

We continued to have to dive under our desks whenever our air raid siren went off!

We researched the different types of shelters used during the war using a non-fiction text and the laptops.

Hope – It is really scary! In the old days people didn’t have a mobile to make sure their friends were O.K.

We also had a WW2 workshop which was really interesting.

BOOK WEEK

It was also Scottish Book Week. We discussed our favourite books.

Bailey – My favourite book is ‘Grandpas Great Escape’ because it has a lot of adventure and action in it.

We also chose book characters and made props and hats for them.

Kyle – We made Willy Wonka’s stuff. I made a hat. Hope made the walking stick and Callum made the golden ticket.

Emily-Me and Lily made wands – like Harry Potter.

Kaiden – I made a suitcase that Paddington Bear carries.

PE – Football

Debbie – I have improved my tackling. I used to stay away from the ball and now I go and get the ball.

Lily-Elen – I am less scared of the ball. I faced my fear and am proud of my football skills.

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!

This week we have been working hard on developing the Reciprocal Reading skill of Summarising. We have been using the idea of 5-5-1. This is where we write 5 sentences about the chapter or book, 5 words to describe the book and 1 word to sum up the whole book. Here are some of our pieces of work.

We are continuing to work on the Persuasive genre of writing. This week we were arguing why pets are good for our health. We came up with some incredible reasons to convince our audience that having a pet can be incredibly beneficial for our lives and mental health. This week we have been focusing on using persuasive vocabulary, such as ‘I strongly believe’ or ‘I am certain that you will agree’ . Here are a few examples of our work.

This week has been Scottish Book Week. We have been working on a few different activities throughout the week to promote reading within our classroom. We have enjoyed listening to a few sessions of  Authors Live, we have taken part in Stop Drop and Read everyday and have been busy designing and making a diorama scene from our favourite books.

We hope you have enjoyed reading about some of our learning so far this week.

Literacy

In reading this week, we continued to develop our summarising skills. We had to choose the important information when we are summarising.

In writing this week, we had to persuade the reader that technology helps us learn. We had to read our feedback from last week and uplevel our work. After we had  written our persuasive piece, we had to self-assessment writing.

Maths

In maths this week, we continued to develop our rounding to the nearest 10 skills. Additionally, we were learning to round to nearest 100. When rounding to the nearest 100, we have to look at the tens column. If the tens digits is between 0-4 we round down and if the digits are between 5-9, we round up.

IDL

For or topic Extreme Earth, we were learning about tornadoes. A tornado is a giant tube of air that spins violently, extending from the thunderstorm to the ground. 

Primary 2!

Hooray! Primary 2 are finally up and running with the blog after some technical issues!

We have had such a busy week. In number this week, we have been focusing on place value. Some of us have been looking at tens and ones and others have been working on hundreds, tens, and ones. We have been challenging ourselves with different numbers and adding them together.

In literacy, we have been very busy working on sentence structure using our core writing targets. We are working very hard to remember a capital letter, finger spaces and full stop in all of our sentences. We have also been looking at summarising the key parts of our reading book and adding detail to our pictures.

In writing, with Mrs Lockhart and Mrs Morrison, we have been working on persuasive writing. Last week we argued why fireworks are dangerous and this week we argued that dogs are good pets.

We have also taken part in Yoga this week and are working on moving our bodies in different ways. The children enjoyed acting out different animal poses and being the teacher!

Our word boost book this week is ‘Manfred the Baddie’, which is the children’s favourite book so far. Manfred is a baddie that turns good but is still a little bit naughty! Ask your child what their favourite part of our word boost book is.

Another productive week was had by all.  The P4s have been working hard to use their subtraction skills in solving word problems.

They create a persuasive text about the use of fireworks, they learnt to use speech marks in a sentence and they created questions about their books.

For IDL, they designed and created their own chariots using paper.