Deans Primary School Blog

This week in Primary 4/3 we have been working hard on finishing off our topic of gymnastics in gym. We have been working on linking a series of movements together, including a balance, a pose and a jump into a roll. We have thoroughly enjoyed this topic in gym and are looking forward to learning some basketball skills after the October Holidays.

 

We also had a very exciting and a little soggy session of Green Gym this week. Alice was our teacher and she was teaching us all about bees and biodiversity. We learned all about how pollen spreads and how we can help save the bees by planting more flowers.

In our Victorians topic this week we have been exploring different methods of creating texture within a piece of art. We used, smudging, crumpling, tearing and shading to create a picture of a chimney sweep.

We hope you enjoyed a little snapshot of our week. We are very much looking forward to a little break during  next week. Happy Holidays!

Primary 5 have had a great week on the lead up to the October break!

In Literacy we have continued reading our group readers, enjoying discussions on these and talking about any words we are unsure of that we could clarify. We also continued working on our Clarifying grids from last week. We picked out some super words to clarify!

In Writing this week we had our final Recount piece. This was our assessment piece. We were given the choice to write about an event or a holiday/trip. Here are some of our finished pieces:

In Spelling we completed an interim assessment on the words we have been working on this term. On the whole we scored really well. Mrs Hillan encourages us to continue to practise as much as we can at home as it definitely helps!

In Numeracy this week we have been working on a pre-topic assessment on Division. Here are some of our thoughts:

Chloe – It is similar to your times tables and if you don’t know them it will be hard to do.

Caelan – When we start doing division is starts to get more challenging as you grow up, but you know more.

Sophie C – At first it’s hard but when you start to get used to it, it gets easier.

Iona – It was a bit of a challenge, but once we pushed ourselves it was a bit easier.

Summer – If you want to do division is times a number that’s in sum that will help give you the number at the start.

 

For IDL we have introduced our new topic of SPACE! We are very excited to get started on this. Here are some of the things that we listed that we would like to find out about:

-Why is Pluto a dwarf planet?
-Can you lie down in space?
-How big is the moon?
-How many stars are there?
-How many people have been in space?
-How many holes are in the moon?

-Why can you find water on the moon?
-Has there ever been a pet on the moon?
-Can you eat food whilst walking on the moon?

We hope everyone has a super October break and stays safe!

Maths

We have started a new topic – TIME.

Bailey – I enjoyed the funny time song and can use quarter past.

Bella – I feel I now know how to tell the time.

Alexis – I am better at telling the time.

Some of us practised converting 12 hour times to 24 hour times.

Literacy

This week when writing a recount we wrote one together as a class.

Emily – This was fun. I enjoyed putting all of our ideas together.

Bailey – I have improved my handwriting and showed it to Mrs Stewart.

Philosophy

During our talking and listening learning we discussed some thunks. Thunks are questions with no correct or incorrect answers.

1. If I read a magazine in a shop without paying for it would that be stealing?
2. If pigs ruled the world what changes would we see?

P.E.

Kyle – I enjoyed basketball. I am better at shooting.

Health – Headstrong

We had another visit from Mark this week.

Bailey – He explained that sometimes it is O.K. to be scared and asked us to think about how we could deal with things we are scared of.

 

This week we consolidate on our mental addition strategies.  Ask me how to do compensation, partitioning and skip counting.  We have also been learning to use chimney sums as a written method of adding.

For Literacy, we worked on creating an effective orientation for our recount.  We revised on our punctuations using dictation.  For reading, we defined words that are unfamiliar.  We learnt to use clarifying skills to make meaning and expand our vocabulary.

In PE, we worked on our forehand and backhand skills using tennis rackets.

This week has been incredibly busy and jam packed with lots of interesting and challenging learning taking place in our classroom and beyond.

In maths, we have been focusing on identifying a fraction of a whole number. We have been using concrete materials to do this as well as using our knowledge of multiplication and division. It was tricky to get our heads around but once we practised everyday we are becoming more confident at applying these skills.

In numeracy, we are continuing to work on using place value to help us with addition calculations.

We are still working on the writing genre, Recount. This week we wrote a recount featuring our Best Birthday Ever! We are experts at this genre now and becoming very skilled at using the self assessment placemats to help us identify what went well and what we can do next time to improve. Here are some examples of our wonderful work.

We have been exploring the concept of perspective in Art and Design. Seeing Autumn has finally begun we decided to draw an Autumn Scene, including a pumpkin patch. We worked step by step to create an element of depth to our pictures. We are very proud of the final result.

We hope you enjoyed this little snapshot of our week.

 

We have had another busy week in Primary 5, with lots of new tasks and challenges.

In Numeracy we have been looking at Decimals and how these relate to Fractions. We also looked at how we record these on a number line. We then went on to look at Percentages and also made links to what we have done previously in Fractions and Decimals. Here are some examples of the questions we completed:

50% of 40 = 20

25% of 80 = 20

10% of 70 = 7

PUPIL THOUGHTS:

Lewis – Decimals look hard but when you do a couple, they get a bit easier.

Chloe – You need to know your times tables to do them.

Summer – You also need to know your division skills.

Matthew – Percentages look hard, but are actually easy.

Olivia – First when you take a look at percentages it may look hard, but all you have to do is divide – e.g 50% you divide by 2.

Ryley – After you’ve tried a couple of percentages questions they become easier.

 

In Literacy this week we have moved on to look at the skill of Clarifying in Reciprocal reading. This is where we use a variety of strategies to make the meaning of an unknown word clear.

Here are the strategies we might use:

-use clues from reading on in the text

-use clues from re-reading the text

-visualising what is happening

-using our own knowledge

-looking for smaller words inside bigger words

-using clues like illustrations, punctuation etc.

We used a text called The Raven Heir:

We discussed what it might be about using our previous skills in Prediction and then we picked words from the text to clarify using the strategies above.

Here are some of the words we picked out to clarify. We will finish these next week.

In spelling we practised our words using fancy lettering. We repeated this later in the week but tested a partner, who then had to write their word correctly in fancy lettering.

 

In PE we have continued with our basketball skills and have now incorporated these into mini games. Before starting we had to go over the basic rules of the game.

We are looking forward to another week of learning next week.

Literacy

In writing this week, we continued to develop our recount writing skills. We created a small shop and as a class, we discussed the steps we carry out when in the shops. This helps us visualise our shopping routine when writing the recount piece. We were trying to ‘Bump Up’ our writing by adding adjectives to give the reader more information.

We were also practicing our tricky words this week. We were using our rainbow writing. This is where we have to say, cover, write and check each words.

 

Maths

In maths this week, we continued to develop our fractions knowledge. We were building on our knowledge from last week to look at converting fractions such as eighths and sixths into halves, thirds and quarters.

 

IDL

This week, we started our new topic Extreme Earth. We were learning about the layers of the Earth. We came up with a chant and dance to help us remember that the layers of the Earth are inner core, outer core, mantle and crust. We also learned about the key features of a volcano. To support this, we watched the live footage of the volcano eruption in La Palma.

We had two special visitors in P.5 this week.

Mark came from Headstrong which is an organisation  which specialise in changing the way we think to a positive mindset. Mark certainly makes us think about ourselves and we laugh (a lot!).

We also had Megan, a musical theatre practitioner. She was working with us on a song that we are going to get the chance to perform in Howden Park Centre later in the year. There was a lot of talent on show so watch this space!

It feels like everyone wants to work with our fab primary fives!