Deans Primary School Blog

Hello, we say it every week but what a busy week!!!

Our Reward

The children filled their marble jar and they decided that they wanted their reward to be a trip to the park. It was a lovely bright morning and the children had lots of fun with Mrs Lockhart and Miss Webster.

IDL

Our IDL stations are new to us as it is not something we have done before. The children have been very engaged in their learning and excited to be part of the different activities in the classroom.

The science experiment is allowing the children to experience first-hand how our digestion works. It gets a little messy but the children loved it! We have also been learning some very tricky words linked to our body, how our lungs work and making a model of our lungs.

This is a weekly rotation so not all children have visited each station yet.

Numeracy

We are working hard on division and trying to understand the concept. We have worked hard as a group to share our knowledge with each other and use different strategies to help us solve different equations.

The children took some of the pictures.

Have a lovely weekend!

Literacy

In writing this week, we were continuing to use our imagination to create a story to entertain the reader.  As a class, we looked at two examples and peer assessed each of them. We noticed that the example with the adjectives and connective words had a better story line. Then, we went on to write a spooky story using the correct structure.

For reading, we were looking at developing our predicting skills. When predicting, we have to use the text and pictures to help us determine what will happen next. We were making predictions throughout the story and we had to either write or draw what we think would come next.

Numeracy

This week, we continued to develop our subtraction skills. We have been using our Number Talks to discuss different strategies we can use to calculate the answer to an equation or worded problem.

We have also been continuing to look at missing number equations. We have to use critical thinking skills to work out the missing number.

IDL

In our topic, we have been looking at the history of the Winter Olympics. We have been learning that the first Winter Olympics was in 1924 and the different types of sports that took place during the Winter Olympics.

Additionally, we have been learning about the heart. As a group, we had to create a heart model using coloured water, straws, balloons and plastic bottles. This represented the heart as a pump.

We’ve had an amazing week!

We have been learning to read time and time intervals.  We have started learning division with remainders as well.

For reading, we worked on finding the main idea and summarising the text.  We also worked on highlight important information and note taking.

For HWB, we explored different friendship groups and the importance of  being able to express yourself.

In IDL, we learnt about different types of produce in Scotland and where most of them are made/ farmed.

IDL

We have been learning about the function of our organs and where about in the body they are. We have started stations for this. Some children have made lungs whilst others have been learning about digestion through an experiment.

Yoga

We read a story and then had to do different animal poses from the book! The children really enjoyed the different animal poses.

Writing

For one of our writing slots this week, the children had to write about why Yoga is good for your body. The children are working so hard in their writing and they are all making progress!

We danced our way into the weekend! Happy Friday!!

Monday:

Maths was a continuation of work on halving, quartering and percentages.

In language new spelling words went out. The class also wrote their narrative pieces they planned last week. AS and NB excelled.

In PE we extended our learning on hockey, focusing on dribbling and keeping the ball close to the stick. AS, SU, SD, EY  and SJR excelled.

For IDL today we went back to looking at the Tudors.

Tuesday:

In language today we split into four groups and wrote plays. Two groups re-wrote the scene from “Macbeth” with the witches. The other two groups adapted the story of “Anne Frank” and “Little Red Riding Hood”. MDs excelled in his writing.

We were able to perform most of these plays at the end of the day. SU was an amazing wolf! CB, SHP, MM, AD, EY, DW, KH and AS all excelled in drama.

For maths we split into two groups, one of which EY lead, going back over previous work on directions. The other group looked at Roman numerals.

Coding with Mrs B was great fun, as always.

For IDL today we continued work on the Tudors, with partners researching famous people from the time, and started writing biographies about them.

Wednesday:

Reading activity: Continued work on summarising the previous book, focussing on the quality of the summary and assessment.

Maths: work on giving directions

The class went to Scotmid with Mrs D today to continue their work on promoting a net zero environment.

With Ms T the class did a book survey because it is national book week next week.

In maths one group looked at fractions while another group worked on practising their tables.

Thursday:

Maths: went back to working on algebra and equations, which we will briefly continue with on Friday. AD, CB, AS, DW, MxD, JH (whose maths is brilliant!) and SJR excelled in this.

Language today was a reading comprehension about the Tudors. Nearly the whole class found this very interesting, and the timeline very useful. MM,SU, EY, AD, CB, AS and MxD excelled in this.

Mark worked with the class on a health activity on the school values, that these can be a transferable skill that the children could practise at home.

Some of the class did an art activity of drawing winter trees. SU and MM excelled in this.

Continuing our work on the Tudors the class started to make timelines in Publisher, including when they were born. AD, DW and MxD excelled in this.

Friday:

Maths: worked on timelines, and briefly looked at scale.

PE: tennis activities. Also continued refining the rules of our class game: “Ball Tig”

For spelling this week we wrote our words three times to help to get them in our heads. We also picked our own choice of technique to help us practise our words, such as backward writing, pyramid writing etc.

In Reading this week we created questions for someone to answer on our group texts. Here are some of the examples of questions we came up with:

Erin P – What is Harmony’s teddy’s name, and why is he called this?

Olivia – Why is Harmony wanting a pet so badly?

Giullia – Did Gran get mad at Loz for buying her new shoes?

Chloe – If Harmony had a pet, what would she call it?

Gracie – Why did Elfie not like a bath?

Ryley – If you had to pick put of your favourite pets, which one would you pick and why?

Sophie G – Were Elfie’s parents bad people?

Sophie C – Did Elfie have any siblings, and if she did, what were their names?

Iona – Why is she called Elfie?

Lewis R – How did Nisba fall and hurt her arm?

Daniel – How did Loz fall down a hole?

In Numeracy this week we have completed a Division Assessment to see what we have learned and improved on since we started our Division topic. There have been some big improvements since the first assessment we did, which has made Mrs Hillan very happy!

In Digital learning this week we continued our work on coding, discussed internet safety and read a story around this. Here are some comments from the class:

Sophie C – We learned how to code using buttons.

Lewis R – We used buttons to control the helicopters.

Chloe – I enjoyed when we coded a bird to eat a slug!

Erin P – When we read the story it was telling us not to post bad things online.

Giullia – We learned not to do things that people we don’t know ask us to do online.

Sophie C – We learned not to take pictures of other people without their permission.

In Writing this week we used our plans from the last time, based on either of the two picture choices. We have come up with some super story ideas. We checked over our work as we wrote and once we were finished, and used the assessment grid to help with this. Here are some of our finished pieces:

Next week we will be doing our Narrative assessment piece, so this week we spent some time planning for this. Mrs Hillan gave us two pictures that we could choose to write about, or we also had the option of creating another map to base our story around.

In PE this week we have continued playing dodgeball, working on our team playing skills, throwing and catching skills, as well as dodging!

Next week is the celebration of World Book Day on Thursday and we will be doing activities all week around this. A reminder that we have a competition to design a mural that could be recreated in our library. Here are some ideas for inspiration:

It would be great if as many of us as possible could enter this!