We continue to look at money and measuring in maths. We have started to look more at fractions and learn about halves and quarters. In writing we began looking at procedure texts last week so we created our own cat sock puppets following the steps of the procedure. We love practising our handwriting on the tables to help us with the formation of our letters. As it has been World Book Day this week we took part in a draw along with the author Emily Mackenzie who write ‘There’s broccoli in my ice cream!’. We have also enjoyed our big, cosy read today in our pyjamas.
Category: Uncategorized
Learning in P2/1
It has been a very busy few weeks in P2/1. Before the holidays we chose to learn more about Scotland. We started by finding Scotland on a World map, then a European map and then, the P2s found East Calder on a map of Scotland.
After that we thought about what we wanted to focus on. Finlay said he wanted to learn more about the bridges and rivers of Scotland. Nearly the whole class wanted to learn more about the castles of Scotland.
We had great fun using our ‘teamwork’ skills to build bridges from different materials. We presented our bridges to the class.
Our bridges had to be sturdy enough to span the two tables.
The P2s wrote information reports about bridges and the P1s wrote some sentences about the bridges we had made.
We thought it would be great to try building castles and to compare the materials we used.
We thought the Lego and the junk modelling was the best to make our castles.
In maths we have been learning about fractions. P1 were cutting items into halves and P2 were exploring halves and quarters of numbers.
We have all been learning about tally marks.
“I made ten with the pencils!”.
Learning in P3/2
We have been so busy over the last few weeks and we have been really enjoying our learning. This is a summary of some of our learning highlights which we would like to share.
Topic – Ancient Egypt
We are really interested in our Topic, Ancient Egypt and we have enjoyed leading our learning. We wanted to learn more about the Pyramids of Giza and we started off by following a tutorial to create picture of the pyramids. They look great and we were so focused on our learning.
We also learned more about how and why the pyramids were built. We have been reading books and watching videos in class to support our learning. One of our favourite recent learning activities was a STEAM Challenge (Science, Technologies, Engineering, Art and Mathematics.) We had to create a 3D model of the Pyramids of Giza. This was fun because we worked in partners and we chose how to create our model. Some of us used paper, some of us used construction or other strategies.
We loved talking about our strategies and the tools we chose to use. Creativity was one of the main skills we identified as part of our Success Criteria. We also had to use great teamwork with our partner to be successful. We currently have our pyramids displayed in our classroom and we love to show them to anyone visiting our classroom.
Numeracy and Maths
We continue to engage in Number Talks every day to consolidate Numeracy skills and to talk about different Numeracy strategies. We also engage in Numeracy every day and one day a week, we focus on a Maths topic. At the moment, we are exploring fractions in Maths, and in Numeracy, we are learning division strategies. We are starting to understand the link between fractions and division. The following learning activities are examples of our learning from the last few weeks.
Using arrays to divide numbers and consolidate multiplication.
Working in random partners and in groups to solve division calculations by making equal groups. We always share our strategies and help each other. We love talking about our learning.
Literacy – Writing
We are working vey hard in Writing. Primary 2 are moving on to writing a Procedure and Primary are continuing to work on writing explanation texts. We are still splitting into two groups for Writing at the moment due to P2 and P3 focusing on different genres. Mrs Robertson will soon work with P3 pupils, and P2 pupils will work with Miss Marra.
We are excited to share more of our writing with you. Watch this space and we will share more examples of our writing.
We recently peer-assessed our writing again to give each other feedback and identify next steps. We were very focused and used the skill “communication” to talk about our ideas and listen to others in our group.
Literacy – Grammar
We are learning to identify and use past and present tense verbs in Grammar. We are consolidating our learning and applying our learning in different contexts. We recently engaged in a learning activity that we loved so much, we asked to do it again! Miss Marra gave each of us a card with verb on it. Some verbs were past tense and some were present tense. We had to find the person who had the same verb as us in a different tense e.g. walk – walked. This is how we were split into random partners. We then wrote a sentence for each verb on our cards. Mrs Mitchell worked with a group, and Miss Marra supported us with our learning. Our challenge was to make up our own sentences with past and present tense verbs which we really enjoyed, especially when we made up silly sentences.
This is Blair’s past and present tense verbs with her sentences above which she created with a partner. She confidently shared her sentences with the class and could talk about how she knew which verb was past tense and which verb was written in the present tense.
Music
We look forward to our music workshop with Dave every Wednesday. We all had the opportunity to play instruments this week which was amazing! Miss Marra forgot to take photos, so we will share some photos of us playing instruments next week. We learned to make loud and quiet sounds with our instruments to tell a story.
Last week, we used sound and learned how music can be used to tell stories. We also took part in acting out the story to help us understand it better. Some of us were even talking about the links with Guided Reading and Reading Comprehension. This role-play activity in Music helped us to understand the story. 
Article 29: We have the right to develop our talents and abilities.
This week in P2
We have continued to work on our Scotland topic and looked at the Loch Ness Monster this week. We created drawings of what we thought she looked like and started storyboards to create an imaginative story about what would happen if Nessie ended up in our school playground. We continue to look at money in numeracy and have started to look at fractions. We have started our new genre of writing this week and we are looking at procedure texts. We have enjoyed our music sessions with Dave and the music project where we were playing instruments this week.
Also a big congratulations to Mia who used her learning in class to create her own castle to bring in to school. Great job!
Sky Academy P6
Sky Academy P6
P6 were fortunate enough to visit Sky Academy this week. Sky Academy Studios uses the power of TV and innovation to open young minds and develop young people’s Creativity, Collaboration and Communication. Our day out included
- A hands-on learning experience in which
the class will create their own TV content - A chance to work with team of experts
and cutting-edge technology - A screening of our video on the day and
the chance to watch and share the video after our trip - A behind-the-scenes tour of Sky
As you can see from the images below we have some budding Producers, Editors, Directors, Scriptwriters and there should be Oscar nominations for our Presenters, Experts and Eyewitnesses Well done to our fantastic Cameramen/women who filmed the whole experience.
World Book Day 2024
World Book Day is next week!
This year World Book Day is on Thursday 7th March and classes will be celebrating authors, illustrators, books and the joy of reading.
We would also like to invite everyone to A BIG Cosy, Comfortable Reading Day NEXT FRIDAY 8th March.
All pupils are welcome to join in if they wish. You can wear pyjamas or dress down and also bring a favorite cuddly toy, cushion or pillow. We will all get comfy and enjoy some shared reading time together.
Please note pupils can exchange their World Book Day tokens at participating stores. The token can be used to purchase one of the special £1 published short books, or used to discount other book prices by £1.
Happy reading everyone!
Achievements outside of school P6
Congratulations to these 3 superstars! We have achievements in Swimming,Football and Taekwondo. A fantastic effort. Well done we are really proud of your efforts.
This week in P2
We have had a busy week this week in P2. We continued learning about money in our numeracy lessons where we created coin caterpillars and added the amounts to make a total. We also looked at making the same amount but using different coins. We finished looking at information reports in writing and we are moving on to looking at procedures from next week. We created castles from a range of materials and made sure it had some of the parts of a castle that we had been learning about. We are enjoying looking at the history of Scotland and look forward to learning more about the Loch Ness Monster next week.
P3 Learning
Lots of fun learning in Primary 3 this week. We have continued to learn to use arrays to help us divide. We were trying harder calculations and working out the family sums that go with each array.
we are learning to write an explanation. This week’s title was ‘How to look after a dog. We planned our writing on Wednesday and then used our plan to write our full explanation on Thursday. We are getting much better at writing interesting sentences and some of us have started learning to write in paragraphs.
In Maths we have continued to learn about fractions. This week we used 8 cubes in two colours to make creatures and then had to record it on squared paper and come up with a fraction sentence about it ie My creature is half green and half pink. We also learned about how many cubes one quarter and three quarters are.
In topic we were learning about Roman houses. We found out about how the rich and poor Romans lived. We learned that very rich Romans had massive villas with lots of rooms, they even had slaves to look after them. We found out that some villas had a room called a ‘vomitarium’? Ask your children what that was used for!!!!!!
Celebrating Scots Language
We have been celebrating all things Scottish over the last few weeks and classes have had fun learning about Scottish culture as well as reading and writing in Scots. They have enjoyed listening to Scottish poems, stories and songs.
Primary 1 have been using Scots words to describe the weather. Some classes have included Scots words in their WordBoost lists. Primary 5 created their own ‘scunners’, Scottish horror characters and also wrote examples of alliteration in Scots.
Many thanks to our wonderful Secret Readers who read some stories in Scots this week. Classes always love have a visitor and it is so important for learners to hear adults reading aloud. This is especially appreciated when we are encouraging and celebrating the diversity of languages at East Calder Primary.
We would love to hear from any parent or carer who would like to read to a class in a language other than English. Although pupils might not understand the words we would love to widen their experience of listening to other languages being spoken.
If you are interested please get in touch by emailing our school office.
Rights Article 30: I have the right to learn and use the language of my family.
