Last week we were learning to use the element of line to draw what we see. We looked closely at a leaf and thought about the shape of it and the lines of the veins. We then drew its outline and tried and copy where all the lines were. Next we looked at the leaf again to see what colours were needed. We thought about light and shadow and shaded our leaf picture so it looked as close the real one as possible.
During Book Week Scotland (which begins on 18th November) we celebrate reading for enjoyment and aim to show our pupils that adults enjoy sharing books and stories too.
We love to welcome in adults as Secret Readers who come along to read a short story or chapter aloud to classes.
We would be delighted to hear from you if you would like to volunteer as a Secret Reader during the following dates and time.
Week 1
Week 2
Please contact our school office by email and include the following information
We provide a wide selection of books but are happy if you have a favourite of your own that you enjoy reading.
We would also love to celebrate the number of different languages that we have here in East Calder Primary and would appreciate it if anyone would like to read a short story in a language other than English.
Many thanks for your continued support.
Happy Reading Everyone!
We have had another busy week with our learning. We are continuing to work with giving exact amounts of money and giving change. We also keep extending our knowledge of times tables. As we have been learning about Farming, we decided to write a description of a tractor. We used our plan to inform our writing. In Art we used different media to create fluffy sheep.
Wow,how amazing is this! Emmy and Victoria have made up a game inspired by our class novel Light on Dumyat by Rennie McOwan. The name of their clan is a mix of their two surnames and the game involves all the skills you would need for an adventure in the Scottish hills,just like Gavin,Clare,Michael and Mot! I was so impressed with the game and the bow and arrows you constructed were great! Fantastic to see you having such enthusiasm for the story……we will have to wait and see if our predictions of how it may end are right!
This week has been out of this world! Literally! We’ve been very fortunate to have some real meteorite samples loaned to us from the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh. What an amazing opportunity to hold, feel and look at some incredible rocks that have been travelling through space for millions (and even billions) of years.
Everyone was so engaged and respectful when handling these very precious materials. Hopefully you have heard all about it at home.
We were very lucky during Maths Week to have two visitors come in to tell us how they use Maths in their daily work. Mr Malik is a software engineer and uses Maths all the time when he is writing code. He even created a game to show us how the software worked. Then we heard from Callum who runs a company involving small animals. He uses Maths each day for things like measuring how much food or water to give the animals and record the temperatures in the cages.
In class we worked on our times tables with a random partner, using arrays to help us.
We were also very lucky to go on a trip to Almond Valley Heritage Centre to take part in a Maths Trail. Here we found out how the farm used Maths in the past. We met the Miller who used to water wheel to power the wheel to grind the flour. Then the baker had to weigh the flour to make bread. We walked round the farm counting lots of different animals. This helped us gain knowledge for our Topic on Food and Farming.
Maths Week P6
Miss Niven joined us for Maths Week and demonstrated how P6 could combine our maths skills with expressive arts, as they learnt about the role of stage management in theatre. The children learnt about stage directions, technical stage drawings, and setting a stage, and how these elements all use maths. They first measured out the space, applying their measuring and estimation skills, and then coordination skills were used for setting the stage. This was followed by scene changes, which encouraged an understanding of how time and coordinates are used in managing a stage production.
We were also lucky enough to have 2 visitors come into our classroom to explain how they use maths every day in their careers. Mrs Pennykid told us how Maths is so important not only in the running of the KNEC Community Listening project but also when she worked as a nurse, discussing what skills she needed to use on a daily basis. Mrs Nallathambi used jars and beads in a very ingenious way to demonstrate how pensions work and what strategies she employs on a daily basis. Following on from this the class researched a range of careers and were amazed just how many relied on maths in the world of work.
Linking curricular areas, we looked at which artists used maths in their work. From our research we found artists like Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky and Georges Seurat to mention a few all used maths of some description in their art. We saw examples of pointillism, geometric shapes, tessellation and symmetry. We chose a particular artist and either recreated a famous piece or created our own in the style of the artist.
This week we have had great fun listening to maths stories. We listened to ‘Jack the Builder’. It was all about 3d shapes. We worked in groups to create our own models with 3d shapes and explored their properties. We made up an addition sum to work out ‘How Many Feet in the Bed?’ after listening to the story by Diane Johnston Hamm.
In art, we looked at the works of Piet Mondrian and Frank Stella. They used line and shape in their artwork. It inspired us to try our own works of art.
We were lucky to have Mr Pennykid come in to school to tell us all about how he uses maths in his job. We also loved listening to the animal stories too!
We were learning to order number to 100. We were given a card with a number on it and had to get ourselves in the correct order. Then we had to make our number using tools in the classroom. We came up with lots of different ways. Some of us laid counters out in twos and explained our strategy to everyone else. Jude had the number 22 so had two lines of 11. Eli had 15 so had 2 groups of 7 plus a single counter. Next everybody in the class tried their strategy.
We are continuing to learn to write a description. We watched a video about giraffes, then discussed it and thought of adjectives to help describe a giraffe. We used a planning sheet to write done the information. The next day we used the planning sheet to write our description.
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