This week has been one of mixed emotions, we have enjoyed much of the learning that has taken place but we have also been preparing to say goodbye to Mrs Wilson. Primary 5 created a poem which we performed to her telling her how much we appreciated all that she has done for us over her time at St. Joseph’s.
In our Literacy work this week we wrote the front page of our newspaper, reporting on the discovery of King Alexander III’s body at the bottom of the cliffs at Kinghorn. We have enjoyed learning about the different features and techniques used by papers.
Maths this week saw us refine our number skills and using what we know to solve word problems.
On Wednesday me had a film crew in to film us as we tackled a challenge that Mr Reed had set us. Mr Reed had challenged us to harness the power of the wind to bring a cup from the floor up to the height of the table. We had lots of different resources which we could use. We based our designs on wind turbines which Mr Reed had talked to us about. This was a great fun task and although not every group was sucessful, we all enjoyed the challenge.
Welcome back to our blog! This week we had a visit from a Theatre group and this helped us us to improve our Drama skills- we enjoyed performing dance moves from ‘Under the Sea’! In writing we completed our ‘Shape Shifter’ stories. In Maths we revised how to add and subtract numbers to millions. In topic we found out about ‘Sailing Day’ on board the Titanic – we found out about the crew on board, the class system at that time with First, Second and Third class cabins, the route the ship took and where it sopped along the way. We also found out why people were taking the trip. We create a wall display picture of the Titanic and we started to make 2D plans to help us to make 3D models of the ship.
This week began with a visit from a theatre group who introduced us to lots of fun games that help us to work better in teams. We learnt a simple dance routine that we enjoyed performing.
We have been continued to discover more and more about King Alexander III and why his death was so important for Scotland. We are close to writing a newspaper report about his sudden and dramatic death.
Through our maths this week we have continued to build up our skills in addition, subtraction and also our times tables.
Mr Reed was delighted to meet so many of the parents on Thursday and to give an overview of how our time in Primary 5 will look. If there were any parents who were unable to come along then Mr Reed is happy to arrange a time to share with you some of the messages you missed.
Our apples are ripening beautifully and looking magnificent – some young pickers got to work on those that are already ripe this week and managed a fantastic harvest, they’ll be stored for a few weeks ready for our Apple Day.
And many thanks to Ian, a farmer from Tranent who came to the rescue when we lost some of the wheat that the P7s had been growing to disease. The Royal Highland Education Trust, who provided the original seeds, put out a call to local farmers and Ian offered us some wheat which was too near a hedge for his combine harvester. It was delivered to school this week and is now drying out with the rest of the pupils’ wheat in school.
Welcome back to Primary 7! This week we had a vote to decide upon our first topic, we decided to start our exciting year in P7 with ‘The Unsinkable Ship’ …we talked about what we knew about the Titanic and what we wanted to learn this term. We started our first week finding out ‘How the Ship was built’ we completed lots of different challenges and chose to really push ourselves hard by trying some HOTS challenges! In Maths we looked at rounding and estimating and how significant figures can help us to estimate things in our daily lives. In Writing we started our first imaginative story focusing on lots of descriptive language to create a character description called ‘ The Shape Shifter’, we also revised how we can peer and self assess our own work. In RE we prepared for our first school mass. We also presented our powerpoints to others in our school to say why we wanted to be house or sports captains…we are excited to see how the vote went, when we find out at assembly on Monday!
Friday saw the children who planted wheat seeds in the spring harvest their wheat. Sadly one bed of wheat had been infected with a funghal infection and we were advised not use it but we harvested the other bed and the wheat is now drying in a classroom, waiting to be threshed and winnowed.
And some children from P5 and P6, including some who helped with the planting, harvested our carrots, giant courgettes – now marrows! – and spring onions.
And big thanks to the parents who have helped prune the apple and pear cordons along the back fence and put up some meshing. This was because children (not from St Joe’s!) were seen taking fruit from through the fence and using it as footballs and missiles so the meshing is an effort to save the wonderful crop that is ripening and which we’re hoping to harvest with the children in the coming weeks.
Welcome back to P7 we hope you had a lovely long summer and had time to enjoy the great weather ! We are settling well into our new class – We revised ‘Children’s Rights and completed lots of ‘Rights’ Challenges. We worked in groups to discuss our class rules, and we created ‘Our Class Charter’. We set our ‘Goals for the year’. We found out how to use ICT to create tables and graphs and use these skills to complete different challenges. We revised Place Value in Maths. We helped our P1 buddies settle in to school! We also started our applications for House Captains, Football Captain, Netball Captain and Sports Captain. We are very excited about the year ahead!
Huge thanks to parent Mike (Katie, P6) for strimming all along the cordons and the back fence along the raspberries meaning it’s no longer a jungle but we haven’t had to use weed killer. Also huge thanks to those who have offered to water over the summer to keep everything the children have planted alive!
The P3s have completed planting in their competition tyre – we will be judged in September when Burgh Beautiful visits the school. The P6’s wheat is huge and is starting to grow ears of wheat. Our last physic garden session saw the group make iced mint tea from mint in the garden (four liked, four didn’t) and sage toothpaste from the herb.
Our whole garden is looking beautiful so a big thanks to everyone who has contributed over the last academic year !
