It is lovely to have the children back after their Christmas break; I have enjoyed listening to their tales about time spent with their families and all the amazing memories that have been made.

We have launched straight into our new topic about sustainability and are studying Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and how he survived through reusing and recycling what was available to him. We have enjoyed the story so far and we have had many great discussions about what items would help us survive on the island.

Our topic introduced us to the ‘Forth Rivers Trust’ and we had some visitors who taught us about the project that they run to raise the number of brown trout in our local rivers. To help the project we are going to have about 200 trout eggs in our classroom. These we hope will hatch and will grow to a size that can be released back into a local river. We have to take responsibility for the fish, ensuring the water is kept at the correct temperature, remove any dead eggs and complete tasks about the life cycle of a trout. The fish are due soon and we will keep everyone up to date with their progress.

We have begun FUTSAL on a Monday afternoon with Scot, he is great fun and is teaching us lots of new skills which will improve all aspects of our ball control not just how to score goals.

On Tuesday, we went to the Academy to take part in a handball tournament, it was great fun and we did very well.

We are currently learning a poem ready to perform on Friday as part of our Robert Burns celebrations.

Primary 5

We have had the best week ever; we have partied hard, become teachers for the day, danced, taken part in tournaments and had a visit from ‘Rookie Rock Stars’.

It truly has been a wonderful end to the term. This week we had the opportunity to share some work that we had been doing in class over the past few weeks with the children in Primary one. As part of our learning, we had been designing a board game that could be played by others; we had to be able to explain the rules to new players as well as show that we can play games fairly. We had lots of fun designing our games, but even more fun playing them. We were very proud when Mr Reed said that we could share our games with the children in Primary one. It was fun to play against them even though they did seem to win all the time.

Our Christmas party was amazing; we played games, danced and enjoyed some lovely party food. The traditional dances that we had been learning during our PE sessions were performed. We impressed Mr Reed with our dances.

To end the week Rookie Rock Stars came to do a reunion session, this was an opportunity to sing the songs we learnt at the end of the summer term as well as a few Christmas songs. It was lovely to see Glynn again and sing and dance to some familiar songs.

Mr Reed has really enjoyed the term with us and has given us a clue about our theme next term. We will be looking at sustainability with a focus on one of Mr Reed’s favourite stories, Robinson Crusoe. Mr Reed thinks says we will have fun learning about the original Bear Grylls.

Have a lovely Christmas and a very happy New Year.

Primary Five.

This week has been amazing; we have really got into the festive spirit in so many different ways.

Our week began with a dress rehearsal for our nativity during which we were performing our song ‘Mary’s boy child’.  It was lovely to see all the P1 and P2 children dressed in their costumes, it really got us in the festive spirit.

Tuesday the whole school went to Livingston to watch Jack and the Beanstalk, it was a brilliant pantomime, full of songs which we all knew and could join in with. It was great to be out as a whole school enjoying such a fun performance.

Wednesday we had a fun task to carry out in our table groups. We learnt lots of new grammar terminology and tried to spot examples of each of them in a text taken from A Christmas Carol.

We were excited and nervous performing our song to the parents in the afternoon but enjoyed every second of it.

Thursday was our night to be the stars again and sung our song in the church. The church was packed so we really had to sing our hearts out. We especially enjoyed the biscuits and snacks that had been left for us afterwards. It was such fun to share our song with so many parents, grandparents and carers.

Friday we could wear our slippers to school to show our support for the homeless at this particularly cold time of year, even Mr Reed wore his slippers but they were not as cool as ours.

As our term draws to a close we are all in high spirits and excited about the parties next week.

Primary 5

This week has really felt like Christmas is getting closer, we have had a great week full of festivities and rehearsals.

Our week began with a visit to ‘Christmas unwrapped’, here we learnt more about the Christmas story in a fun and interactive way. We were treated to recounts told by actors who really brought the story to life. We then had the chance to take part in some lovely Christmas crafts where we made something special which we took home.

We have come together as a school several times to prepare for our Christmas performance where we will be singing for everyone.

We enjoyed a Christmas dinner which was full of fun and laughter.

We became Santa’s elves on Thursday and using all our teamwork skills and a very impressive production line created over one hundred sweet filled sleighs to be sold at the Christmas Fayre.

Next week we are looking forward to even more festivities as we get another week closer to Christmas.

Even though the weather is not the best it has not dampened our spirits in Primary 5.

Our week has ended on a high with our Primary 5’s mass. We had been preparing it over the week and enjoyed our moment to lead the school in our St. Andrew’s day mass. We all had roles and responsibilities that we were proud to take on.

This week has once again been full of fun and exciting learning.

During our maths work we have been learning about area and perimeter and have been learning to calculate areas of shapes including compound shapes. We have also been finding out how to calculate the perimeter of shapes other than squares and rectangles.

Through our literacy work we have been focussing on our use of adverbials and how we can use these at the beginning of sentences. We have also been learning to use different methods to plan and write stories with a focus on how best to begin a story if we really want to ‘hook’ the reader.

With our topic now completed Mr Reed has been really impressed at how much knowledge we have about what has been an incredible period of Scottish history. We have all taken part in presentations to share with the class one aspect of the period. We all enjoyed doing these although it was a little scary to stand in front of the class and become the class teacher, even if it was for only a few minutes.

Next week we have a very hectic week as we are out on Monday morning to ‘Christmas unwrapped’. Where we will be looking at the story of Christmas as well as taking part in some craft activities. We also will be preparing for our Christmas performance, where Primary 5 will be singing a song which we were desperate to sing.

Primary 5

We have had a great week this week although there has been a touch of sadness; we are drawing our amazing ‘Scottish War of Independence’ topic to a close and are beginning to show how much we have learnt in various different ways. Mr Reed set us a challenge to attempt to answer some tricky questions however we were able to answer all of them using our knowledge as well as referring to the timeline that we have been using. We also completed our three part story of a soldier heading off to fight in the Batlle of Bannockburn. Our stories allowed us the chance to use key vocabulary which engages and excites the reader.

Throughout the week we have been practising our use of multiplication and have been solving word problems using the different techniques we have been shown.

As part of our art work we created coats of arms which told a little about ourselves. These we have been told will create another display outside our classroom.

This week has been filled with fun and festivities. We have been on battlefields, learning tactics to beat the Edward’s army, discovering what makes a good knight and even parading around the school dressed in our most frightful costumes. Through all of this we still managed to spend some quality time learning about multiplication and learning different ways to tackle multiplication questions. We also thought about the importance of choosing the best word when writing stories. We played lots of word association games to encourage us to think about the best word available rather than the safe word we know.

On Wednesday we all enjoyed coming to school in our Halloween costumes and parading around the hall. It was amazing to see everyone dressed up; Mr Reed looked even more scary than usual. Mr Reed is very sorry but due to ICT difficulties at this moment he is unable to upload photos.

On Thursday we all went to Mass, the walk to and from the church was cold but bright and made even more special by the most amazing autumn colours everywhere you looked.

We all looked our best on Friday for our photos.

This week we have been very busy in class, we have enjoyed a fun filled workout to raise money for LEPRA. We took part in lots of races and exercises. The girls did on this occasion beat the boys.

This week we had the chance to show off our writing skills. Mr Reed introduced us to punctuation Kung Fu!!!! Which we all enjoyed taking part in. We then spent time planning our story about Stirling Bridge. We all pretended that we were soldiers preparing for battle.

We designed a Christmas card which we have brought home to share with you to see if you would like to have our designs made into Christmas gifts and cards.

On Friday, the gardening gang borrowed an apple press and used it to make apple juice from the apples collected from the school. It was absolutely amazing; we all enjoyed our freshly made organic apple juice.

We also used some of the older apples that were not good enough to eat to maske  bird feeders. We all had great fun creating our very individual feeders.

Primary 5

This week we have been researching about how life was different during the medieval period. We have been discussing sports, food, medicine, houses, entertainment, weapons and of course torture!!! We decided upon which area we wanted to focus our research on and used computers and books to locate relevant information. With the information that we gathered we created a large information page ensuring that we used all of the features that we had been introduced to.

We also spent time learning about William Wallace and how he rose to power only to meet a very gruesome end. We found out how tall he was and how long his sword was. Mr Reed only came up to his shoulder!

Our maths this week gave us the opportunity to improve our ability to add and subtract using the chimney method. We all impressed Mr Reed with our ability to set out our work and successfully answer the various questions he had set.

Mr Reed set us all a challenge to copy down a paragraph in our best handwriting; this is now up on the wall for us to improve on next month when we repeat the challenge.

It has been a great week and one that will be hard to beat.

Primary 5

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.

We are excited about what next week will bring.

Primary 5