As we arrive at the beginning of the holidays, primary 6 have been reflecting on what has been a really fun and informative start to 2020.

Much of our learning has been focussed around the devastating fires that have been burning in australia for many months now. Through this we have created pieces of artwork, information pages, written stories, learnt locations of cities and of debated environmental issues.

We have also been enjoying learning about electricity and how to make working circuits using various components. We designed and made our own working switches, which we will use when we begin making our own working lighthouses after the holiday.

We have reached the end of a fantastic book by Kathleen Fidler ‘ The Desperate Journey’ which told the story of a family evicted from their home during the highland clearances.

Despite the weather primary 6 have continued to have an outdoor learning opportunity each week. We have been doing maths and spelling games as well as creating games which we hope to teach to primary 2 after the holiday.

Have a great holiday

Primary 6

 

This week has been a week of wonderful learning in Primary 6; we begun the week with Futsal and enjoyed being outside learning new skills. As the week has gone on we have been busy learning and preparing for the Burns Assembly. We have had such fun editing a poem to make it our own. I am sure you will enjoy it. If you were not able to join us we have put it here for you to read.

Meh granny never had the things

That maist fowk hae the day,

She never watched a NETFLIX show

Or heard Spotify play.

She never yaised a Nerf Gun

Or shopped in B and M.

She always yaise a  tea cosey

An‘ ended  with Amen.

 

Meh granny never ate Nandos

Or wore designer boots

She never drank a can o’ bru

Or tasted passion fruits.

She never smelt the scent of Greggs

O’ eaten a vindaloo

An’ she never played an X box.

Facebook ,she never knew.

 

Meh granny never wore a bikini,

No even in her teens.

She never wore a mini skirt

Or Primark’s skinny jeans.

She never had her hair in spikes

Or dyed it blue and white,

An’ she never had her airms tattoed

Or partied for a night.

 

Meh granny never had her own hoose

Wi’ mod cons like we hay

The kitchen was her main room,

The loaby her hallway.

The carpets were but clootie rugs

That she’d made piece by piece,

An’ her vacuum wis a besom heid

That worked wi’ elbow grease.

 

Alas, meh granny’s no longer living near

She lives in a care home

She’s sairly missed, but nontheless

That’s whaur she’ll hae tae be

Hoo’ever—should she get tae hear

O’ a’ the things we’ve got,

I’m shair she’ll hobble onto a bus

An’ come back here like a shot.

 

We have continued to learn about the devastation in Australia, and wrote a story as if we were one of the animals caught up in the fires. This writing opportunity allowed us to write in the first person as well as carefully consider how to include each of the senses. Mr Reed even put some of our work up on display as it was so well written.

We have also been given the opportunity to explore electrical circuits and even build circuits which was great fun, there was lots of ‘lightbulb’ moments.

We have been told that we will be continuing our partnership with Donaldson School and sessions will begin again next Friday.

Primary 6

It has been a great start to 2020 in Primary 6, we have been really busy with our topic as we pay particular attention to the devastating wildfires in Australia. We created pieces of artwork which were inspired by what we had been learning. These have been put together to create a display in the corridor outside the classroom. We would love it if  you came to see our work

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We are also preparing for our Robert Burns assembly next Friday and have been looking at various Scottish poems. We found one which we liked but thought that as a class could do better so we have been busy becoming poets as we adapted and improved a poem. We hope that you will be able to come and hear us perform our poem.

Primary 6

What an amazing end to what has been a wonderful term together.

The children have been incredible, they have managed to keep going right to the end despite all the changes to the timetable and normal routines of the week.

We shared a great Christmas party with P7 and enjoyed lots of crazy games.

As we end the term, I would like to wish you all a very happy Christmas and prosperous new year.

Mr Reed

Over the past two weeks Primary 6 have been even busier than usual; we have been away from the school to play golf, we have had visits from the NSPCC and Show Racism the Red Card  as well having our flu vaccinations

Last week we had two visitors form the NSPCC, they came to talk to our class about keeping ourselves safe. We talked about lots of different areas and found the videos very informative. It is always good to be reminded about what it means to keep ourselves safe at all times.

We also had a visit from Chris; he works for an organisation called Show Racism the Red Card. Even through it sounds like it should just be about footballers it actually covered lots about racism and how it must be stopped from happening. Some of the conversations we had in our class were very challenging and made us think about things in a different way.

We had our second visit to Kingsfield Golf Club where we continued to practise our golf. We played a great game of noughts and crosses which forced us to hit the ball with even more accuracy. It is clear that in Primary 6 we have some great golfers.

Last Friday we had a great time during our outdoor learning as Mr Reed set us the challenge to build dens using what we could find outside. The den must be big enough for at least one of us to get inside and we also had to make our dens even more interesting by being able to share with the other groups all of the features that we had included. It was great fun and we enjoyed using our imagination to make our dens even more exciting.

We are continuing to learn about Andy Goldsworthy and learn more about his style of artwork. We tried to make our own version of one of his pieces of art which was great fun even though it took a long time to complete. Our work is now displayed outside of the classroom for everyone to see. This week we learnt about how he uses nature in many of his sculptures. Mr Reed then asked us to collect 3 sticks of similar size and then showed us how to make triangles tying them together in a particular way. We then began tying the triangles together and slowly, very slowly the sculpture began to take shape. We haven’t finished this yet so can’t share the finished sculpture with you yet.

Four of us went up to Donaldson School to work with some of the pupils there. It was really interesting to go to an alternative school and meet children and teachers and join in their learning. Perhaps we will be teachers in the future. Everyone will get the chance to go to Donaldson over the next few weeks.

I wonder what next week has in store for us!

Primary 6

It has been a wonderful term in Primary 6, so many great learning opportunities have been embraced by everyone. We have ended the term reflecting on our topic and realising just how much we have learnt about myths from around the world.

It was lovely to meet with so many parents this week and share with you some of the work that the children have been doing in class.

Today our Free Writing Ambassadors were visited by some of Primary 2 to support them and encourage them to embrace Free Writing in the same way as we in Primary 6 have.

Have a wonderful break and enjoy some family time with your wonderful children.

Mr Reed

This week has been very eventful, throughout the week we have had a maths focus and have been demonstrating our understanding of number in many different ways. We also took our maths outside and created balanced equations using sticks, leaves,. Stones and even tennis balls to create challenges for our friends to answer.

We found out what happened to Medusa through the learning of the story, we then recreated the story using drama. This was great fun and a brilliant way to ensure we all knew the story well.

We reflected on our Robinson Crusoe work from last year and learnt ways of turning salt water into drinking water by boiling salt water then catching the steam in a beaker. What we didn’t expect to find was all the salt left behind in the pan after the water had been evaporated.

Christmas came early this week as we planned and created our designs for Christmas cards, wrapping paper and gifts. We have all brought our work home to share with you and hopefully you will choose something that could be used as gifts. We do have to bring in the slip next week if we do want to order any items.

Primary 6

This week has been very hands on across all areas of the curriculum; we have enjoyed some topic work outside where we are creating our own marvellous mazes similar to the one Theseus navigated his way around when killing the Minotaur. We used all sorts to create numerous pathways which Mr Reed had to try and find his way out. Our learning this week took us to an even more terrifying creature known as Medusa, We found out how she became such a famous mythological creature. Mr Reed has assured us that next week she will meet a gruesome end.

We were thrilled when Mr Reed told us that during our Science lesson we would be making a mess!! He was not kidding, we were given the chance to turn tap water into the dirtiest water we could using mud, leaves, stones, grass and twigs. The transformation was impressive having started with tap water it now looked like the muddiest puddle ever.

We then were given various objects which we could use to make a water filter, this was great fun and in our groups we made our decisions based on what we knew about filters. With our filters made Mr Reed pored a certain amount of the muddy water into the filter and allowed the water to pass through our chosen materials. It is fair to say some filters were better than others but given the opportunity to repeat the task we were all able to say what we would do differently given the chance.

Tomorrow is Crazy Hair day so we are all wondering what Mr Reed will do as he has an obvious disadvantage.

Primary 6

On the Friday before we broke up for our holiday, as part of our outdoor learning we took part in a ‘Poetree’ activity. Mr Reed introduced us to this by sharing a poem that he had written about trees.

We then went outside with whiteboards and sat under, next to, near, in and around different trees in our playground and began to write poems about what we saw, felt, heard and smelt. Once we had some lines of poetry we then wrote them up on the computer.

This week we have been editing our work, we gave feedback to each other’s poems and then used the feedback to make changes to our own poems. Our new and improved poems were again typed up and then printed. We then illustrated our work before they were laminated and tomorrow we are going to place them on the trees that we wrote about.

Here are a few pictures of us as we wrote our first drafts of our ‘poetree’.

Primary 6

As part of our outdoor learning we were challenged to look for symmetry in nature by Mr Reed. Our first challenge was to find a leaf which when folded in half was symmetrical. After much searching we as a class had to agree that Cerys’s leaf was the most symmetrical leaf.

We then created symmetrical art using natural items that we could find on the playground and had a competition to see which was the best example of symmetry.

Throughout the week, as part of our topic we have been learning about the different gods of Ancient Greece and have been learning the connections between them. We have used what we learnt to aid our writing and included one in our writing task.

Primary 6 and Primary 7 have been invited to take part in a really exciting project which will draw upon our designing and artistic skills as we create a section of a mosaic that will be displayed here in Linlithgow. The project involves the other primary schools in the town and we are really excited to be part of it.

Mr Reed led a class discussion about the need for clean water and how so many people in the world do not have access to clean water like we do. Over the next few science lessons we will be creating different water filters to see if we are able to filter and clean water (we still will not be drinking it.) We will then look to see how clear we can get the water as it passes through various filters that we will be making.

Primary 6