On Monday 23rd April Primary 5 visited the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh to photograph some of the exhibits and to view the 2018 Wildlife Photography Exhibition. We were welcomed by Ms Gill (Theo’s Mum!), who gave us a very interesting insight into her role as a director of the museum and really inspired us to get the most out of our visit. P5A visited the exhibition first and were amazed by the clarity and composition of the many forms of wildlife which were on show. Some of the photographs were even taken by children their own age or younger! While P5A were visiting the exhibition, P5C got to explore the wonders of the museum…

Some favourite exhibits were Dolly the Sheep and the human hamster energise wheel within the Science and Technology installation. We were also blown away by the Natural History section, where we saw dino skeletons, sharks, narwhals, elephants, wildcats, big, cats, giant pandas….the list is endless.

Afterwards, P5A explored the museum while P5C went to view the wildlife photographs. Some of our favourites were the photos of animals interacting with their young, animals playing, animals hunting, underwater shots and so much more. There were also some images of animals which are hunted by humans, showing us the devastating effect we can have on wildlife.

Some of us made sketches of the exhibits; we are continuing to work these up back at school with Miss Brolls and we are adding more detail to these as we go along.

We had a fantastic day at the Museum and would highly recommend it as a day out, especially as it’s completely free!

Have a great holiday weekend,

Miss Anderson and Mrs Campbell

Mrs Campbell and Miss Anderson have been overwhelmed by the amazing reproductions of ‘Titanic’ cabins which were produced by Primary 5 this term.

Every one which was brought in to school seemed to contain even more detail than the last, from teeny-weeny bowler hats to clocks showing the exact time the ship went down to beautifully tiled Edwardian bathrooms. It was clear that the children loved learning about life aboard the iconic ship and they were fascinated (and a bit scared!) to learn about its sad end. The children also focused on the class system in place during this time and they learned about the impact this had on the unfortunate passengers of Titanic; the number of 3^rd class passengers who lost their lives greatly outweighing those in 2^nd or 1^st class.

Hopefully you can see from our photographs the level of detail included in some of these amazing cabins, with some children choosing to recreate the stark austerity of steerage and others opting for the opulence of 1^st class. We know that these creations sometimes need a bit of adult help, so thanks again to all the children (and their helpers) for their amazing creativity – well done!  

L.I. We are learning to link multiplication and division

S.C. I can count on and back in 3s, 4s, 6s, 8s

I can divide whole numbers into equal groups

Primary 5C were keen to improve their knowledge of times tables so we have had a week of working specifically on this to try and increase speed and accuracy with multiplication and division facts.

We used our knowledge of place value and known facts to multiply  and divide numbers and engaged in a few practical games and activities to help us brush up our times tables facts!

We took advantage of a jotter-free day to learn some games which we think will be helpful – some of these could also be done easily at home:

• Times table challenge wheel – we tested each other on how quickly and accurately we could write all the stations of the chosen times table
• Multiplication / division bingo and dominoes
• Times table snakes and ladders
• King’s Game – taking turns to place cards at their correct station within the chosen times table

Now that we know these games we can hopefully keep using them to improve our times table accuracy and knowledge of division facts.