Category Archives: English & Literacy

Book Week Scotland 2018, Community, English & Literacy, Expressive Arts, Nursery

Celebrating Book & Nursery Rhyme week

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Over the last fortnight we have celebrated World Book week and Nursery Rhyme week. We started with a visit from Rachel McGaw who read ‘The Kilted Coo’.  Then we were challenged to learn a different nursery rhyme every day, starting with 5 Currant Buns which we acted out. Next was  Humpty Dumpty, we had fun clapping each time we said Humpty and Dumpty. Our favourite was A Sailor went to Sea,  clapping 3 times every time we said sea or see. We finished the week with  I’m a Little Teapot and Round and Round the Garden. As a treat we invited our parents and carers in to hear our rhymes and watch the children receive their Book Bug Bags.   They enjoyed home baking and shortbread made by the children then participated in our nursery rhyme concert. It’s been a fabulous few weeks celebrating with our families.

Book Week Scotland 2018, English & Literacy, Primary 3, Technologies

Book Week Scotland in P3

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In Primary 3, we LOVE reading and we have been excited to take part in fun learning activities to celebrate Book Week Scotland 2018.

Visualising the character: Through our IDL based on the book, The Boy Who Grew Dragons, we have been developing the reading skill of visualisation. We used this to help us when beginning to look at our whole school book, The Lost Thing. We listened to the book being read without being able to see any of the illustrations or the front or back cover, and we were challenged to draw ‘the lost thing.’ We then created a fact file for our creatures, describing its appearance, habitat, diet and hobbies. We compared our ‘lost things’ to the real illustrations, watching the film version of the story to visualise the characters and settings further.

Creating animations: Using our own lost characters, we used Puppet Pals 2 to create short animations based on the book. As some of us had not used the app before, we began by ‘tinkering’ with it, exploring its features and teaching each other when we learned something new. We took pictures of our lost things and made them into movable characters, adding voice overs to narrate the stories.

Read, Write, Count: In addition to all of this, Primary 6 joined us to gift us with our Read Write Count Book Bags. They helped us to explore the exciting books, create our own stories and play the fun games with us.

We have also taken part in a Book Week Scotland reading contest on Sumdog, continued to read our own books for enjoyment and given our review of lots of exciting new novels that our PSA has very kindly funded. We also enjoyed a visit from author, Colin Drysdale, who shared lots of incredible facts about sea creatures and sea birds found in Scotland. What a busy and book loving week in Primary 3!

 

English & Literacy, Expressive Arts, Health & Wellbeing, Primary 5, Technologies

P5’s Outdoor Adventures

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Primary 5 have had a great few weeks exploring the school’s woodland areas and using the space as an ‘outdoor classroom’ for various challenges in Literacy, Art, Technologies and Health and Wellbeing.

As a class, we have been reading ‘Billy & the Minpins’ by Roald Dahl. Challenge one saw us using our visualisation skills to imagine what the Gruncher (a terrible man and Minpin-eating creature) would look like and then creating natural art inspired by Andy Goldsworthy.

Challenge two was based our Technologies skills. We had to design and create bridges for the Minpins to travel from tree to tree. There were some magical creations!

Our final challenge was very different! We used the woodland as a setting for ‘yogateering’. Pupils had to find, memorise and repeat various yoga sequences to earn points for their team.

Overall, we have thoroughly enjoyed taking our learning outdoors and hope to do more in the new year.

 

Book Week Scotland 2018, English & Literacy, Uncategorized

Book Week in Primary 4!

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Primary 4 have enjoyed looking at the book The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan. The children took part in several activities to explore one of the main characters in the book ‘The Lost Thing’.

Visualisation challenge: The boys and girls had to listen to the book without seeing any pictures. As they listened, they were asked to pick out information that would help them to visualise The Lost Thing in their minds. Have a look at their creations!

True, False or Unsure challenge: Once we had found about the Lost Thing, the children were set a challenge to decide if a set of statements were True, False or Untrue. The boys and girls then shared their decisions and justified their choices. It was a really interesting discussion and the children had lots of different opinions about the Lost Thing. These were some of the statements we looked at:

  • There is only 1 lost thing in the entire world
  • The lost thing is lonely
  • The lost thing looks for lonely people
  • The lost thing wants to be alone
  • The lost thing is invisible
  • The lost thing is in Shaun’s imagination
  • Only children and animals can see the lost thing

‘Found’ poster challenge: Our last challenge was to create a Found poster so that if someone or something was looking for the Lost Thing we could help them find it! We thought about creating detailed character descriptions for our poster, have a look!

English & Literacy, Primary 5

WOW! Wonderful Writers in P5 Working Hard on Adventure Stories.

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Wondrous P5 Star Writers!

P5 Star Writers wowed us with their descriptions of scary settings. They were working on giving more detail in their descriptions. They did this by writing about what the setting looks like and the colours that the character sees. They were trying to put in the thoughts and feelings of their characters too.

We are all working on core targets of using capital letters and full stops in every sentence. We could try and create longer sentences using conjunctions such as and and but.

We listened to a good model for writing and adventurous tale that was called Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. It would be a very good bedtime story to listen to.

Please ask them what happens in the middle of their stories and get them to tell you what happens in their visual story maps that they have made as we will be working on that in the forthcoming weeks.

 

English & Literacy, First Level, Primary 3, Supporting homework, Supporting Reading, Uncategorized

Visualisation in Primary 3

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We are learning to visualise the characters in a text
– I can use my imagination to form pictures in my mind
– I can select the key words the author uses to help me to create pictures and can explain my thinking
– I can use my senses to help me to visualise

This week, Primary 3 started their new IDL context about the book, The Boy Who Grew Dragons, and we were introduced to the reading skill of visualisation. We learnt that visualising is when you use the words an author writes to help you to make pictures or a movie in your mind, allowing you to understand what is happening in the text.

We then heard two descriptions of well-known book characters and, without seeing an illustration, we had to draw a picture of what we thought the character looked like using the key words from the text. We compared our drawings to the real illustration and discussed what words or phrases would have helped us to be more accurate. Using our new skill, we then drew pictures of the baby dragon in our IDL book.

Supporting at home:

When reading a range of different books at home, ask your child to visualise the characters and key events being described. Encourage them to describe the pictures they are forming in their minds, and ask them to tell you, point to or read the words that the author used to help them to create these pictures.

English & Literacy, Expressive Arts, Primary 5, Second Level

Lively Sculptures at Gallery Trip.

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National Museum Of Modern Art

Monday 8th October 2018

On Thursday 13th September Mr Renshaw, Ms Brolls And Primary 5 went to the National museum of modern art. Each pair got a ipad see primary 5 could take pictures of modern art. We Got Split Into two groups. Half went with heather and the other half went with poppy. We went to see lovely outdoor sculptures. There was one were people thought was either a penguin. Some thought it looked like a black bottle. Next we went to see  a huge green grassy Mountains. It had small lakes. It was a beautiful day. There was a beautiful sculpture it looked like a mermaid. When we were walking past the playground and we thought some things were like sculptures. There were light blue huge rocks. There were tall ones and small ones. They were in  different shapes and sizes. They had gold pieces. It looked like they were on a piece of paper and printed it on. There was lots too see

Later in the day we went to modern gallery 2 (MOD2). Before we went to walk across the road there were one other sculpture it was this metal person sitting on a rock. It was close to the road. You had to look around the corner. After we walked across the road there was a sculpture. It was like a sign. It was glowing. It Said ’ ’There will be no miracles here. We went inside the building. We went up these wooden stairs. Next we got in too a room. In the room we got in to groups and partners. I was with my best friend. We decided to make a goat with a fox. We used Sharp pencils, oil pastels, scissors, navy blue foil, cardboard and a bamboo stick. After we all had lots fun we had to tidy up. We went to the field there was a sculpture it was like a wind mill. But it was made out of very thin triangles. Then we went back too modern gallery 1 (MOD1) we collected our food and went outside. Me my friend and some boys went to a hexagon we could sit inside it. It was raining we went inside. We had fun and we were laughing. It was a very nice day. Some people stayed outside and the other children went to see more art. When we came back again. Different children went inside we had lots of time to play. There was heavy rain we all enjoyed the rain. Later on we had to go in the bus. We waited for a while. The other children were collecting art work. It was raining a bit less than earlier. I was a bit upset. Our Sculpture was missing. My Friend was also upset. We worked very hard on it. We went on the bus we enjoyed our time. We were on the bus for about an hour. We eventually got back. It was nearly home time. After we got packed and went home.

 

 

 

English & Literacy, Primary 5, Second Level, Technologies

Bloggers in P5 – First Post for Sophie

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Ever        Going      Be

Things           To       Alright!

Hi it’s Victoria and Harper. We went to The Modern art galleries. We went to MOD1 and MOD2 let’s see what we did! First we got off the bus (we all do that right?) When we got there we were greeted by two ladies their names were Poppy and Heather. We also got split into groups I was with Heather so was Victoria. Miss Brolls came with our group too.

First, we went outside and all of us looked at this big hill. Me and my partner took some pictures of stuff like this big penguin it was really a woman. We all couldn’t believe it. Then we went over to MOD2 where we made sculptures. Leah (my partner) made a pie looking art work I loved it! We went outside to play and meet the other group.

Then, we had lunch yay then Miss Brolls took us to Raqib Shaw and it was so cool seeing his art he had two dogs in all of its pictures. Finally, we got to go back to the park to have a little play while the others saw his art.When they came back and we all played together it was so fun.

I will add some picture to show you!

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