Category Archives: Curriculum Areas

The Legend of Spud Murphy

P.5/4 have just finished reading ‘The Legend of Spud Murphy’ by Eoin Colfer. This is a very funny story with interesting characters. It is full of twists and has an important theme running through it about enjoying reading. There have been lots of learning opportunities throughout the four weeks we have been studying it, such as:

  • Discussing and writing about the characters’ attitudes towards books and reading.
  • Exploring the relationships between the main characters and how they change throughout the book.
  • Writing an email in the role of Will (the main character) to one of his friends.
  • Describing the librarian, Spud Murphy, using interesting vocabulary and evidence from the text.
  • Writing an informal letter from Will to his granny about his experiences at the library.

Here are some questions that you could discuss at home about the book. Maybe chatting about it will make you want to read it too!

  • Who was your favourite character and why?
  • Was there anything that surprised you about the plot?
  • Would you recommend this book to a friend and why/why not?

the legend of spud murphy

Sumdog

As P3-P7 now have access to Sumdog to support their learning in maths, and P2-P7 have it to support their learning in reading, P5 buddied up with P3/2 today to show them the wonders of Sumdog. The Primary 5s showed their buddy how to login, how to play some of the games, how to earn coins as well as explained how to get their first pet and how to decorate their Sumdog house.

Sumdog will be used to support learning in school, but can also be accessed at home where the children can complete challenges set by their class teacher. They can access this account at home by using the log in provided in their homework diary/book.

To access Sumdog, go to: https://www.sumdog.com

It’s Maths O’Clock in Primary 5!

 

Learning Intention: We are learning to tell the time on digital and analogue clocks (MNU 1-10a)

Success Criteria:
I can recognise and show time on analogue and digital clocks
I can answer simple problems involving time
I can talk about am and pm times

In Miss Sherlow’s maths class, we have started a new unit on time. We have been learning about how people use time in their daily lives, and now we are learning how to tell the time on both digital and analogue clocks. In our class today, we started by recapping some key time vocabulary- o’clock, quarter past, half past, quarter to, am and pm etc. We then discussed that the clock can be read in 5 minute intervals and used our knowledge of the 5 times tables to help with this. We used our counting stick to count up in 5 minute intervals starting at a variety of different times. We then played a game using our learning hats where we wrote a time secretly on a post it, then stuck it to our partners head. Each person had to guess what time they were given by asking questions e.g. is the hour even? Is the time before 5pm?

We then split into our groups:

1. Teaching table- we were learning to use am and pm times and write them as 24 hour times.
2. Sumdog group- Time Challenge.
3. Game group- Pass O’Clock– we set a clock at 3pm then flipped a coin. If we rolled a heads, we moved the time on 5 minutes. If we rolled a tails, we moved the time on 10 minutes. We had to read the time each time. First to 5 Hours- we rolled a dice 3 times with each dice showing how many lots of 5 minutes we had (e.g. a 3 would equal 3 lots of 5 minutes, so 15 minutes). When we reached 60 minutes, we received a counter. The winner was the first person to get 5 counters.

You can support your child’s learning at home by: asking your child to read the time from both digital and analogue clocks regularly; discussing time durations (e.g. how long it takes to walk to the shop, how long it would take to drive to your Granny’s house etc.) and by asking the difference between two times (e.g. how many minutes between 5.34pm and 6.03pm). You could also try making your own learning hats at home and challenging your child to guess the time.

Glow Meet with Williamston PS

On Thursday some of our Pupil Council and Technical Troopers took part in a Glow Meet with some pupils from Williamston Primary School. Some classes at Williamston Primary already use Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), so we decided we would ask them some questions about their journey, including the benefits of BYOD and how they resolved any issues they came across. A big thank you to the P6s who gave gave some of their lunch time to meet with us, we have lots to think about.

Morning Blether: Profiling

This morning the Pupil Council held a Morning Blether to explain to parents what profiling is, how we are profiling at Mid Calder Primary School and how was can improve our approaches to profiling.
We also shared a new profiling tool that our staff have created in order for parents to understand what a level looks like in Maths and Language. This will be launched at the Curriculum evening on February 25th at 6pm and will be made available to all parents at this event and on the blog.

Thank you to the Pupil Council for organising this event and to the parents who attended, you can find a copy of the PowerPoint below.

http://www.slideshare.net/midcps/profiling-morning-blether

Farmhouse Breakfast Club Week

This week as part of the Farmhouse Breakfast Club Week Mrs Findlay has worked with the children to organise a number of events to promote the importance of eating a healthy breakfast as well as promoting our school breakfast club.

To link with our Burns celebrations the children decided on a multi-cultural breakfast to promote that we are ‘One Scotland’ and we celebrate the range of cultures of people who live in Scotland. The children enjoyed croissants, bagels, selection of meats, porridge, lentil dahl, sweet noodles.

Odd or Even?

LI

We are learning to recognise odd and even numbers

SC

I can show an odd or an even number in a variety of ways.

I can explain why a number is odd or even

 

In Maths and Numeracy this week P1a began by sorting out a big  pile of socks!

We soon noticed that each sock had a partner, so we matched them up and laid them out  in a long line. Next, we  counted  them by  counting in twos. We learnt that these numbers are called EVEN numbers.

Later, we used this game to sort shoes.

Sorting Shoes

Very quickly, we discovered that the shoes didn’t always have a partner when we put them on the shelf. This helped us to understand what  ODD numbers are.

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Do we have an odd or an even number of socks? We worked together to solve the problem.

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We can show odd and even numbers in different ways.

Why don’t you try this activity at home?

Ladybirds

P1b 2D Shape Space Pictures

LI: We are learning about 2D shapes.

SC: I can identify and name some 2D shapes.

SC: I can describe some 2D shapes using relevant vocabulary.

Last week, we identified 3D shapes as something which we would like to learn more about. We agreed that we would need to learn about 2D shapes first, and so we have been learning to identify and describe lots of 2D shapes. After analysing and comparing different 2D shapes, we applied what we learned to create 2D shape space pictures. Once our pictures were complete we had fun was counting, naming and describing all of the different shapes within our picture. here are some examples:

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We have also really enjoyed playing ‘Guess the Shape’. We take turns to choose a 2D shape from a feely bag. Without looking at the shape we have to describe it effectively so that the rest of the class can identify it.