Many thanks to all parents who made it along to class today to see our MSH challenge in practice!

I hope you could see the value of this means of assessing your child’s learning and instilling in them a ‘Growth Mind Set’ to face up to challenge and build their resilience to keep going even when things initially seem tricky.

All of the children faced up to the challenge and should be extremely proud of themselves!

Science

We will be continuing to plan and build our International Space Stations next week.  We would very much appreciate any clean recycle materials (no tins or glass please).

Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Miss Preston and Miss Akram x

I hope everyone enjoyed the extra couple of days off … We were even blessed with some winter sunshine … and snow! 🙂 🙂

We have had an extremely busy couple of days in P7/6!!

CAB/Community Links

During our recent CAB sessions the children highlighted that they would like to meet with representatives of the Emergency Services to get their opinion on the issues and challenges that the children had identified.  We were very lucky to have four fire fighters come into school on Wednesday to meet with our P6, P7/6 and P7 pupils.  They showed us some interesting videos and spent over an hour sharing their experiences and answering our questions.  Myself, Miss Moir and Ms Miller were all extremely impressed with the maturity, listening skills and confidence to ask questions shown by all upper pupils during this session.  Well done everyone!  Hopefully we will also have a representative from the Police in soon too! (pics below)

IDL

Rainforest

Our Rainforest in a Jar experiments are coming along nicely … well most are 🙂  Some are showing signs of new growth, roots are developing, we are even seeing some insects both grow and reproduce!   We will be observing these over the next two weeks in class then the children will be able to bring them home.  I know ALL parents will be excited to hear that news!

We completed our end of topic challenge/assessment on Rain Forests.  I was overwhelmed by the effort, knowledge, creativity, ICT skills and developing presentation skills shown by everyone!  A massive well done to each of you!

Deciding upon the two winners of the challenge was an extremely difficult decision!   The winners were chosen because they had gone over and above what was expected; They had produced PowerPoint presentations, 3D Art, super facts that reflected research outside the classroom and their confidence during their presentation let me know that they had obviously put in time to practice their presentation.

The winners were Ruby E and Shannon G.  Well done girls!

WWII

This week we completed our topic plan for our WWII IDL learning!  We have started our class novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which will tie in with our WWII learning.

Science & Technology

In line with the P7 transition project, we are doing a mini-topic on Science across the whole class.  We are focusing our research and learning on Tim Peak and the ISS.  Today we spent time discussing the ISS  and planning a model.  Any recycling materials you can send into school will be gratefully received.  I have spent time tonight looking over initial sketches and I am so excited to see the end products!

P7 News

As part of the Heart Start initiative all P7s were given the opportunity to experience CPR on dummies.  (Pics below) Our P6 pupils will get this opportunity in their final year of primary.

Today the P7s and I spent some time looking over their transition math assessment.  I was most impressed with the effort and the way each of them faced the challenge!  Although daunting for them initially it was a fantastic way for us to identify the areas that need some additional attention. We will meet again next Thursday morning to continue this exercise.

A reminder that the out-of-school Science projects are due in next Friday (26th).  These are being handed over directly to the Academy, so I cannot stress enough the importance of presentation, presentation, presentation! 🙂  … Ask your child how many times I mention this in an average day 🙂

As you can see, we have had an exceptionally busy two days!!

A reminder that tomorrow morning (19th) is our class open day!  All Parents/Carers are invited into our classes to see why and how we use Mild, Spicy, Hot challenges across the stages.

Dates for your diary

P7 Transition Science Project             Friday 26th February

P1 1980s Disco!                                      Friday 26th February (Dress down in ’80s style – £1 donation)

Masterclass – Book Week                     Thursday 3rd March

Parent/Carer Consultations                Thursday 17th March

Upper school WWII Assembly            Friday 18th March

Hope you all have a fabulous and well earned February break!

Miss Preston x

This week in P7/6 we have been ….

Literacy

• learning about similes and creating our own similes
• writing our own imaginary simile poem about ‘My Monster’!

Numeracy

• consolidating our learning of addition and subtraction
• completed our end of topic assessments

IDL:Rainforests

The children have been presenting their end of topic presentations, and I have to say that from what I have seen so far I am extremely impressed with the knowledge, effort, creativity and overall presenting skills!  Hopefully, the remaining six presentations will be presented tomorrow morning after assembly.  The winner(s) of the challenge will then be announced!

Our Rain Forests in a jar are going well ….Some are already showing signs of new growth, roots forming!

Music

We have completed the sessions with Mrs Stewart.  These will re-commence after the Easter break.  Music will continue between times within our classroom.

CAB

• finalised the lyrics for our verse of the song for the CAB Conference
• had our final session with the CAB peer tutors – they were extremely impressed with how we engaged with the sessions, how open we were with our concerns about the community and the ideas we came up with to improve the community

HWB

• we completed our Heart Start lessons
• I am extremely happy with how much knowledge and practical skills our class have remembered.   I’d feel in safe hands should anything happen to me in class! 🙂

The maturity shown by all in ‘awkward and embarrassing’ contexts was most impressive! A huge well done to everyone!

P7 News!

•  Heart Start: CPR.  Mrs Bowman was overwhelmed by the way you engaged with this session.  This is an important life skill and every one of you did yourselves proud!
• Math/Numeracy Assessment – as part of the transition process Bathgate Academy requested that all P7s within their cluster primaries complete a standard assessment.  Everyone of you gave 100% in this task!  As a teacher, I can not ask for more than that! Well done!

A few dates for your diary:

• Friday 19th February               Open morning: Mild, Spicy, Hot!
• Friday 26th February               P7 Transition Projects Due (Science)
• Thursday 17th March               Parental/Carer Consultations
• Friday 18th March                    WWII Assembly

Looking forward to all the exciting learning opportunities and experiences that next term will bring!

Miss Preston x

We would be very grateful for any recycling materials you can hand in (no tins or glass please) for a Science/Technologies project we will be doing after the February holiday.

Thanks in advance.

Miss Preston and P7/6

This week in P7/6 we have been …

• Developing our addition skills and discussing the various strategies we use, next week we will be moving onto subtraction
• Learning about when to use paragraphs in our writing, how to properly layout our work and transference of our spelling skills into all of our writing tasks.  We have also been focusing on our comprehension skills.  Next week our grammar focus will be similes
• As the weather has been a little kinder to us this week we managed to get outside to collect the resources required for our Rainforest science experiment; creating a Rainforest in a Jar! Photographs below.  We will be observing our experiment over a four week period, recording any changes and reflecting on whether our predictions were correct or not
• We have been continuing to develop our gymnastic skills in PE with Mrs Logan.  As part of our outdoor PE/Learning we took part in a scavenge hunt with Miss Moir’s P6 class
• The whole upper school have been collaboratively writing the lyrics for this year’s CAB song.  We have also had the peer tutors from CAB in school
• Heart Start – we began learning all about first aid: dealing with heavy bleeding, unconscious and conscious victims, the recovery position and suspected heart attacks.  We will be completing our practical first aid skills next week
• Our P7 pupils were given their transition report guidelines.  This project has to be completed, in the main, at home.  If you require any resources to assist your child with their project please do not hesitate to contact me and the school will help out as much as we can.  The children can use our class laptops for research/preparing their reports during Homework Club (Wednesday lunchtime) and during our weekly reward slot

As you can see, we have had very busy week indeed!

Please note:  The children have no literacy circle or reading homework (usually due on a Monday) to allow the children time to complete their Rainforest Presentations.  I am really looking forward to seeing what the children have produced!! 🙂

Dress in Red Day is next Friday (12th) in aid of Heart Start.  A £1.oo donation is requested with all monies raised going to the British Heart Foundation.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Miss Preston, Miss Akram and P7/6 🙂 🙂

Rainforest in a Jar

P7 Transition Ceilidh at Bathgate Academy

I am extremely happy and proud to let you know that two of our pupil’s not only reached the Scottish School’s Swimming Final, but they both did exceptionally well!

Sam Parker (P5) was the youngest child to reach the finals.  Even though he is only 9 he was swimming in the under 12 category.  Sam did fantastically well considering his age and that this was the very first time he was swimming in a 50m pool.

Emma Parker (P7) also performed amazingly.  Emma won her heat and her time meant she was 3rd from her category.  Emma then went on to win SILVER in the final with a time of only 29.82 seconds!!!!

Mrs Sneddon and I went through to Glasgow to see them swim.  Needless to say we are both extremely proud teachers this evening!

A HUGE well done to both Sam and Emma!!!

Miss Preston xx 🙂 🙂

2015 08 27 – P7_6 Newsletter – Term 3

Hi

A reminder that our P7/6 class trip to Amazonia is tomorrow.

The bus will be leaving school at 9.15am sharp, returning at approximately 2pm.

Children will leave school at our usual time, so no special pick up arrangements are required.

If you opted to give your child their own packed lunch then please remember to pack one in their school bag 🙂

The children (and me!) are all really excited for tomorrow.  The children, knowing my fear of spiders, are insisting on me holding a tarantula  … Don’t hold your breath for this happening!!

Miss Preston.

A reminder to all Parents/Carers of P7 pupils that this year’s Bathgate Academy Roadshow will be at our school on Tuesday evening – Tues 12th at 6.30pm.

This is an opportunity for you and your children to meet with and speak to a number of teachers and SMT from Bathgate Academy.

We hope you can make it along.

Miss Preston & Miss Akram