Vertical Groups started on Friday.  The focus for this term is ‘GIRFEC: Health and Well-being’

Each teacher has chosen an area of the 8 HWB Indicators and the children will be given the opportunity to learn more about each of the areas over the next 8 weeks.

Safe

Healthy

Achieving

Nurtured

Active

Respected

Responsible

Included

My focus is ‘Nurture’.

My home group is Bruce 3.  We met together for the 1st time on Friday.  As part of our ‘Getting to know you’ activities the children faced the ‘cup challenge’! They all worked extremely well together!  I was extremely impressed with each and everyone of them, in particular the older children who ensured that the younger ones were included.  Here are some photos of the challenge! 🙂

Welcome back p7/6!  

We have had a very busy week catching up with each other after the October break, had a variety of ‘spooky’ based activities & lessons, Vertical Groups have re-started, and we continued with our Tobacco (p6) and Alcohol & Drug Misuse (p7) workshops … and of course our Halloween parties!!

Some of our class are off to camp next week; What an exciting opportunity!! I am sure you will all have an absolutely fabulous time and me and your classmates can’t wait to hear all about your adventures!  I am sure we will have some great experiences of our own to share with you too xx

Miss Preston & Mrs Harrison x

Here is a snap shot of some of our first term highlights! 🙂 🙂

Looking forward to lots more fun and learning as we move onto term two!

End of term 1 blog :)

Look out for final updates and some fun pics on Friday 🙂

The children have worked extremely hard over our first term.  Everyone settled in and gelled as a class, albeit it chatty one 🙂  As we are nearing the end of a number of areas of our learning a variety of assessments have taken place or will be taking place this week. Assessments vary between written, self/peer, observations and presentations.

Numeracy:  The children have all worked extremely well on our fraction/decimal/percentage topic.  This can be a very tricky area of numeracy however I am very pleased with how all the children have addressed the challenges faced.  We linked the introduction of decimal learning into ‘Money Week’ which took place last week.  In groups the children were faced with the challenge of planning a party of their choice with a budget of £100.  The variety of ideas and control of the budget was most impressive by every group.  We will be using ICT and some ‘real life’ contexts to build on our decimal and percentage learning this week.

Literacy: The majority of this term’s literacy work has been linked to our whole class topic of ‘Citizenship, Eco and Fair Trade’.  We have been developing our Listening and Talking skills through a variety of group based tasks.  We have also been focusing on improving our writing by adding depth using a variety of the 4 key areas of VCOP: Vocabulary, Connectives, Openers and Punctuation.  After the October holiday we will begin ‘Literacy Circles’ and ‘Reading Routes’ to develop comprehension skills.  The children have been learning a variety of different Literacy Circle roles in preparation for this set of primarily homework based comprehension tasks.

Health & Well Being: Our main HWB focus this term has been to get to know each other and develop our team work skills of listening to others, sharing opinions and negotiation.  This has been done via a variety of paired and group tasks.  Assessment is via teacher observations and peer/self evaluations over the term.  P6 and P7 were separated into their year groups as of last Thursday for a 4 week period for their HWB specific lessons.

P6: Tobacco Workshop – these sessions are run by an external team who come in each Thursday to discuss the dangers of smoking.

P7: Drug & Solvent Misuse – these sessions are run by the class teachers, again each Thursday, to discuss the dangers of misuse of both legal and illegal drugs.

HWB/PE: We have been blessed with the weather this term and have been lucky to have not missed any of our outdoor PE sessions.  Our whole school initiative of the ‘Daily Mile’ has also happened almost every day.  As a school we are lucky to have Mrs Logan as our PE specialist.

Topic/IDL: This term’s topic of Citizenship, Eco and Fair Trade was split into two separate entities (driven by timetable commitments).  Mrs Harrison has been focusing on the Citizenship and Eco areas and my focus has been Fair Trade.  Driven by the interest shown by the pupils this aspect of their learning was amended to focus on the current Syrian refugee situation.  Mrs Harrison will update the blog with regards to the learning within this area.

As the concept of ‘fair price for farmers’ is topical at the moment we focused on the price of milk, linking the issues faced by producers closer to home.  In groups the children have been researching the issues faced by British dairy farmers, considering production costs vs selling price, climate issues relating to our very wet Summer, comparisons between supermarket prices etc.  On Tuesday (13th Oct) the groups will present their findings to the rest of the class. I have had a sneak preview of the presentations and I have to say it is obvious that the ICT research, knowledge of PowerPoint and team working skills have been of a very high standard.  I am looking forward to the final presentations tomorrow! We are also extremely lucky to hopefully have Mr Findlay, a local dairy farmer and father of two MPS pupils come in this week to answer our questions.  Unfortunately this was not possible prior to the end of term IDL assessment but as a class we have a number of very interesting questions prepared.

Our whole class topic for term 2 is Rain-forests.  I am really looking forward to this topic as I think it allows the children to excel themselves through artistic and imaginative expression of their learning!

Modern Languages:  Our primary focus is French.  In preparation for P7 and S1 we are beginning to concentrate on our written French.  Over the past two weeks we have been learning how to write facts about ourselves.  Going into term 2 we will continue to develop our French vocabulary to enhance our French conversational and written skills.  We will begin to embed French into our daily routines in term 2, for example, instruction and responses throughout the day will be in French.  Some basic Spanish words will also be introduced over the coming months.

RME: Mrs Harrison has been teaching RME this term so she will update the blog with details.  I know there has been lots of fun activities and learning taking place.

General:

Can I please take this opportunity to remind you that:

*  Bathgate Academy Open Evening is on Wednesday (14th)

*  All after school club letters must be returned by Wednesday (14th)

Both Mrs Harrison and I hope that term 2 in our class will continue to be filled with fun and learning 🙂

Miss Preston x

We have had a very successful and busy week in P7/6.

Numeracy

We have been continuing to work on and develop our knowledge of fractions.  The plan is that by the end of next week we will be ready to assess our knowledge and understanding of this part of our numeracy focus and move onto decimals.

Literacy

After the October holiday we will be introducing ‘Literacy Circles’.  Every week each member of the reading group will be given a ‘role’ for their reading homework.  On a Wednesday morning they will have to present their ‘role’ to the rest of the group.  This approach to reading comprehension allows the children an experience of thinking about their reading and what they take from it from a variety of angles, hopefully allowing the children to find a method of fully understanding what they are reading that suits their individual learning style.

Over the past few weeks I have been introducing the different roles in class.  This will continue up to the October break.

IDL

The children have been working on their IDL topic this week using ICT as a research tool.  My focus with the class is ‘Fair Trade’ and I have chosen to bring the issues of fair trade to a more local and ‘real’ level for the children.  We are looking at ‘Fair Price for Farmers’.  We began our topic work this week and I was extremely impressed with the team work skills and variety of research strategies displayed by all the children.

Mrs Harrison’s original plan was to look at Eco via clean water issues across the globe.  However, driven by the children’s wishes and interest in current news affairs this has now changed to a Global Citizenship focus on the problems and issues faced by the Syrian refugees.

HWB

Mrs Logan had the children working extremely hard during PE this week!  They were doing a ‘bootcamp’ and there was lots of rosy cheeks and heavy breathing throughout!  Great work guys!

The weather is being very kind to us at the moment – much kinder than it was during the summer holiday! – so we have been able to continue with our Daily Mile and outdoor PE sessions.

As a health promoting school we would like to remind parents and carers that a healthy snack and healthy packed lunch are encouraged at school.  As snack time is only 15 minutes long we recommend that each child only bring one snack.

HWB: Team Work

On Wednesday, we teamed up with Miss Moir’s P6 class for an ‘Alphabet Treasure Hunt’! The children had to find a partner from the other class and use their team work skills to find 26 items within the front and back playgrounds. The tricky part was that the items had to begin with each letter of the alphabet!  Myself and Miss Moir were extremely impressed with the way all of children behaved and engaged with this task! During the plenary the children expressed many positive comments, including: ‘it was nice to work with people from another class’, ‘i enjoyed sharing my ideas’, ‘We’re not finished yet’!!  

Modern Language (French)

We had a general knowledge quiz on France and French culture on Wednesday. The children used their ICT research skills to carry out research in pairs.   They did a great job finding out lots of information about France and Paris.

Current Affairs

I was extremely proud of my class today.  We were looking at 9/11 footage and had a variety of discussions around this extremely sad and devastating event.  All the children participated in the discussions and showed a genuine interest in discussing the thoughts, behaviors and emotions from a variety of perspectives, including terrorism. What stood out was a genuine empathy for those affected.  Caiden suggested a minute silence to give us all a chance to reflect and remember those affected.  As a class we had a minute silence at 11.09 yesterday morning.

House Captains

Our P7s were all invited to stand as candidates for House Captains.  Our class had a very impressive 5 volunteers out of a possible 9!  Each candidate had to prepare a speech to try and persuade the rest of their house to vote for them.  Special recognition goes to Caiden who was the only boy from both of the P7 classes to stand!  Well done Caiden! Votes will be placed on Monday and the new House Captains announced during next Friday’s assembly.  Good luck 🙂

Pupil Council

Our class pupil council representatives were decided today.  Representing our class we have Ruby (P6) and Bailie (P7).  Well done and the best of luck in your new roles 🙂

Junior Road Safety Officers (JRSOs)

All P6 pupils have been invited to stand as candidates for this role.  Any child that is interested has to hand in a written explanation of why they believe they should be chosen for this role.  This has to be handed in on Monday (14th September)

Celebrating Success

We had an outstanding 6 Head Teacher awards plus 1 Depute Award this week!!

Amyleigh, Aiden C and Ruby received their HT award for demonstrating excellent fraction knowledge.

Ruby also received a HT award for perseverance during a maths challenge set by Mrs Harrison.

Emma received her HT award for getting 100% in a start of term Numeracy assessment.

Anthony received his Depute HT award for perseverance during the challenge set by Mrs Harrison.

Well done to all who received an award this week, and good luck to everyone for next week!

We hope you all have a fantastic weekend! 🙂 🙂

Miss Preston and Mrs Harrison

We have had an extremely busy week in P7/6.

Literacy

All children in our class have now been issued with their reading books.  All areas of their literacy have now been assessed.  Miss Preston will be focusing on development of spelling, grammar and writing skills.  Mrs Harrison will be focusing on reading skills.  We will be linking our writing into our topic which for term 1 is Global Citizenship, Fair Trade and Eco.

Numeracy

As with literacy all the start of term assessments are now complete.  Our focus areas are place value, fractions, decimals, percentages and data handling.  We will be linking our numeracy learning to a variety of real life and interdisciplinary contexts using a variety of teaching materials and media.

HWB

Throughout the term we will be looking at ‘teamwork’ skills as our HWB focus.  This week we had a challenge!  Each team was given a number of plastic cups.  The aim of the challenge was to build the highest tower.  All teams worked very well in this challenge – each team having to work together and pull on their skills of resilience and patience as ultimately each tower fell down at least once! :O

Congratulations to the winning team, who managed a very impressive ’13 cup high’ tower!  Well done to Amyleigh, Caiden C, Cameron, Aaron W & Summer 🙂

Expressive Arts

Our EXA focus this week was art, looking at the artist Kandinsky.  Last year our P7s (P6 then) learnt about concentric circles.  Mrs Harrison discussed and drew on our P7s existing knowledge, who shared this with our P6s.  As a class we then transferred this k&u into a more complex piece – The Autumn Tree.  I’m sure you will agree that the results were fantastic.  (pics to follow on Monday)

On Monday String Sounds performed to the whole school.  Our P6s and Miss Moir’s P6 class were then entertained further in a class workshop.  It was fabulous to see and hear the differences between the three instruments (big bass, cello and violin) and hear them working in harmony.  We especially enjoyed hearing tunes we knew like the ‘Jaws’ soundtrack played on the big bass!

We were exceptionally lucky to be entertained by M&M productions on Wednesday with a performance/pantomime of the Wizard of Oz!  It was fabulous!  The costumes, characters and props were fantastic!

Modern Languages

We have been using our ICT skills to research information on France.  Next week we will begin to revise our existing knowledge of the French language and begin to develop this.  We will also start to look at how to write in French.  Once we have our ‘French’ heads back on we will begin to look at some Spanish too 🙂

School uniform:

Can I please take this opportunity to remind all parents/carers that plain black indoor shoes are part of our school uniform.  This is particularly important in the upper years where  children are developing an awareness of ‘brands’ and the apparent status that comes with them.  In line with our school uniform policy, if you choose to wear a white shirt/blouse then a school tie has to be worn.  Ties are not required if wearing a yellow polo shirt.  No hoodies are allowed.

Homework:

Our class homework schedule is:

Monday                       Spelling, reading, reading comprehension and math issued.

Wednesday                 Children’s reading will be listened to by class teacher.  New reading homework issued due on           Monday.

Thursday                     Spelling, reading comprehension and math homework to be handed in.

Hope you are all having a great weekend.  See you on Monday!

Miss Preston and Mrs Harrison xx

We hope you enjoy reading about our plans for term 1.

Thank you to all parents who made it along to our ‘Meet the Teacher’ evening last week.

If you ever wish to discuss any aspect of you child’s learning or experience at school, please do not hesitate to contact the school to arrange a meeting, or simply grab us at the end of the day.

Miss Preston/Mrs Harrison

2015 08 27 – P7_6 Newsletter – Term 1

We have had a fantastic start to the new academic year in P7/6!

As a whole school initiative to raise fitness we have started walking/running one mile each day.  We have been lucky enough to be able to do this outside 🙂 Weather permitting we will be doing this every day.

We have been testing our general knowledge, maths and grammar knowledge and learning all about each other through a variety of activities.

We had a look at internet and social media security and how to keep ourselves safe online.  We watched a fun video that highlighted how different our ‘online’ life is to our actual life.  We had a very interesting and thought provoking discussion around this.  If you would like to view the video it is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDycZH0CA4I

We have been looking at our rights and decided which UNCRC articles we believe to be most important and that we would like to include in our class charter.  This coming week we will decide upon a theme for our display and a photo will be uploaded onto our blog once it is finished.  The children also decided upon class rules.

Our P7s have been doing a great job as buddies to our new P1s.  Well done guys!

I hope everyone is enjoying the weekend and the sunshine!

See you tomorrow! 🙂 🙂

Miss Preston x

Looking forward to welcoming all p7/6 back to school tomorrow 🙂

I hope you have all had a fantastic holiday and I am excited to hear all about everything you have been up to!

See you tomorrow

Miss Preston 🙂

Last week we performed extremely well during our class assembly!  We hope you enjoyed watching us and seeing what we have been learning this year.

IDL/Topic

We have been finishing off our IDL topic of People that help us within our local community.  We planned and designed a new ‘ideal’ Blackburn that would have a variety of new amenities.  These varied from a hospital, fire station, entertainment such as soft play and swimming pools!  Here are some pictures of our designs.

Numeracy

In maths we have been working in measurement.  We have now moved onto measuring using centimetres and metres.  In numeracy we are continuing to work on number and addition strategies.

Literacy

We had our literacy assessment this week.  Our focus has been on ‘functional/instructional’ writing.  This week we had to write clear and concise instructions on a) How to make a sandwich or b) How to put on a jacket.

Celebrating success

Skillionaire

This week the Skillionaire skill was ‘Create’.  Our class winners were Lauren McGuire and Anna Findlay.  The girls won their award for their new Blackburn town plan.  Well done girls!

Next week’s skill is Analyse.  Good luck everyone!

Blackburn’s Got Talent Final!

We would like to wish Marti and Neve lots of luck for tonight’s final!

GOOD LUCK GIRLS!!!!

I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Miss Preston, Mrs Anderson and P3/2 xx

We have had a very ‘higgelty piggelty’ week in P3/2 as we have been without a classroom for most of it!  However, yesterday we moved back in to our newly painted classroom and we love our new lilac and purple theme!

Literacy: We have been developing our skills of ‘instructional/functional’ writing.  After our visit from Miss Alien from planet Zorg last week who simply could not understand our instructions of how to put a jacket on (silly alien!) we have been writing instructions for a variety of basic activities such as brushing your teeth, putting on shoes.  We then put our instructions to the test to see if we provided sufficient information.  The results varied and we are becoming more aware of the importance of not making assumptions when writing with an instructional/functional purpose.

Numeracy:  This week we continued with our number focus.  We had a ‘Mild, Spicy, Hot’ challenge on Thursday.  On reflection the majority of the class felt that they had not really challenged themselves.  This is something that we will work on as we progress into the term.  Now we are settled back into class and have no further Monday’s off we will be progressing our Measurement subject area.

PE:  We will be developing our athletic skills such as throwing, jumping, sprinting.  Mrs Logan is working with the children on gymnastic skills.

IDL: Now we are settled back into our class we will be picking up our topic work as of Monday.  We are looking at people within our community that help us.  We will be linking this into our French language and developing our French vocabulary.  We now have a specific ICT area within our class where the laptops will be set up for the children to use for literacy/numeracy/French interactive games, independent/collaborative research etc.

Celebrating Success

As everything has been mixed up this week we did not award a Star of the Week – we will have two next week to make up for this.

Skillionaires

This week our Skillionaire focus was Evaluating.  Our two class winners were Anton Lamb and Leighla Brookes.

Well done to both of you!

Murrayfield’s Got Talent!

I was an extremely proud teacher in today’s whole school final as I watched SIX of P3/2 pupils perform in Murrayfield’s Got Talent final!! Both acts from our class did amazingly well today.  It takes a lot of courage, confidence and self-belief to stand up and perform in front of such a large audience!  So a HUGE well done to all 6 finalists.

I am even more pleased to announce that Marti Muirhead and Neve McMillan were chosen to got to the Blackburn’s Got Talent Final!!!

WELL DONE GIRLS AND ALL THE VERY BEST OF LUCK!! 🙂 🙂

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Miss Preston x