Category: Whole School

Time for a little update on the roundhouse…

P4 have been very busy this term constructing our very own Celtic roundhouse! With the help of Tom and Sarah-Jane (Murron’s parents, who are also archaeologists!) we were able to make a life-size (for us anyway) version of a roundhouse. It has been hard work, involving lots of digging, hunting for mud, stripping and weaving willow and building the overall structure. We are very proud of how it looks and have been surprised at how much learning has come from this project! We have had a first-hand experience of how ancient Celts would have built their own homes and how difficult it could be, we have learned about joins and structures and also about how to use different tools. Keep posted or pop in and visit to see how it is coming along!

Until next time…

Primary 4 🙂

This morning we were visited by three very important visitors: Moira Niven (Deputy Chief Executive of West Lothian Council), Councillor Dodds and Councillor Fitzpatrick. Our visitors came to see our WWI Victory Garden. Niamh, Chloe and Declan were all able to share their learning, talking about how they planned and created the garden, along with the knowledge and skills that they developed. Our three Primary 7 pupils were amazing hosts, thoroughly enjoying sharing their learning.

After visiting the garden, our visitors popped into the Primary 7 classroom to join in with the class learning.

Our visitors also visited the Primary 4 Celtic Roundhouse and were amazed at what has been produced. They all said that they would like to come back again at a later date to find out more.

We hope our visitors enjoyed their time with us (and enjoyed their Victoria Sponge!).

We were learning about what rich people and poor people wore in the 16th Century.  I would have preferred to have been a rich person because they beautiful clothes. Shannon

We were working with 6 digit numbers and we were adding on 1000, 10 000 or 100,000. I found it a bit tricky so we are going to play the roll and stick game to practise this to make me more confident. Amber

We were developing our basket ball skills further by shooting into the hoop. Since I am quite good at it I was supporting others to show them the correct way to hold the ball when you are shooting.  Louisa.

In drama we were doing an improvisation from our class novel ‘The Spiderwick Chronicles’. The characters we were becoming were Mallory, Jared, Simon and Mum. To be successful we had to try to take on their characteristics eg. move like the character, how they sound and how they react to others. I enjoyed trying to be Jared.  Lewis P

We have been asked by Pumpherston Community Council to advertise their appeal for funding towards an exciting local project. The Community Council are hoping to start a Community garden here in Pumpherston and are applying to the Bank of Scotland Community Fund for a donation.  Their bid page says: ‘This award would help us develop our community garden project. This will increase a sense of community ownership, pride and stewardship. It will help to foster the development of community identity and raise spirits. We would hope to bring together all members of the community, no matter their age, race, culture or social standing.’

Find out more and vote for this exciting opportunity at:

https://communityfund.bankofscotland.co.uk/voting/cf_org_vote_profile.asp?cfr=98E668

Contact Pumpherston Comunity Council through their website: http://www.pumpherstoncc.org/

This week we have started the fruit stall again.  Grapes are 40p, oranges are 30p, apples are 30p and bananas are 30p. We know the children in the school enjoyed having a healthy snack before the summer so we will be running the fruit stall Monday to Thursday to see if it remains as popular.

We are starting to learn about our topics! This term we will be learning about life in a Burgh at the time of Mary Queen of Scots. Last week we researched a timeline from present day all the way back to the time of Mary Queen of Scots.

In science we have started to learn about the Solar System.  In both of these topics we are working in groups so we have been learning the skills of good group work!

Well done P5!

This week, Primary 4 started work on poetry.

We have been learning about special types of words called calligrams. They are words which look like what they mean.

We read a poem by Gina Douthwaite called ‘Circus of Shapes’ and we worked in groups to find examples of calligrams. We found letters that looked like jumping acrobats and others that looked like rings and a tightrope. Then, we tried to create our own for an ‘under the sea’ shape poem. We found this a little tricky, especially getting our letters to look like sea life! We are going to practise writing calligrams more next week. Look out to see how we improve!

Well done to Jessica McLean who is our star writer this week – Miss McLaughlin is going to challenge her to write some more interesting calligrams!

Challenge..

We found writing calligrams for sea life really tricky! Can you think of how we could make the word ‘starfish’ look like a starfish?

Until next week..

Primary 4 & Miss M 🙂