Seafield Primary School

Learning Highlights:

• For science,  we were excited to use slinkies to demonstrate how sound vibrations move through the air in waves. We used some instruments to investigate different tones an pitches and how they make different vibrational waves.
• We tried very hard in the Sumdog competition and managed to beat the other classes in our school with a great score.
• For writing, we looked at our individual targets and helped each other by peer assessing using tickled pink and green for growth.

Challenges:

• In maths we are learning division and how it related to multiplication. We can used counters if we want to but it can be tricky working out how to share the numbers equally, especially as they get larger.
• We have been learning to be effective questioners in reading. This is a very important skill but it is challenging, especially because you have to read the text very carefully.
• For PE we have been making static shapes using our bodies. It is not easy to balance properly and some of us kept falling onto our mats. It’s a good job they are soft!

Lead Learners this week were Faith and Emma-Jo. They were looking out for people tucking in their chairs, not running in the corridor and good playground behaviour.

Learning Highlights

1. This week we enjoyed working with Rob from Kids Gone Wild. He took us to our usual spot in the forest area at Deanburn Gardens where we learned how long it would take for different items to disintegrate into the soil. Did you know that glass will take over one million years?!
2. We had a music lesson from Mrs de Luen from NYCoS who taught us a song that includes 5 different languages; English, Spanish, French, Swedish and German.
3. As a class we looked at sounds and vibrations and how they travel through the air to the ear.

Tricky Tasks

1. We have been practicing times tables in maths and looking at how important it is to learn them off by heart to help us with harder maths in the future.
2. For spelling practice we have been looking at putting words into alphabetical order. It gets quite tricky when some words begin with the same letter and we have to look at the next letter.
3. We have been using reciprocal reading skills in literacy and have made predictions about our class novel, the Wild Robot. We’ve also been clarifying hard words and asking more questions to get a better understanding of the text.

Our lead learners this week were Amelia and Thomas who worked on looking out for kindness and respect.

P2/3 had an amazing week. Some of the children’s highlights this week include:

• “Writing about Planet Earth to persuade Ali the Alien and his friends to come and visit Planet Earth and bring Sparkles back.”
• “Launching our rockets outside. It was fun to see the rockets going far and then watching the videos in class.”
• “Learning about Bar graphs – so you can see things quickly instead of having to count tallys.”
• “Health and wellbeing was fantastic because we were learning about how to keep safe with medicine and dangerous things in the house. I liked exploring the packaging of the items to see if they were safe or not. Medicine should be stored up high.”
• “Outdoor learning because we got to do lots of fun activities and play on the slack line.”

A couple of challenges this week include:

• “Cracking the code in literacy was a bit tricky but after Mrs Wallace explained it then I understood it better.”
• “The tricky sum at the end of the bar graph page because it was lots of adding”.
• “Writing was a bit tricky when we were trying to get Ali the Alien to bring Sparkles home. I was trying to write paragraphs.”
• “Practising lines for the nativity as I kept forgetting what I need to say.”

Our Lead Learners this week were Noel and Rosa who were super helpful and enjoyed having extra responsibilities in the classroom.

Have a super weekend,

Mrs Wallace

Tickled Pink

• We got to experiment with Micro-bits and used these to create an algorithm to make a smiling face.
• We used water colour paints to create nativity scenes.
• Being a rights respecting school we wrote persuasively about the importance of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child.
• We learned about profit and loss in our numeracy work.

Green for Growth

• We learned steps from The Lambeth Walk in dance and we are going to work on putting these together in our groups.
• We are developing our reading strategies and have been getting better at predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarising.
• We need to try to get faster at doing our spelling dictation tasks.

Lead Learner Update

Our Lead Learners this week were Meg and Darcey and they chose to look for their peers who were

• keeping the classroom tidy
• using good listening skills and
• staying in your set when doing a task

Tickled Pink

• We have been practicing really hard for our nativity and are trying to learn our songs and lines
• We became toy inventors and used magnets to create a maze for our friends!
• We loved doing some science with our P6/7 Buddies! We even got to eat the sweeties after!

Green for Growth

• We have been working on persuasive writing and are working on writing more independently
• We are beginning to use bigger numbers to 20 in our addition and som of us have found this a bit tricky!

Our lead learners this week have been Blake and Leon! They have worked hard to be good role models for the class!

P2/3 have had lots of fun celebrating Book Week Scotland. The Scottish Book Trust put together a bag for each child in Primary 1-3 which includes two books, a leaflet with activities and some extra goodies. Throughout the week we have read the books and enjoyed predicting what we think will happen in the book/next when reading them. We played games linked to the books and activities that linked in with our topics (Space and Weather). Today we had a Teddy Bear Picnic as the children were gifted their bag to explore with their teddy and friends. The children then voted for their favourite book, using tally marks as this is what we were learning last week. There was a clear winner – totaling 14 votes – The Story Thief.

We enjoyed our nativity song rehearsals this week and it is clear that the children have all been practising lots because it is sounding really good!

Lots of children enjoyed showing their hard work to grown ups during ‘Sharing Our Learning’ session. They were really proud to show what we have been doing in class and also get some feedback from parents.

For our Space topic we have been learning about the Phases of the Moon (this linked with the story ‘Out of Nowhere’ as they liked having picnics and looking up at the moon) – some of the children found this task quite tricky to stick the correct moon picture into the cycle. We will be checking what phase of moon it is regularly and trying to spot it in the sky (unfortunately it has been too cloudy the past two nights!).

For our Weather topic we were learning about weather instruments which linked with our story ‘Jeremy Worried About the Wind’ as he had made a Wind Vane. After learning about different weather instruments and their names, we done a little quiz to follow up and then made our own rain gauge (as we get plenty of rain in Scotland!). Some of the children found it challenging to make their measuring scale accurately, but with support were able to mark out centimetres and number them. The children were very excited to take them home and show their grown ups. Some shared that they have already put their rain gauge outside and measured how much rainfall we have had since.

I hope you have a super weekend and enjoy exploring your new stories.

Mrs Wallace

Tickled Pink

• In art we learned about the nativity scene and painted with contrasting colours to make it stand out.
• For antibullying-week we had ‘Friendship Friday’ where we got to play with our friends to build our relationships, we also gave our feedback to the Health Team on what bullying is and how to deal with it.
• In our WW2 we looked at Morse code and secret message. We built electrical circuits and used the light bulb to send our own messages.
• We had our parents in this week for a Sharing our Learning event, we were able to show our parents our work and they gave us feedback.

Green for Growth

• Some people found profit and loss a bit tricky in math’s this week. We were also challenged with some multi-stepped word problems.
• We had some tricky words this week in our spelling, looking at prefixes, lots of us found this tricky this week.

Lead Learners

Lead Learners and Milkshake Monday winners are Meg and Darcey, they will be looking for those who consistently demonstrate our school values.

Learning highlights:

• This week the children started using a new resource called Kapla which are small, loose wooden blocks. They completed a stem challenge to build the strongest bridge using this new resource and everyone loved it. They have been experimenting with designs all week and are looking forward to more challenges.
• Today, we learned why Remembrance Day is important, why poppies are sold and the difference between the Scottish and the English poppy. We created some stained glass art where we drew and cut out poppies, crosses or images of soldiers. Check them out on our windows when you drive by.
• We have been reading ‘The Wild Robot Escapes’ as our class novel at snack time. This is a sequel to ‘The Wild Robot’ which we read last term. This week, the story reunited the main character, Roz with her son, Brightbill and the class erupted in cheers and celebrations! We were so happy, excited and glad that they found each other again after so long. We can’t wait to see if Roz makes it back to the island.

Challenges:

• All maths groups are learning the times tables which can be very tricky. We have been drawing arrays, using number squares and skip counting to help us.
• In reading, we used a short read text to enhance our summarising and clarifying skills. We are learning to only summarise the important parts of a text and to read the full sentence to try to understand the meanings of words.
• For spelling we tried to find smaller words within our main spelling words. This was really hard because we learned that you can’t add extra letters and some words are not spelled how they sound.

Our lead learners this week were Jack and Che. They were looking for people being kind, people tucking in their chairs and for people saying thank you to others.

Learning Highlights

• A highlight of our week was learning about the different payment methods is maths, such as, debit, credit, cash, cheque and digital wallets.
• In writing we wrote persuasive texts about whether we agreed with homework or not, most of the children disagreed!
• This week was Road Safety Week, we taught the nursery children how to cross the road safely and also about different hazards.
• We have enjoyed our new Kapla resource, where we built the Titanic and wrote our spelling words with them.

Tricky Tasks

• In PE we learnt the pre war dance of the Charleston, we practiced three different steps, the step and tap, the swivel and hand movements. We found the swivel the trickiest due to complex foot movements.
• We role played in maths this week to come up with TV adverts about debit and credit cards, we found it tricky to cut down all of our amazing ideas.

Lead Learner Update

Last week our Lead Learners were Oscar and Caleb, they were looking for showing great listening skills, respect when the teacher is talking and focusing hard to get work finished.

Our new Lead Learners for this week are Olivia and Alieu, and our special person is Calla.

We have had another great week. Our highlights are:

• Learning about Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night before making firework paintings. We then had a visit from P6/7 to teach us how to be safe with fireworks and bonfires. The presentation was amazing and they taught us lots. We made posters to show what they taught us and showed them to the P6/7s – they were really impressed with our hard work.
• Climbing trees during Outdoor learning using tree climbing straps to help us get up higher. The children worked together to find a good tree to climb and took turns to go as high as they felt comfortable – getting down was the scarier part but the children supported each other and communicated well throughout to help guide the climber back down.
• Making our own ‘Al the Alligator’ prop for comparing numbers. We used it to help fill in missing signs and say the sentence out loud (eg. 76 is greater than 41). We enjoyed playing games on the laptop to practise too.

A couple of tricky tasks:

• Making weather mobiles because they were fiddly and the strings kept getting in a tangle.
• Some children found their phonics tricky this week – igh and y. They were practising which spelling is usually found in the middle of words and which is at the end.

Our Lead Learners this week were Kellan and Ella, they thought the class have been really kind this week and have worked well together. Well done everyone!

Have a super weekend – look out for the fireworks and stay safe!

Mrs Wallace