Author: Mrs Matos Van Den Heever

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P7b weekly blog update!

Final week before our October break, and there was still so much learn. It’s been a busy week, but everyone has been working hard, and I am sure can not wait for a lovely relaxing week long break!

Numeracy: This week in Numeracy we have been learning how to use the Formal written method to solve division problems. We have found using this method as a quick and easy method, but again we have realised how important it is for us to learn and know our timetables. We have been practising our timetables in class and Mrs. Matos has set us the challenge to continue to practice at home. To consolidate all our learning from this term, we completed a variety of different word problems and we needed to use our skills of numeracy vocabulary to know which number operation we needed to calculate. We used the formal written method for all four number operations.

Literacy: As we draw to an end of our Brazil study and comparison, we learnt about deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest. As a writing activity we wrote an essay on deforestation and the effects it has on the Amazon Rainforest. Our essay needed to be written in paragraphs, show our understanding of deforestation and the effects it has, as well as sharing our opinion and ideas. We were so engaged in learning about deforestation , that we held a small debate. The class was divided into four groups, each group was representing a party ( Greenpeace, Large Meat company, Traditional medicine and a travel agency), each group needed to use persuasive language on why they would need a section of the rainforest. It was a very interesting outcome.

HWB: This week we learnt about food hygiene during the preparation of food. To help us to put what we had learnt into practice we made some Brazilian muffins. We made sure we cleaned our surface areas, washed our hands , wore gloves, wore hats and aprons. With only 4 ingredients it was sure something very different to what muffins usually taste like.

Home learning: Over the last few weeks, Mrs. Matos has been so impressed with the high quality of home learning that the children have been brining in. From using ‘junk’ materials to create Favela’s to filling a shoe box with items that relate to a book that they have been reading.

P7b and Mrs. Matos

 

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Rights Respecting School Committee

Today our Rights Respecting School Committee came together and worked together in groups to brainstorm some ideas on how to raise awareness of Rights and Responsibilities with pupils, parents and staff. It was a very productive meeting with lots of fun and exciting ideas. We are planning for our next meeting to compile an online survey for pupils and staff to complete, we will then analyse the data and compile our action plan.

Mrs. Matos and Mr. Ritchie

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P7b Weekly Update.

‘ There is joy and wonder everywhere, when you see the world through the eyes of a child.’

Numeracy: Numeracy this week has been great fun, we have moved on from the formal written methods of addition, subtraction and multiplication, we are now learning the formal written method to solve division problems. It was tricky at first, but we have the hang of it now! – EM

Literacy: This week in Literacy we learnt about homophones, homophones are words that sound the same but have different spelling and meaning. Some examples are the words guest and guessed, passed and past or herd and heard. We have been learning about inference. This term we have being researching and comparing the differences and similarities of Scotland and Brazil. Mrs. Matos set up a crime scene in which Christ the Redeemer, in Rio, was vandalized. After we had discussed the meaning of inference and how it can be used in the world of life and work, we wrote a short paragraph about the crime, using the evidence to help us to infer what might have happened.- EC

Science: In science this week we learnt about classification keys. We worked in pairs to make a classification key about penguins. In different pairs we started making one about sweets! We made up funny names for the sweets we didn’t know. It was a real treat! – LC

1+2 French: In French this week we revised our numbers to 50, played some lotto bingo and hide the object game. While one person searched for the object, the rest of the class had to count in French, the closer they got the louder we counted, we were surprised our loud counting didn’t crack the windows! – DR-S

Buddy Time: This week with our buddies we had the opportunity to help them with ICT. We helped them to log onto the netbooks and Sumdog. We helped them to become familiar with how to navigate and play the different games. We used our school values of  confidence, kindness and inclusion to help our buddies!

P7b and Mrs. Matos

 

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P7B Weekly Update!

Wednesday, 26th September was European day of languages. P7b joined together with P7a to learn some basic Portuguese vocabulary. We linked our Portuguese lesson to our learning and comparison study of Brazil. We discussed that Portugal is Europe and that Barzil is in South America, but that Portuguese is the chosen language in Brazil. We had fun learning some vocabulary and also comparing the similarities of some words to that of Spanish.  We worked in pairs to complete a language jigsaw, matching the Portuguese word to the English word. To finish off our lesson we learnt a popular Brazilian game that is played amongst children, the game involved memory and speed. The game was a lot of fun that we have continued to play it throughout the week on the playground.

Literacy: This week, a very special person is leaving our school. Jessie Orr, the lovely cook that has been cooking our delicious school dinners has decided after many years to retire. We wanted to do something special for Jessie, so that she will know how much we appreciated her. Last week, we learnt the features of a Tanka poem, we therefore decided to write Jessie a special message using the features of a Tanka poem, completing this activity was not only something special for a very special person, but it also helped us to consolidate our understanding of tanka poems, and helped us to practise identifying  the number of syllables in words.  We concentrated this week on homophones and identified the common errors when using the incorrect homophones in a sentence, the week before we looked at Synonyms and this week we consolidated our learning by identifying different synonyms for the different homophones that we were learning.

Numeracy: We continued to solve multiplication problems using the formal written method. We continued to play a range of different games to help us practise recalling our timetables.

IDL: In previous weeks, we learnt the location of Brazil, this week we looked again at the world map, and we revisited our knowledge of identifying the 7 continents on a map. We then had a look at South America and located Brazil, to continue with our comparison study, we identified Scotland and its major cities on a map

Expressive Arts: Christ the Redeemer is one of the most popular and well known landmarks of Brazil, this week we created our own images which represent Christ the Redeemer, we used a wide variety of different art techniques, such as shading, collage, overlapping and more.

HWB: This week we started our discussions on how to keep ourselves safe, how we will keep ourselves safe in the community. We worked in groups to identify the possible dangers that we could face, and we discussed different ways in which we can ensure that in a time of danger, we will be more aware of how to respond appropriately.

 

    Discussing possible dangers in the community.

We continued to practise our basketball skill in PE, we used the skills that we have learnt throughout the term, and played a few short games against each other.

Wider Achievement: Well done to HR who had brought along her badges and gifts that she had received recently at girls brigade. It is always lovely to hear about all the achievements outside of school.

P7b and Mrs. Matos

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P7b’s short but meaningful week!

It was a rather short week this week, with the children having a good rest over their long weekend break. Although it was short, we still managed to have some meaningful learning.

Literacy: During Literacy this week, we learnt about Tanka poems and the features of writing a Tanka poem. Through our Brazil study, we used some reading material and netbooks, to further our knowledge and understanding of the Amazon Rainforest. To help us to make our Tanka poems create a sense of feeling and emotions, we recapped on some Figurative language that we can use in our poem, we discussed the difference between similes, metaphors and personification. We challenged ourselves to use at least one of these in our poems. Our completed poems will be displayed in our classroom for you to read.

Numeracy: We have been consolidating our understanding of using the formal written method when multiplying a multistep problem. We have been using word problems to help us practice using this method. We have realised the importance of knowing our timetables, and we have been practicing them through various games.

HWB: This term we are focusing on how to keep ourselves safe. We were fortunate to have a visit from a RNLI volunteer, who came along to share with us, how we can keep ourselves safe near open water. We learnt how to identify danger and  how to report if we suspect that someone is in danger. Our talk was very informative, and we were complimented on our knowledge and engagement. We took part in a fun role play activity, where some of us were the victims, some of us were the witnesses, we had a coast guard operator, and our life boat rescue team – it was great fun, playing out all that we had just learnt.

To top off our week, P7b put on a fantastic performance for their class assembly on Confidence. The children all delivered their lines with poise and confidence. Mrs. Matos is so proud of everyone, we know that standing in front of a hall full of people saying lines and singing is not for everyone, but each and every P7b learner can be so proud of themselves today. Thank you P7b, you delivered an important message about confidence to all the learners, staff and parents/ carers of Springfield Primary School!

P7b and Mrs. Matos

 

 

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Rights Respecting School Committee.

Today was our first Rights Respecting Schools Committee meeting. It was lovely to see some children returning to the committee, as they were a part of the committee during the last school session. We also welcomed some new boys and girls to our committee group this morning. It was so lovely to see so many enthusiastic children!

This morning we spent some time discussing the purpose and role of RRSC, and we discussed some of our future plans and aims. We spent a little time voting for our Chair and vice – chair pupils and we also voted for two secretaries who will be responsible for the minute and not taking during our meetings.

Mr. Ritchie and Mrs. Matos are looking forward to working with the children, as we continue to build an ethos of Rights Respecting values throughout our school and community.

 

Mrs. Matos and Mr. Ritchie.

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P7b’s Weekly blog update.

It has been a week of numbers.  It has been Scottish Math week this week. During the week we have been practicing our timetables. We have played a range of different games to help us to remember our timetables. We followed instructions to make a timetable ‘fortune teller’, we used our ‘fortune tellers’ to play with a partner and to ‘test’ each other on our timetable recall. We have also been playing timetables dominoes and snap.  We all have different mental and written strategies for multiplying multi-digit numbers, but this week, we concentrated and consolidating our use of the formal written method for multiplication. Part of Maths week, we joined with P7a and went on a multiplication word problem hunt, we had to use our timetable memory and formal written method to solve the word problems. We had great fun doing this and learnt the importance of communication and team work.

During Literacy this week, we discussed different ways in which we can uplevel our writing.  In particular we discussed the use of interesting vocabulary. We learnt that a synonym are words that are spelt differently but share a similar meaning.  After using the thesaurus to help us build a word bank of different synonyms we realised how many different, and in most cases much more interesting words we could use in our writing, to make our readers more engaged.

During Primary 7 we will be taking on different leadership roles. Over the last couple of weeks we have chosen the leadership roles we felt we would best suit our skills and share our knowledge with the school.  This week we worked together to create a leadership remit for the different leadership groups/roles.

 

We have spent sometime this week practising for our class assembly. Please come along to our assembly on Friday, 21st  September at 10:00 – it will be a motivational assembly on our value, confidence. We have all been working hard to learn our lines and learn the lyrics to the songs that we will be singing.

French with Mrs. Gordon this week, we were learning  about fruit! We learnt the names (French vocabulary) of different fruits and using French vocabulary we were asking each other which fruit we liked. We learnt the phrase, ” Tu aimes les…”, we also learnt the vocabulary to reply which fruits we do like. Thank you to Mrs. Gordon, we are enjoying learning French through the games we play.

This week in Science, with Mrs. Tulloch, we went around the school grounds and identified living things. As part of Maths week and science, we looked at percentages, and how we can use this to identify the majority of living things on our school grounds. Thank you Mrs. Tulloch!

Lastly we would like to say a massive well done to DR-S  for passing her grade 1 piano exam with a distinction! What an amazing achievement. As DR-S shared with the class, there was one part of her exam which she wasn’t to confident about, but with resilience she achieved the highest mark for that particular section of the exam. Well done, we are so proud of you!

 

This week P7b won the peg challenge, we have been working hard this week to set a good example, on how to walk quietly through the school. Mrs. Matos is very proud of everyone in P7b, and she wishes everyone a lovely, fun and relaxing long weekend!

P7b and Mrs.  Matos x

 

 

 

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Afterschool Netball Club!

Our afterschool netball club is in full swing again this session. Our Primary 7 boys and girls have been coming together every Wednesday afternoon to practice their netball skills with Mrs. Matos and Miss Harrison.

We have been so impressed with the enthusiasm from everyone who has been coming along. The boys and girls have demonstrated their netball skills and talents, Mrs.Matos and Miss Harrison have been so impressed.

Wednesday’s netball practice.

 

 

 

 

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P7b weekly blog update.

Literacy: Week three and the summer holidays are beginning to become a distant memory. We had some time during literacy to reflect on our summer holiday. We had the opportunity to write a recount of our holiday. Before writing our recount, we discussed what important elements were needed, we discussed that our recount will be written in the first person, it will be in the past tense and most importantly we needed to remember to use interesting adjectives to describe our holiday. Mrs. Matos has really enjoyed reading our recounts, and through our feedback, we are going to concentrate on   interesting Openers, Connectives and the use of a variety of punctuation in our  future writing. Using a picture stimulus we got our creative juices flowing. Using the stimulus we wrote a creative story based on the picture which was taken in Brazil. Again it was important to use a range of interesting vocabulary that would keep our readers engaged. We definitely have some very creative writers in P7 and we are looking forward to seeing how everyone’s writing will progress throughout the year.

Numeracy: We have taken some time to focus on our number facts this week. We have recapped a little on place value and reading numbers up to 100 000. We have been practicing our number bonds, and together using all of this knowledge we practiced solving  subtraction and addition problems using the formal written methods. Next week we will be exploring the world of multiplication, please remember to practice your timetables daily, the more we practice the easier it becomes to recall them quickly and accurately.  It is Maths week next week, please remember to log onto Sumdog to take part in the competition.

PE: We have continued this week learning a range of different ball skills that we can use during a game of basketball.

IDL: Using the netbooks and class atlas we located Brazil on a map. We began to look at the geography of Brazil, the neighbouring countries and the cities in Brazil that we will be exploring a little later. To show our understanding, we drew our own map of Brazil, and labeled the map with its cities and neighbouring countries.

1+2: Spanish with Mrs. Matos we have been learning the Spanish Alphabet, we have been singing songs to help us to remember the alphabet better. We have also been learning to spell a range of different names, while our partners spell the names in Spanish.  French with Mrs. Gordon we have been playing a range of different games to continue to practice and use some of the vocabulary that we already know.

HWB: This week we discussed our school values, and what they meant to us. We discussed the importance and why we have values in our school. We created our own values posters, and wrote our own definitions for each value. Keep your eyes open as some posters will be displayed in our classroom.

P7b and Mrs.Matos

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P7b ‘Star Studded’ week.

” Learning and teaching is messy stuff. It doesn’t fit into bubbles.” Michele Forman.

Literacy: This week in Literacy we had discussed and identified the key elements of an autobiography. We discussed and compared the difference between an autobiography and a biography. We had an opportunity to use our knowledge and skills to write our very own autobiography, this was a good opportunity for us to remind ourselves of the importance of grammar and the use of using interesting vocabulary to keep our readers interested. It was also a chance for us to share a little about ourselves that maybe some of our class mates may not have known about us.

We had our first experience at the ‘Word Café’ where we had a three course book tasting. It was a fun filled experience, where we had took the time to discuss in our groups which reading novel would interest us. After discussing the front cover, title, reading the blurb and the first few pages of the different readers, as a group we chose our reading book for the next few weeks. It was important for us to make the choice, based on our interest and understanding, as this year we are really going to focus on reading for enjoyment. (Book tasting photos to follow)

Numeracy: During numeracy we used some prior knowledge to show our understanding of the four operations of number as well as completing some Maths concepts too.

HWB: PE with Mrs. Matos this week, we have been working on skills that will help to improve our basketball playing. We have also been learning this week the importance of our emotional wellbeing. We are now using the inspirational 5point scale in our classrooms, to help us to identify, discuss and manage our emotional well being. Mrs. Matos has been very pleased to see some of the children already using the scale this week, and seeing the benefits of talking about how we are feeling.

Class Charter: We have been focusing on our Rights as a child. We discussed the importance of knowing our rights, but also that we have certain responsibilities too. Together in groups and as a class, we created our very own class charter, and we linked them to the different children’s rights articles. For our class charter character theme, we chose animals. We used the netbooks to help us draw and create our animals for our class charter wall display. Please have a look out for it at your next visit to our classroom.

Leadership: Primary 7 is an important year for us, a year where there are some big expectations of us. One of these expectations are taking on a leadership role for the year. This week, we discussed the different leadership roles, and we spent some time completing a leadership application form. We needed to identify which role was of interest, but also which skills we can offer to that particular role. House Captains have received their badges this week, and will begin their duties next week. Next week we will begin to establish the remits for our leadership roles.

Buddy Time: We have received a lot of positive feedback regarding our buddy duties. We have enjoyed spending time with our buddies, and welcoming them into the Springfield Family. This week Mrs. Matos gave all of P7b the inclusive value certificate, for all our hard work, enthusiasm, and kindness towards our buddies. On Friday is our special time, where we get to spend some time with our buddies in their classrooms, this week, we assisted our buddies with completing their wellbeing questionnaire, we explained to our buddies what the different wellbeing indicators meant.

Time Capsule:One of the highlights this week, was burying our P7 Time Capsule. We have buried our capsule out by the outdoor classroom. We are looking forward to digging it up again at the end of P7!

Walk a mile: We have re-launched walk a mile this year. We have all set ourselves a target. We have 15 minutes, seat to seat, to complete a mile. Mrs. Matos was very impressed that this week, some children managed to complete the full mile and some more, within  those 15 minutes. Keep up the enthusiasm and persistence.

Learning Targets: We learnt  how to set S.M.A.R.T goals this week. (Ask us what SMART stands for). This week, we set ourselves learning targets for Literacy, Numeracy and Maths for term 1. We are all going to show our resilience and confidence this term, and really work hard to achieve our targets…watch this space.

Just a reminder that football starts again on Monday afternoon and Netball on Wednesday, everyone is welcome to come along and try out.

Mrs. Matos and P7b

 

 

 

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