Author: Mrs Matos Van Den Heever

Brrrr, the snow has arrived! I hope that everyone is enjoying their snow day. During snow days when the schools are closed, I would encourage everyone to make the most of this opportunity and enjoy the snow for fun and exploration. When outdoors and exploring, we can always see this as an opportunity  for learning. You can be outside, building snowmen, castles, crocodiles etc.. all of this involves a variety of learning possibilities, if you decide to go sledging today, not only is this great fun, but you will also be learning about, speed and distance. Sometimes the best learning is when we are out having fun! Snow days  are also a great opportunity to snuggle together with a warm  Fairtrade hot chocolate and catch up on some reading. However, if you are looking for some examples of learning activities to do at home please  have a try of some of the following.

Numeracy: Money – continuing on from what we have been learning in class. Give your child a budget of £150, tell them that their will be a week closure of all shops, and that they need to purchase food that will feed the family for a week. Get your child to make a shopping list for all the food they think will be needed for the week. Use an online supermarket website to research prices of the foods they may require.

Literacy: Children can become a roving reporter and create a newspaper article on todays snow… Remember this is HUGE news, so get creative. Another option could be that today’s snowday is reported on the front page of a newspaper. Children can look at the newspaper front page as a guide.

Expressive Arts: Continue to practice lines for the Lion King production, or rehearse song lyrics and dances.

IDL: Begin some research on the Industrial revolution, take some notes so that you can share them with the class.

Technologies: Using the information you have researched, create a presentation on the Industrial revolution, which you can presented to the class.

1+2: Using YouTube, do some French or Spanish five a day, this activity will help with your French and Spanish vocabulary and will get you moving on this chilly day.

RME: As Easter is approaching, try find out how different religions celebrate Easter or How is Easter celebrated around the world.

 

Some great websites that enhance learning:

www.sumdog.com

www.ictgames.com

www.starfall.com

www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc

http://www.helpkidzlearn.com

http://topmarks.com

 

No matter what you choose to do today, make sure you are staying warm and safe and having plenty of fun!

 

Mrs Matos x

 

 

 

Numeracy: It’s been a busy week this. We have been continuing to calculate which products are the best value for money. We have had a look at different products and calculated how much they would cost per gram or millilitre. Through these calculations we realised the importance of having a division strategy which would help us with our calculations. We spent some time recapping and practicing using the formal written method for division. During number talks this week, we challenged ourselves with some money word problems. We have been confidently sharing our strategies and calculations with each other.

Literacy: The mysterious journey of Edward Tulane , is our class novel this term. It is a novel that has definitely encouraged a lot of discussion on how the story compares to something similar in our lives. This week we read a few more chapters of the book, and began to ,make some predictions on future chapters. We created a story board based on a part of the story. Some of us were eager to share our story boards with the class. Writing this week, we continued to work on short sentences which can help to create suspense in a piece of writing.

IDL: This week, we began to paint our still life pictures we focused on the main elements that the Scottish Colourists would have used in their paintings. Moving on in IDL this week, we discussed what we already know about the Industrial Revolution, what we would like to learn and key questions that we would like to have answered. To help us with our discussions we watched a short video clip on the Industrial Revolution, Next week, we will dwell further into when the Industrial revolution started and why.

PE: Something different for PE this week, we had our first Rugby taster session this week. We played some tag rugby skill games. We looking forward to the next 5 sessions to follow.

Expressive Arts: With not to long to go now till our big Lion King production, Mr Mac, a drama teacher from Linlithgow Academy came along to help us with getting into character. We played various games that will help us to move around the stage and remain in character confidently. We continued this week with Lion King rehearsals, Mrs Matos is so impressed with all the hard work that all the P6 and P7’s have put into learning their lines, and all the songs. On Friday, Mrs Matos said to everyone that while watching the rehearsals, she was so proud of everyone that she was close to tears. This is definitely a show that you do not want to miss.

 

P6A and Mrs Matos

 

A short but very busy week of learning.

Literacy:  During writing we have learnt the importance of using the apostrophe correctly. This week we focused on using the apostrophe as a possessive.  We looked through real life pictures where the apostrophe was used incorrectly. We noticed that the main error is that the apostrophe is used in a plural rather than a possessive. To consolidate our learning we completed some sentences using the apostrophe correctly as a possessive. During guided reading we have been using Literacy Circle, we each have role in our reading group. We each focus on a specific reading skill, we then get the opportunity to share our work with our group and engage in reading conversation.

Numeracy: This week have continued learning about money. We focused on how to keep our money safe and we also looked at phone tariffs and calculated which phone provider would be the cheapest. We discussed how some companies come across cheaper but once we calculated the price per minute it became evident which would be the cheaper tariff.

IDL:  We spent a bit more time and completed our still life sketch. Next week, we will use the Scottish Colourists and their painting technique as inspiration to complete our still life by giving it some paint. Scottish Colourists used, bright colours, they exaggerated light and dark and used thick paint, we are going to use these three techniques in our paintings too.

Expressive Arts: We continue to rehearse for the Lion King production. We’ve been working together to help the ‘grasslands’ with their head pieces. We have also spent some time in the hall running through the scripts and practicing our singing.  A lot of hard work and effort is going into this production, and Mrs Matos and all the teachers are very proud of our enthusiasm and effort. We would also like to say a big thank you to all the parent helpers who have been helping to make our costumes, we can not thank you enough.

P2 Pals: We continue to work with our P2 pals. This week we helped our P2 pals use the netbooks to research Victorian toys and games. We enjoy helping the P2’s, as we get to learn something new too.

 

P6 A and Mrs Matos

 

Literacy: We’ve been very busy with Literacy this week. We started our week with an active spelling task, helping us to consolidate our learning of our weekly spelling. We created spelling scribbles with all the words and spelling patterns we have learnt so far.  We focused on sequencing during our reading. We learnt about different skills that can help us to identify and understand the sequence of events. We continuing to read our class novel, The mysterious journey of Edward Tulane, our novel is reaching some interesting and grip taking moments. We have enjoyed having discussions on the chapters that we have read so far, and we really enjoying predicting what may happen next. We completed a sequence activity based on the novel, this linked well with our reading comprehension skill of sequencing that we learnt earlier in the week. For story writing this week we focused on short sentences that can create suspense. We know that when writing a story it is important to keep your reader interested, we leant that sometimes by writing short, gripping sentences, that this can keep our reader interested and wanting to read more.  You practiced to write a few short sentences that created suspense for our readers.

Numeracy and Maths.: Number talks this week was based on division. Mrs Hogg and P6B joined us during our number talk session. Mrs Hogg was very impressed with our confidence and  the variety of division strategies that were being used.  Continuing with the ‘theme’ of division. Mrs Matos introduced us to the Singapore Bar Modelling strategy. This was the first time we had heard and tried this strategy, we all agreed that this strategy could help us with word problems. Please ask us at home to share this strategy with you. We started a new topic of money this week. We started to look at different ways that payment and be made, and we discussed deals and calculated the best deals when shopping.  Make sure to take us along shopping this week, we may be able to help you find the best/ cheapest deals.

Health and Wellbeing:  Although a little colder on Tuesday afternoon, we went outside to continue practicing our hockey skills. We continued to work with a partner and practice ball control and passing, we also practiced shooting into goals. Tuesday the 6th February was internet safety day, the theme for this year was, create, connect and respect. A lot of discussion was had around this years theme, we discussed ways that the internet can be used to connect like minded people, to use the internet to create awareness and lastly to remember to respect others and their opinions.  We have created poster that we will display in our classroom to remind us of the importance of internet safety.

IDL:  Using the netbooks, we researched a Scottish Colourist of our choice, we used the information that we researched to create a PowerPoint presentation that we will present to the class later next week. Being inspired by the Scottish Colourists and their still life paintings, we started with our final sketch of a still life, later next week  we will use the different techniques that the colourists used and we will be painting our still life sketch… watch this space for our completed paintings.

Lion King: On Tuesday afternoon we did our first run through of the production with cast 1. Mrs Matos, Mrs Gordon and Mr Logan were very impressed that we were able to practice off script! The Lionesses stole the ‘show’ with their amazing singing and dancing – well done girls! On Thursday afternoon we started with some costume preparations for the Gazelles and the grasslands… Not long to go, and you really don’t want to miss out, so remember to get your tickets!

After a busy few weeks, we can get time to relax over our extended weekend. Enjoy your weekend and we will be back on Wednesday for some more fun- filled learning.

P6A and Mrs Matos

 

 

 

‘If a child cannot learn in the way we teach, we must teach in a way that a child can learn’ – unknown author.

Literacy: We continue to improve and develop our spelling skills. This week we concentrated on words with a shared spelling pattern, we completed a variety of active spelling tasks to help us develop our spelling skills and knowledge further. Figure of Speech was a focus in our writing this week. We learnt the difference between Metaphors and Similes and how they can be used effectively in our writing.  We took our imagination and writing on a ‘Frozen Adventure’, we used creativity to write a descriptive story about our adventure to a snowy and frozen destination, our focus of learning was to use Metaphors and Similes as a way of describing our journey. We continued on from last weeks Scots language focus. Using the Scots dictionaries and some new Scots words that we have learnt, we wrote  a play script.

Numeracy:  A special message from Harry Potter came through our promethean baord, with a variety of negative number calculations. This week we consolidated our learning of negative numbers. Mrs Matos was very impressed with our enthusiasm and positivity of learning this week during numeracy. We have all grown confidently during number talks, and we continue to try and share a range of different strategies when solving multiplication equations.

PE:  We continuing with volleyball skills this week with Mrs Reid and with Mrs Matos we continue to learn and practice hockey skills.

Scottish Colourists: Using the netbooks and some books that Mrs Manlove kindly let us use, we researched and summarised key facts about one of the famous Scottish Colourists. The artists’ work has inspired us to use the same key elements to create our own version, next week we will continue to sketch our still life.

Lion King: We’ve been working hard at our Lion King rehearsals. This is definitely one production you don’t want to miss. If you haven’t got your tickets yet, they will be on sale this week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoon, don’t wait they going fast!

Well done to Joseph and Erin who both received a values award this week in assembly. Please remember that we don’t only celebrate achievement in school, if you achieve anything outwith school, bring it to class and share your achievements with us.

P6A and Mrs Matos

 

 

Another week gone in a flash, and with so much fun learning opportunities, who can be surprised that it is already the end of another week.

We’ve had a busy week in Literacy this week. Looking back at previous writing tasks, we identified the types of sentence openers we have been using. During this task we realised that majority of our sentence openers have been some what boring and that we needed to make them more adventurous. True to Mrs Matos’ style, she dressed up in ‘adventurous’ outfits to demonstrate how interesting our openers need to be, so that our writing is not predictable to our reader. We also went on an adventurous sentence opener hunt, where we had to find fairy doors around the classroom, open them up and find some outstanding openers that we can use in our writing. A very strange message appeared on our board from one of the fairies, I strange pink parcel had arrived in the school, the fairy asked us to write a newspaper report about the strange parcel, her instructions were very clear, that our report needed to answer the questions, who, what, when, where and why and most importantly we needed to use adventurous sentence openers. Mrs Matos was very pleased to read our reports and was very impressed with the variety of sentence openers that were used.  We have been developing our comprehension skills in reading. We have been using our hands to help us to identify the main idea in a text. We use our hands to help us, as each finger on our hand is a question that the main idea would answer , such as, who,what, where, when and why. The mysterious journey of Edward Tulane is currently the class novel that we have been reading. We have only read the first few chapters, but we are already drawn into the story. Edward is a character in the story. We created our own interpretation of Edward and we wrote adjectives and similes that we thought best described him. We have been teaching Mrs Matos some Scots language, we recited some poems, Mrs Matos was very impressed with our ability to remember such lengthy poems and the expression and effort we put into reciting our poems. Playing Scots language Bingo, helped us to translate and learn some Scots words, it was great fun…Mrs Matos continues to need support with this !

 

In Numeracy we continued to work with multiples, factors and prime numbers. We played a game of True and false, and had to prove our answer, and try use mathematical language to convince Mrs Matos that our answer was correct. Growing in confidence we continue to  share strategies and talk about numbers during Number talks.  We have started to work on negative numbers. We discussed how negative numbers are used in the real world, such as banks, temperature and elevators. To test our prior knowledge with negative numbers, we played a fun negative Artic Adventures game.

 

During PE with Mrs Matos we continued to practice our hockey skills, we practiced holding the stick correctly , ball control and shooting. With Mrs Reid we continue to learn volleyball skills.

Scottish Colourist has been our focus this week. We spent some time using the netbooks to research about Scottish colourists. We have started to practice sketching a still life, this is a lot trickier than it seems, but with resilience we are committed to continue practising, and later we will be painting our sketches.

Kindness and inclusion are two of our school values, this week we used these two values and played some educational games with our P2 pals, we are learning that  by being kind and inclusive that we are able to have fun with all children at Springfield Primary no matter what age.

Mrs Matos and P6a would like to say a Big thank you to Paul who was very confident in sharing a PowerPoint all about his sister and her needs. Paul, you are a very special big brother and you can be so proud of yourself – Well Done, and thank you!

 

P6A and Mrs Matos

 

 

 

 

P6A Blog                                                                                          9.1.18 – 19.1.18

1^st Week

On Tuesday, we were learning that letters can replace missing numbers in calculations. After lunch, we did some Go Noodle with P6B. We also went down to the nursery to teach them our visions, values and aims, and then we started creating posters, linking to our visions, values and aims for the nursery. Our learning intention was to make a poster that is clear enough for the nursery to understand.

On Wednesday, we continued working on our posters for the nursery, and we did more work on using letters in calculations. We also started solving equations using letters. For literacy, we did a pre-read of our new class novel, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. After that we had P.E. with Mrs Reid. In the afternoon, we went to P2 to help them research either snowy owls or JOLOMO.

On Thursday, we solved some more equations using algebra in numeracy. We had visits from a few special visitors in science, who were talking to us about renewable energy. After lunch, we went to the Lion King preparations.

On Friday, we had the Lion King preparations all day.

2^nd Week

On Monday, we played spelling games. In Literacy we predicted what would happen in our new class novel, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, by answering question on the Smart Board. Then we read the first two chapters. We wrote down all the tests of divisibility in our How-to jotter, (for example, 2’s – even and can be halved. 4’s – even and can be halved twice.) In Spanish, we practiced our key greetings in Spanish with a partner, and we watched a video to re-inforce our learning. Then we learned about the different states of water.

On Tuesday, we learnt about factors using factors bugs, and we were learning about openers in our writing. In Maths, we were learning to create a set of multiples and find common multiples between tables. After lunch, we learned the basic skills in hockey.

On Wednesday, we were learning to identify factors, and then we worked with P6B on our Scottish poems, which need to be learnt by the 24^th January^. We worked with our  P2 pals, to teach them about money in the environment on the netbooks.

On Thursday, we had a visit from Mr Moon, who used to work in renewables. He showed some interesting videos, including how the 45m long blades get delivered! Then The Travelling Tuba came in and showed (and played!) tubas from all around the world. After lunch we went to the Lion King.

On Friday, we had lots of Lion King Preparations, learning all the tricky songs, we went to assembly and Miss Baillie gave us class of the week. We finished our day with some well-deserved golden time .

By: Joseph Moon

Our week started off with a visit from Mrs Millar, from the Scottish Parliament outreach program. Mrs Millar came along to our school on Tuesday morning, and consolidated what we have been learning  about. We were all placed into parties and we elected our leaders. We had to present a manifesto, debate and vote. It was a lot of fun, where we learned a lot more about the ins  and outs of the Scottish Parliament.

We’ve been continuing with our Big Writing adventures in literacy this week. We worked with our partners to up level a radio broadcast, we discussed what was important in a radio broadcast to make sure that it has an impact on our listeners. Later in the week, we worked with our partners to write our radio broadcast, and this week we will begin to record them.

In numeracy this week, we worked on balancing equations and equations that are greater than and less than. Next we are going to have a look at letters and symbols that can be used to represent a missing number.

1 + 2 this week we learned some Spanish. We learned how to greet someone and how to ask and tell them our names. We also created some vocabulary key cards that we can use throughout the year, to help us to remember.

With Christmas on its way, we learned about why we celebrate Christmas, and that it is not just about what we receive but most importantly what we give. Christmas is about spending time with the people we care about and also about random acts of kindness. It was also the start oh Hanukkah on the 12th December, we learned what Hanukkah was all about and how and why it is celebrated.

We have been reading our Novel, Wonder. The author has written a book that has captivated all of us and we are looking forward to watch the movie on Thursday.

 

Last week to go before our Christmas break, we going to make this the best week yet.

 

P6A and Mrs Matos