Author: Mrs Matos Van Den Heever

We have been very busy over the last two weeks with a wide range of learning opportunities.

Each week we like to spend some time doing some active spelling to help reinforce our weekly spelling words. We have enjoyed playing a variety of spelling games, such as spelling splat, scrabble as well as a fun spelling board game that helps us to learn different spelling rules.

We’ve been using a protractor in Maths to measure angles. Mrs Matos put tape on the white boards and we worked together with a partner to measure all the angles we could find. Moving on this week, we have been concentrating on number, number sequence and staring to look at balancing equations.

We continue to read our novel, Wonder. The author added a twist to the story and changed the narrator, so that we can see how the story unfolds through another characters eyes. This inspired us to create our own comic. We used the netbooks and a program called, Comic Life. Before using our imaginations, we learned about the main features of a comic and what all the different types of speech bubbles mean. This really helped us to create some really interesting and creative comic strips.

With Christmas quickly    approaching we have been spending some time learning about advent and the Christmas story.  We had some fun creating our own Christingles . To continue with the Christmas spirit we worked along with P6B to create some nativity hall displays. We made some very festive donkeys and a manger.

We’ve been very busy learning about the Scottish Parliament. We are able to distinguish between a democracy and a dictatorship. We have also learned about devolved and reserved matters.

Last week was Scottish Book week. We spent some time reading Katie Morag to our P2 Pals.

 

We looking very forward to the Christmas Fayre, we have made some candy cane reindeers and Christmas rubric cubes.

Mrs Matos and P6A

 

 

We have been busy once again in P6A. With so much going on there is no time to waste but plenty of time for fun and learning.

This week in Literacy we completed an active spelling task. We used magazines to find the different letters that would be used to make up our spelling words. This was great fun, and this has helped us to reinforce our weekly spelling words. We are continuing to read our book Wonder, the book has taken a slight twist, where the narrator is no longer the main character, August, but rather this time it is his sister, Via. Via quotes a line from the song Space Oddity, we had a look at the songs lyrics and shared our ideas and thoughts on how the song links to the novel. In the novel, Via describes one of  her favourite, most special days she had with her Gran, we had an opportunity during Literacy to use descriptive writing to write about a day that was very special to us.

Over the last week, we have been looking at angles in Maths. We looked at how we are able to identify different types and angles. We used pinboards and bands as concrete materials to create different shapes, and then identify the different angles that can be found in the shapes. Later on in the week we used a protractor to start to measure angles. At home ask us to find different angles in the environment and see if we can tell you what the angle is called.

IDL this week we completed a KWL ( What I know, what I want to know and What I have learned) chart based on the Scottish Parliament. From the discussions and knowledge we shared in class, this seems like it is going to be a very interesting topic we are going to learn about. We used the netbooks to research the history of the Scottish Parliament and we created a timeline of events.

This week was road safety week. The focus of this weeks Road Safety was on speed. Miss Hardie chose an activity to do with us, where she read out 13 questions really quickly and we couldn’t keep up. This activity helped us to realise that we were very quick to tell her that she was going too fast, that we can also tell a driver to slow down, if they are driver too fast.

What could possibly be planned for us next week?

 

 

P6A , Mrs Matos and Miss Hardie.

 

 

Over the last couple of weeks we have been practising netball after school on a Wednesday afternoon with Mrs Matos and Miss Harrison.

We have very quickly learned all the rules and are showing great improvement and potential in our skills and game play.

Each week we are growing strength by strength as individuals and as a team.

 

After plenty of practice and determination, Primary 6A pulled off the Kindness assembly brilliantly. Mrs Matos is so proud of all the boys and girls. Everyone worked so hard and it all paid off. Well done to everyone.

We continuing to read our class novel, Wonder. We have gotten to the part in the story where Mr Browne introduces the precept, ‘ If having the choice of being right or being kind, choose kind.’ We worked together in pairs to discuss what this precept means to us. Most of us had very similar ideas but it was interesting to listen how everyone can interpret the same precept differently. Just like in the novel, Mrs Matos set us a task to create our own precepts on a postcard. We had to design a postcard that had our precept on it, and we needed to explain what the precept meant to us.

Mrs Hardie revised with us the water cycle, before introducing us to the journey of a river. Before her lesson started we had some fun dancing to  Journey of a river song, that would help us to remember the different stages of a river. We found this very helpful when we needed to create our own journey of a river representation.

On Tuesday morning we started our first Big writing adventure task. We received video messages which set us a variety of tasks. This week we were introduced to Dan, who informed us that he will need our help to write a radio broadcast about the endangerment of the orang-utans.  We worked together with a partner and discussed what all we already knew about orang-utangs, and then we decided what information we would need to find out that would help us to write an effective radio broadcast. We were fortunate that some parents and grandparents came along to share our learning with us.. I wonder if we will receive another video message this week?

This week we taught our P2 Pals a little bit of French. We used our key cards that we had created earlier in the year to help us introduce new French words to our pals. We then helped our Pals to create their own key cards so they could take it back to their class and practice. To finish it off we followed 5 a day French and did some exercises.

To finish off a busy but fun week, Miss Baillie gave our class , class of the week. Well done to everyone in  P6A!!

 

 

Primary 6A class blog

On Monday we had a fun day, first we did some work on 3D shapes by making our own shapes with paper. We had an early lunch and at 12.00 we set off to go to the Loch to have an interesting time with the rangers! We did some art using only the resources around us which were nature. Next we made the green man out of clay, we moulded the clay into the face of the green man on the trees and after that we stuck grass and autumn leaves on the green man’s face. On Tuesday it was Halloween!!! Mrs Matos turned into a witch, and sang us the song, ‘The witches of Halloween’. We learned the history of Halloween and the meaning behind it. After that we did paintings of a Halloween night and tried to make it as spooky as possible. We did some assembly practise and we all got our lines. On Wednesday we learned about the artist Henri Rousseau and tried to do some jungle art inspired by him we also did some more work on our shapes. Some people went to help with the p2s to help them on the netbook. While the others practiced their spelling on Sumdog .We had science with Mrs Tulloch and made an electric game which was very fun, next week we will show them to the primary 2 classes . On Tuesday afternoons the Primary 6’s are very busy. Some children attend band rehearsals and others attend a golf lesson, which leaves some of the P6A and P6B learners join together to do some combined learning. This week we worked on our team building skills. Mrs Matos tried to encourage us to work with learners from P6B as this is a good way to form new friendships and to work as part of a team no matter who the team members are. Our team building exercises were lots of fun, we worked hard but we also laughed a lot.  We completed three activities, one activity involved trust. One member of the team was blind folded and the other member had to guide us through an obstacle course, we really had to listen to the instructions for this one. Second activity was called –  group knot, we had linked hands but had gotten tangled and we had to untangle ourselves. Lastly we had to save Sammy the gummy snake, you had fallen off his boat and needed his life jacket (polo sweet), we could only use a paperclip to save Sammy – we managed this ‘sweet’ activity, with talking and a lot of problem solving.

On Thursday we enjoyed some spooky music with Mrs Bain. In Maths we used hula hoops to create a Venn diagram, we used the Venn diagram to sort out the 3D shapes that we found at home.

After a busy week, it is finally Friday. Today we have been creating Grammar characters to help us remember the different parts of speech that we have been learning. Our characters will be displayed in our classroom, where we can always refer to them for help if needed. Committee time- today we all attended our chosen committees where we all worked on a variety of activities.

It’s been a fun week, an Environmental art trip, some spooky art, shape sorting and some team building. What more could we possibly do next week?

 

Joanna, Joseph M and P6A

 

 

 

We had lots of fun on Tuesday, wandering around the classroom for 2D shapes and identifying their properties. Some of the properties we looked for were; edges, sides, corners, vertexes/points.

In literacy we were focusing on parts of speech, we worked in pairs and were given a sheet with words on it. We cut out each individual word and we had to sort the words into the different parts of speech, e.g. nouns, adjectives, verbs. We were also given a passage, The Terrible Twos, and we identified the nouns, adjectives and verbs.

We finished our diary entries, and we used our planning to help us. We had to focus on the elements of a diary entry and the character’s feelings.

On Wednesday we were learning to visualise nets of closed and open cubes. We cut out the templates (or nets) on squared paper and investigated which faces were opposite each other. We also learnt the properties of a few 3D shapes.

In science we designed and created our own quiz boards in partners. We had to use paper fasteners, crocodile clips, and bare wires to make our game for the P2’s work.

We went to the Primary 2’s and we helped them research woodland creatures. Once we found out some facts about the creatures, we helped them write the facts into their jotters.

On Thursday we went to music with Miss Bain. She taught us a Halloween song which we accompanied with instruments.

We also researched the Amazon River and we wrote down at least ten facts. Using that information, we compared the River Forth to the Amazon.

We were studying the properties of 3D shapes, so we were shown a 3D shape and we had to name and then identify how many vertices, edges and sides were on it.

On Friday we listened to Wonder then we did a proofreading and editing task. After, we listened to Miss Bailie’s healthy lifestyle assembly. We also reflected on our week.

 

Thank you for reading – Joseph Moon

It was the last week before we break for our October break, and we were busy, busy.

We took our PE lesson outdoors this week. We continued to practice some basket ball skills through some dribbling games such as dribble tag and many more. Playing the famous ‘piggy in the middle’, we used this game to help practice our passing, catching and defending skills.

It was all about shapes, and how ‘sweet’ it is to make 2d and 3d shapes. Using spaghetti and marshmallows we worked in pairs to create a variety of 2d and 3d shapes. There  was a lot of problem solving going on as we needed to make sure our 3d shapes did not collapse…oh and the temptation to not eat the marshmallows!! Continuing with shapes, we spent some time in the outdoor classroom gathering some sticks so we can create some more 3d shapes. Although the weather wasn’t playing kind, we needed to bring out shape building indoors. We worked in pairs to create 3d shapes using string and sticks, again a lot of problem solving involved and discussion. When we return after the October break we are going go have a closer look at 2d and 3d shapes and learn how to identify the shapes by their different properties.

It’s been  a busy few weeks, researching and comparing the River Forth to the Amazon River. Working with a partner we researched and created a PowerPoint presentation on the cities/towns that the River Forth runs through, we presented and shared some facts with the class.

Always celebrating wider achievements, we say a massive well done to all the boys and girls who took part in the Linlithgow Run!!

Zak has been sharing his new found interest in children’s theatre. Zak is part of Big Bad Wolf children’s theatre and has been learning some lines for a production.. a star in the making!

Joseph, where you planning to put all these medals, Joseph brought a long ANOTHER medal that he had gotten over the weekend – Well Done!

To top it all off, we were given class of the week AGAIN in Assembly ! Mrs Matos is so proud of all the children in P6A we really are the best!!

 

P6A and Mrs Matos

Another learning filled week.  There is no lazing about in Primary 6. We started our week off with some various warm up  exercises and then some classroom yoga. We had to make sure that during our exercises we were conscious of our space. During yoga we needed to try and keep our balance throughout the different poses.  Next week we will be back in the hall and continue to learn some more basketball skills.

Using the netbooks, we worked with our partners to create a PowerPoint.  We researched the different features and places that the River Forth run through. We used the information that we have gathered to create a PowerPoint presentation. Next week, we will be presenting this to the class.

Comment ça va? In French this week, we learned the vocabulary for asking someone how they are doing, and we learned the vocabulary for how we would reply to this question. We paired up with a partner and we practiced how we would greet someone, ask how they are, respond to being asked how we were doing, ask their name and tell them our name. We had the whole conversation in French!! Next week Mrs Matos will be recording our dialogue so that we can listen to our pronunciations.  Ask us to share with you the vocabulary we have learned.

We have listened to some more chapters of our novel, Wonder. We have gotten to the part in the story of where August ( main character), is going on a tour of the school. We were also introduced to three new characters, Charlotte, Julian and Jack. After listening to the school tour chapter, we stepped into the shoes of August, we started to plan a diary entry of the school tour. We learned some key features of a diary entry. When planning we needed to make sure that we included how August was feeling , his thoughts on the three children and describe what the school looks like.  This week we completed our Autumn poems for Miss Baillie’s competition. Even though none of us won from our class, Mrs Matos was very impressed with the quality and creativity of our work. make sure to read our poems when you come along to parent’s evening next week. In Literacy we have been concentrating on editing skills. We have been reading a passage, and needing to identify, capital letters, punctuation and spelling, we all editors in the making.  To reinforce our weekly spelling words, we played some active spelling games, such as hangman, scrabble, and used some foam to write our spelling words in.

In Numeracy we finished with rounding numbers in addition and subtraction. We have started to multiply and divide numbers within 10, 100 and 1000. We have learned that multiplying by 10, 100 and 1000 that we do not only just add a zero, but rather that the number is 10  x bigger than  or 100 x bigger, or 1000 times bigger. We’ve been working on our mental agility through our weekly number talks, our mental maths workbooks and we have been getting a head start on the National Sumdog competition.

We’ve been learning about the golden rule in RME this week. We learned that although worded slightly differently, all religions have the same golden rule, and that is that we should treat others how we would like them to treat us. We looked and discussed the different ways the golden rule has been written for each religion. We agreed that even if you do not follow any particular religion, the golden rule is still a great rule to follow.