Author: Mrs Matos Van Den Heever

What a wonderful, sunny week we have had! When the weather is so good, no one wants to be indoors, so we take our learning outside!

This weeks guided reading we went in our groups outside. We read to each other and shared our thoughts about the story. We also gave each other feedback on how we read. We commented on our fluency, tone, pace and expression.  We worked together and used chalk to draw a new version of the front cover of our books!

In literacy this week we concentrated on sentence writing and ways in which we can improve our writing, by making sure, we use a variety of words, the words have been used and spelt correctly, capitals letters and punctuation are used. We joined  P5A, in pairs we went outside and using chalk we wrote  some sentences, we had to compete against each other. We got points for correct use and spelling of words, capital letters and punctuation.  It was really good fun being outside and thinking of sentences that helped reinforce what we know.

In Numeracy we have been learning about decimals. We  worked together with a partner to match decimals to fractions, convert fractions to decimal and writing decimals on a number line. We have also been learning about sorting and comparing decimals and lastly adding and subtracting decimals, so a busy week of all things decimals. But we have done fantastic and Mrs Matos is very impressed with how well we have worked together to make sure that everyone understands.

We have been very busy this week being travel agents. We have used the netbooks to research different travel agencies and have had  a closer look at their logos. We  chose three names for our travel agency and our peers got to vote for which they thought sounded the best. We also had a chance to be creative and design our own logo.

P5B really do have very special boys and girls, all who have hearts of gold.  A couple of weeks ago you  may remember Beinn, Gabriella and Andrew raised money for Callum’s Cabin. While Beinn is doing that little bit extra. Together with is family, Beinn will be packing bags at Tesco to raise some money to give to Callum’s Cabin.  Well done Beinn, we are all very proud of you and you can be very proud of yourself!

P5B and Mrs Matos

 

There is nothing better than hearing stories of children achieving. It is even better when the boys and boys are excited and enthusiastic about sharing their achievements. This week, Emily brought along some of her dance exams certificates that she received in a recent  exam. Emily took some time to share with the class what all was involved in the exam and what each certificate and medal represented. Well done Emily! Anna and Louise both attend the Linlithgow Girls Brigade. They brought along their arm bands that holds every badge they have achieved. They girls spoke enthusiastically and confidently to the class and explained what they had achieved each badge for. Thank you Anna and Louise, well done for all your efforts. Lastly, how many books have you read this week, or last month, or even over the last year? Maybe 5 books? Maybe 10? Well, can you beat Evie Melvin who took part in the First Minister’s reading challenge and has read over 80 books so far! Evie was awarded a certificate and a lovely new book for all her reading effort. Well done Evie, let’s see if you can catch up to Evie, get reading!

Sometimes we forget to always be grateful for being healthy, and we forget that some people have terminal illness. Emily Calabrese has suffered from Coeliac disease since she was a tiny little girl. As last week was Coeliac awareness week, Emily shared her story and experience of having Coeliac disease. Emily spoke confidently to the class sharing her story and experiences, she  also presented her talk with a very informative PowerPoint. To top off all her hard work and to make sure she got her message across, she had prepared some worksheets for the class to complete. The class enjoyed Emily’s talk and worksheets, they were all hanging onto every word Emily spoke and really enjoyed completing the worksheets and food table worksheets. Mrs Matos was very proud of Emily for having such great confidence, Well done Emily, you are a super star!!

In numeracy this week we have continued with Number Talks. Mrs Matos is very proud of all the boys and girls in P5B. Everyone is beginning to show so much confidence now when taking part in Number talks. The children are really beginning to use and discuss a range of strategies. We have been continuing learning about fractions, we focused this week on finding the  common denominator and we have also been ordering and comparing fractions. We have worked together in pairs to make sure that we both understand what we are doing. Sometimes learning from our peers helps to reinforce our learning. We all show good understanding and Mrs Matos thinks that next week we will be ready to tackle decimals.

In literacy our  spelling pattern was words ending in ‘ck’. We read a funny story about friendly ‘c’ and kind ‘k’, the story helped us to learn the spelling rule, which we will be able to apply in our writing. Speaking of writing, we have begun to write a short story about being chosen to be a torchbearer at the Olympics. We watched a few short clips on the history of the flame,  the clip we watched helped us to understand the feelings that the torchbearers must feel. We going to make sure that our story is going to make the reader really understand the feelings we felt when being chosen as a torchbearer. We going to extend our writing by using adjectives and synonyms, by using descriptive words we going to capture the reader and using synonyms will help us to extend our vocabulary. Watch this space, as we have authors in the making.

We have continued to play the magical game Quidditch. It was an exciting game this week as we got to use ‘broomsticks’ watch out for our photos, they should be ‘flying’ in shortly.

We have had a very successful week in P5B this week and Mrs Matos is proud of each one of us, to her we are all super stars!

P5B and Mrs Matos

 

How fortunate have we been this week, to have this gorgeous weather and the opportunity to take our learning outside.

The highlight of this week, was our trip on Thursday morning, down at Linlithgow canal. Before going on our boat ride, we enjoyed the good weather, playing at the park and having our snack. We then had a very entertaining boat ride, Linton McBurnie from the Canalside Ranger Lowland Canals gave a very entertaining talk  but serious talk about water safety. He demonstrated how we can help someone who is drowning by using a group!  After our talk, we joined P5A for a lovey picnic before heading back to school!

We started our class talks this week, our topic was ‘How to….’ Mrs Matos has enjoyed each and every talk. Everyone has put in so much effort and thought into their talk! Well Done everybody.

 

In numeracy this week, we continued with Fractions. This week we used a slab of chocolate to help us understand Factions better. While eating away at the chocolate slab a  fraction at a time , we realised that some fractions have different numbers but are equal.  We decided to have a closer look at equivalent fractions.

In Literacy this week, we looked at Synonyms and Antonyms. We learnt the definition of both the words. We worked with a partner to sort words under the two headings.  We completed our short stories that we started writing last week. We sent sometime reading each others stories, and helping to edit and give feedback to each other. We are trying to improve our editing skills, so that we can use our edited draft to improve on our writing. Mrs Matos has been very impressed with the quality and imagination of our stories.

There is always something fun and exciting happening in P5B

P5B and Mrs Matos

 

We have had a very busy two weeks in P5B, although we have had a few days off in between, we have really learnt a lot.

We have been really active over the last two weeks, learning new sports and keeping up our strength and fitness through some circuit training during PE. We have been very fortunate to have Mr Newton come along and teach us the amazing sport of Quidditch! Yes can you believe that the famous Harry Potter sport is an actual sport played here in the UK! We have started to learn the basic skills needed to play and over the next few weeks we will be getting our ‘broom sticks’ too! Who said playing a sport couldn’t be magical? We have now started our 8 week block of Futsal, we are really enjoying learning new ball skills.

We have finished up with division, by playing a division game with a partner called ‘remainder wanted’ this was a game that involved working out the division sum and the remainder was our score, the person with the highest remainder wins. This game really helped us to improve our division calculations mentally as well as practicing using the formal written method. We have started to learn about fractions, we took our learning outside and drew various shapes on the playground using chalk, we needed to listen  to Mrs. Matos, as she would call out the fraction amount that needed to be shaded, we all worked well together in groups. The highlight of the week was an activity called scrumptiously simplified fractions, can you get what we used to complete this activity? Skittles! Who knew learning fractions could be so sweet. We worked in groups, sorting out the skittles in colours, we had to work out the fraction of each colour in the bag, then we learnt how to work out and write simplified fractions.

Spelling this week we learnt the rules and exceptions of words spelt with ei or ie, we learnt the saying, ‘ i comes before e, except after c and except when the words sounds like a’, this really helped us with our spelling words. In literacy we learnt about the elements of a story, we discussed how we can make our stories more interesting, engaging, exciting and how to leave our readers with something to think about. We started planning our own creative story, remembering to included all the elements. Together with our partner we have started to edit our writing, making sure to look out for spelling, capital letters, punctuation and wow words.We are going to use our editing to help us to improve on our story.

Over the last two weeks we have been focusing on internet safety, we have had a lot of discussions on privacy settings and what to and what not to share online. We are designing internet safety posters to be displayed in our classroom to help reminds us of the importance to be safe online.

We have a lot to look forward to next week. Next week we start bikeability, and we also have to look forward to our canal trip on Thursday. Could Primary 5 get any better?

 

Welcome back after a lovely Easter break. We are all well rested and ready to go on some new adventures this term.

We didn’t waste anytime  burning off all the lovely Easter Eggs we managed to eat over the Easter weekend.  We joined up with P5A for a joint circuit training during PE. It was great fun joining our friends in P5A, and we are all a little competitive at times. Our circuit training involved, hurdles, hula hoops, balancing, skipping, catching and a bit of tennis. Each activity is helping us to keep fit and build strength in all our major muscles.

We were all excited to get back after our Easter holidays and share with each other all the fun things we managed to do over the two week break. During literacy we planned and wrote about our favourite memories/time over the Easter holiday. When writing we needed to remember all the important grammar rules. Once we were finished we got to read a partners Easter holiday story. We used different colour pencils for editing. We learning that editing is an important skill in writing, as we are learning to identify any error as well as using our editing to work on our next steps.

 

No time was wasted in numeracy. We continued with division this week. We have started to learn the formal written method in division. We started with dividing 2 digit numbers, as we got more confident we started dividing 3 digit numbers. We learnt how to complete division using the formal method with a remainder. We have realised how important it is to know our times tables. Mrs Matos is encouraging us to practise our times tables at home as much as we can, because if we know our times tables, division will be simple. Next week we will be dividing bigger numbers.

As the weather is getting better, we are getting to enjoy some outdoor learning. We worked together with P5A to go on a Spring treasure hunt around the school. We had to look out for the different types of leaves and twigs that we could find around the school, we also had to keep our eyes open  for anything that showed the signs of spring. As we went on our Spring hunt we collected all the things we could identify with Spring. We worked in groups to create an informative Spring poster, which we then presented to the class. Mrs Matos and Mrs McCartney were very impressed with how well we worked together.

We have a lot to look forward to next week. On Monday we have our family learning event, numeracy will be the focus, please come along and see what we have been learning. We also have Mr Woodhouse coming to talk to Primary 5 about his Africa experience, and lastly we will be starting our block of Futsal. Never a dull moment in Primary 5.

P5B and Mrs Matos

 

It sure was our last week before our Easter holidays, but what a busy week it has been.

No matter the week, we never stop learning. In Numeracy this week we finished with multiplication, and started to have a look at division. We made the connection between multiplication and division and realised how important it was that we knew our times table facts. Hopefully with the multiplication mash up song we have been singing and some extra practise during our holidays, I’m sure when we get back to school we will be able to tackle the various division strategies with ease.

In literacy this week we were learning the differences between a prefix and a suffix. We also used the books in our classroom library to go on a prefix hunt. It was interesting to see how we can break words up into, prefixes, root words and suffixes.

We had fun in PE this week, we joined up with Primary 5A and we took part in some fun dancing using  Go Noodle. It was so much fun, to join up with the our friends in the other class, the dance moves were fun, we were having so much fun we didn’t even realise we were working up a sweat.

This week has been a week of all things Easter. We enjoyed making mindfulness colouring Easter cards. We hope that our special persons enjoys their cards that we have made. We have also been practising our Easter songs with Primary 5A. We even made a funky ‘Up Town Funk’ Easter version song. We all put a lot of effort into making our Easter bonnets, which we displayed for our special guests  on Thursday. Mrs Matos and Mrs Macartney were very proud of all the Primary 5s for their  hard work on their Easter Bonnets and singing.

In 1+2 we have been learning the French colours. We created our own Easter French colour by numbers version. We then asked a partner to follow the French instructions and to colour our Easter pictures in correctly. We definitely have some budding artists in P5B.

P5B would like to say a Big Thank you to P4A who invited us along to their classroom to share their learning on Egypt with us. We had so much fun learning different facts about Egypt. We really appreciate all the effort P4A had put in to make us feel welcome, and also had some fun active activities for us to do while we were there. We made some pyramids, wrote our names in hieroglyphics and there were so much for to do. Thank you P4A and Mrs Newton.

 

After such a busy week, we definitely all looking forward to our Easter holidays.

P5B and Mrs Matos

 

 

There is always something new we are learning in Primary 5.

Over the last two weeks we have been concentrating on multiplication. We’ve been learning various different strategies that can help us to solve multiplication problems. We’ve enjoyed learning different strategies and applying them to help us solve mental problems as well as word problems, We concentrated a bit of time on multiplication word problems, We used the Bar Modeling strategy to help us to understand what was being asked in the word problem. We went outside and used chalk to demonstrate how we would use Bar modelling when being faced with a multiplication word problem. After learning various different strategies we started to learn the multiplication algorithm. When doing the multiplication algorithm we realized how important it was that we knew our times table facts. Learning our times tables is something we will continue to learn and practice. One way that we have been learning our times table facts, is through song and dance.

 

In literacy this week we have been looking at the meaning of a suffix. We looked at the suffixes, er and est. We played games on the smart board to help us learn the spelling of the words when we  add suffixes to the words. Our class novel we are listening to is Private Peaceful. The novel takes us back to world war one, although it’s  not all based on the war, but more about a boy, Tommo Peaceful, who forms different relationships when he is younger and before he goes off to the war. We have spent some time analysing and discussing these different relationships and we have compared our relationships to Tommo’s . We worked together with a partner and drew up the relationship triangle that Tommo is in ,we discussed how their relationship had started and how it appears to change throughout the story. Again using the class novel, we looked at the format and style of informal letter writing. We stepped into character and went to war, we then used what we learnt and wrote a friendly letter home.

We’ve had plenty of fun in PE this week. We’ve been playing volleyball with Mrs. Reid. We are having great fun learning new skills and learning the importance of playing as a team. PE with Mrs. Matos we have various different stations that we had to work through. We needed to use different skills, muscles and fitness for each activity. We practiced using the hula hoops, balancing, skipping, and jumping over hurdles. We were having so much fun, we didn’t even realize how hard we were working.

   

On Sunday the 26 March is a very special day, it is day that we get to say thank you to the special ladies in our lives, it could be a mum, gran or a special aunty. We had a talk in class about the special ladies in our lives and what makes them so special to us. We have made these special ladies something special to say thank you for all that they do for us.

What a way to end off the week, with some fun for red nose day! Thank you to the pupil council for organising the dress down, crazy hair day and for the yummy cake sale!

Next week we will be looking forward to Tom from the British Legion coming in to have a talk with the Primary 5s.

Last week before our Easter break, I wonder what we will get up to?

P5B and Mrs Matos

 

 

 

If you thought you knew all you needed to know about multiplication, think again. This week we have learnt five different multiplication strategies. We are enjoying learning about the different strategies as we are able to use them confidently in our number talk discussions. This week we looked at partitioning, distributive strategy, near tens and halving and doubling. We are now able to decided which strategy would be the most effective to use. We really enjoying our number talk discussions, it gives us the opportunity to share and talk about our strategies.

This weeks spelling pattern were words ending in -ed. Did you know there are five different spelling rules for words ending in-ed? We practised our note taking skills, we watched a video clip that taught us the different rules, we worked with a partner and made our own summarised notes on the white boards. We then had the task of adding -ed to some words and using the spelling rules we made sure we spelt the words correctly and that they were placed under the correct rule. We found this tricky at times, but working with a partner helped as we were able to work through the rules, use prior knowledge and brainstorm together.

In Literacy this week, we continued to practise using the inverted comma correctly. We had to rewrite speech bubbles, from a comic strip, into direct speech. we needed to make sure that we used the inverted commas, and that we used the correction punctuation in our sentences. We then created our own comic strip with speech bubbles and asked a partner to rewrite the speech bubbles into direct speech. This  was great fun, we have some very creative and talented children in P5B

In PE this week, we had to work together as a team. We needed to make sure that we worked together. In our groups we formed a circle and held hands. We needed to make sure that we didn’t break the circle. Mrs Matos added a hula hoop to our circle and we needed to get the hula hoop around the circle as many times as possible without letting go of each others hands. If that wasn’t tricky enough Mrs Matos kept adding  more hula hoops to our circle. We really needed to talk to each other and keep each other motivated. It was  great fun, and we all had a good laugh with this task.

Lastly a massive well done to Beinn, Gabriella, Andrew and Mack. These four children have a heart of gold. A young family member of Beinn’s passed away from cancer, this year marked his 10th anniversary, to keep his memory alive his parents run a place where people with cancer can go and relax as a family, get some time ‘away’ from it all, this special place is called Callum’s Cabin. The above children took it upon themselves to raise some money for Callum’s Cabin. They ran a competition and asked the boys and girls in school to guess how many cabins there were. They had proudly raised over £30..Well done!! Mrs Matos is very proud of you all!

Mrs Matos and P5B

 

The weeks in Primary 5 are just flying away, but we are managing to have weeks filled with learning, fun and adventures.

We really enjoyed our fencing taster session. Although some of us are ‘pro’ fencers already, it was great fun learning a new skill and having fun. Our fencing coach was very proud of how quickly some of us had learnt the specific skills needed for fencing. Keep your eyes open , I think we have some potential gold winners in P5B.

During science with Mrs Tulloch we have been learning about sounds. Some of the boys and girls in the class brought along their musical instrument to share with the class. They shared their knowledge on how the sound is produced and also played their instruments so we could hear and compare the different sounds. Some really talented  boys and girls in P5B, thank you for sharing your musical love with us.

We were very privileged this week, to have a very special person come along and talk to the Primary 5’s. Mr Hector Woodhouse came along to our school on Wednesday and shared his stories and experiences when being apart of the civil engineering team who built the Forth Road bridge.  What an amazing talk from Mr Woodhouse, he shared with us some photos , and also his own stories both good and bad during the time the bridge was being built. A very big thank you to Mr woodhouse for taking the time to come and talk to us.

During literacy this week, we have been learning about Direct Speech. We worked with our partner to edit a story that had no commas or inverted commas. We also worked with a partner to edit a dialogue from the story, Good news, Bad news. After some discussions and editing we quickly realised how often we forget to use inverted commas when writing something using direct speech. We have now learnt the rules and are going to try our best to use direct speech in our writing and to make sure we don’t forget to use the inverted comma correctly.

We’ve been learning so much in numeracy this week. We worked with a partner to solve some addition and subtraction word problems. Word problems can sometimes seem scary and tricky. Our first task was to decide if the word problem was asking us to add or subtract. Once we knew what  we were asked to do, we were able to solve the word problems. We learnt that it was important to understand the language or terminology in a word problem for us to be able to answer the questions. We have been very busy learning our times table. We have been singing along to the multiplication mash up song. We have had a looked at arrays and how they can help us to solve multiplication equations. We created our very own city arrays, using the times tables that we found the most challenging. In the next week we will be learning different multiplications strategies, but during our Number talk discussions, some of us are already sharing some effective strategies.

 

We got to celebrate World Book day on Thursday and Friday, the fun started with decorating our classroom door. We all decided and chose a book theme for our door. We all worked together to create the Billionaire Boy – What a fantastic job, and we think it turned out great! In the fun of World Book day we got to dress up, it was so good to see so many boys and girls and even teachers having fun and getting into the spirit, everyone looked amazing. On Thursday we got to spend some time reading our favourite book. We have entered a competition, the competition involved us designing a new book token, all the boys and girls put in a lot of effort , so fingers crossed a winner is chosen from our class. To end off our World Book day celebrations we took part in a scavenger hunt, we did this with P5A, amazing the things you can find in books.

We have three very special girls in P5B, Louise, Anna and Dayna took it upon themselves to raise money for the RSPB. The girls had bought a soft toy Owl, and some chocolate eggs as the prize, over the last couple of weeks, the girls have gone around to the different classes and have asked the boys and girls to guess the owls birthday for 50p. Today the girls announced the winner – L Fryer in P6B!! the three girls have been raising money for the eagle appeal and managed to raise an amazing £64.50. Thank you to everyone for your support, and a massive well done to the girls, Mrs Matos and everyone at Springfield Primary School are very proud of you!

 

What more could we possibly learn next week?

Mrs Matos and P5B