Author: Mrs Tulloch

We have been busy this week in literacy, planning our comic strips. We have chosen our favourite infant  books to summarise and read to primary 1.  As next Thursday is World Book day, we have written invitations to invite Primary 1 up to our classroom , which we are going to transform into a cozy reading area.

We are helping to develop play in our school grounds and are training up to help teachers in infants lead mental health and yoga  activities outside. We are evaluating the activities with Mrs Tulloch and will be adapting them to suit our grounds and pupils.

Thursday was 80’s day!  Our costumes were brilliant. We all looked amazing and really got into the groove with a dancing parade round the gym hall. There were quite a few enthusiastic teachers.  In class we danced the “macareena”.

We played 80’s games in the playground helped by Primary 7 and did a ” Jane Fonda ” type work out in the hall led by the sport’s captains.

We played 80’s music while we worked. For maths, we played musical chairs before then tackling a  chair problem for rabbit and hedgehog. We also did problem solving on Tuesday, ” Pooch Police”,  where we had to recognise and explain patterns and relationships. Here is the extension challenge for anyone who would like to try it. Using the the numbers 1,3, and 5 make three digit numbers to make 999 . We will put the solution at the end of the blog.

Primary 6 continue to work hard on Fame. The dress rehearsal went well at the Academy and now we have a better idea about the spacing, layout, exits etc.  Photographs are being taken on Monday and then we will have a full dress reheasal at the Academy on Tuesday. I know we are all looking forward to the show next week and look forward to showing you our efforts.

We continued making our Sphero assault courses. We are hoping to programme them next week to complete the courses. We will need to reassess some of the moves as there are tight corners and some uneven surfaces to travel across.

Solution 153 +315=999       and   351+135=999

Have a good weekend.

From Mrs McVay , Mrs Tulloch and P5/6

Our confidence and understanding of decimals is growing each day! This week we have focussed on using our mental arithmetic strategies to add and subtract decimals with one decimal place. We have answered questions, created questions for each other and played loop card games to help consolidate our understanding.

When we were doing our written mental maths we were able to make connections with fractions and decimals on a number line.

In maths, we  played Connect 4 with angels. We were able to estimate within 10 degrees of acute, obtuse, straight line and reflex andgles.

This term, as part of our Number Talks, we are focussing on a different strategy each week. This week we looked at making ten within a calculation.

In our Literacy lessons this week we explored note taking and how we can gather information in different ways and from different sources. In pairs, we researched the Battle of the Stirling Bridge in preparation for writing a Newspaper article about the battle next week.

In grammar we have been looking at connectives and we are going to try to incorporate them into our writing

This week we celebrated ‘Scotland Loves Languages’ by playing lots of games to help with our French.  Our language ambassadors helped teach games to primary 4. In the playground we played ” Quelle heure est-il Monsieur Loup?” Monsieur Loup ate a lot of children !

The P5’s in our class did a great job helping the upper school with the show on Wednesday. We used their art skills to help us make props. They even got a sneaky peek of some of the dancing and singing!

Well done to those in Primary 5 that braved the weather conditions and walked to the Leisure Centre for their swimming trial.

Great engineering skills were developed making  spaghetti bridges. One group’s bridge managed to hold 2.8kg. They originally estimated that it would hold 250g. There was a lot of team work and cooperation need for this activity. And it was fun!

We have had a really busy week in Primary 5/6. The Primary 5’s had a great time taking part in the Handball festival at Linlithgow Academy on Tuesday where they were competed against other local schools.

On Wednesday the Primary 5’s listened to a very interesting presentation by Mr Woodhouse about the Forth Bridges. It provided us with lots of information to help us on our trip to the Bridges on Thursday with Mr. Logan and the rest of Primary 5.

In science we planned our spaghetti bridge challenge and next week will be building them.

The Primary 6’s have missed their classmates this week however they have also been very busy with Fame! As the week progressed we had Mrs Bell helping us with some of our songs, Mrs Gordon was teaching us some new dances and we are beginning to look at what is happening on the stage throughout each scene.

We are continuing to look at Decimals and in particular ordering decimals with one and two decimal places. We found this tricky at first but with more practise and exploring different games we are beginning to feel more confident.

In maths we were exploring types of angles and using a protractor to draw angles. We will be reinforcing this next week.

In music we are continuing to learn to play the recorder. We are doing playing and reading from the stave, the notes G,B A  high C. We are then using these playing skills to improvise 4 ”beat fills “ in a simple jazz piece.

Learning through play in the upper school    

Have a good weekend from Primary 5/6, Mrs McVay and Mrs Tulloch

We have had a very busy week in Primary 5/6! We are continuing to explore Scots language and created our own Scots poems about an animal of our choice. We spent time exploring a wide range of vocabulary and using this to create our poems. Mrs McVay hopes that some of us will have the confidence to recite our poems to the rest of the school next week during assembly.

We were introduced to a new maths topic this week and that was decimals. During our lessons we began to look at the place value of decimals up to 3 decimal places. To develop our understanding further we then created diagrams (that looked like chocolate bars) to understand the concepts of tenths and hundredths. Next week the class will focus on ordering and sequencing decimals up to 2 decimal places.

Mrs Tulloch and Mrs Doyle showed us how to measure angles using a protractor. We made a protractor for the classroom door and now we can measure going in and out of class.

As part of our Art lesson this week, we learned about the famous Scottish artist Samuel Peploe. We looked at some of his paintings and discussed how they make us feel and how he used light and dark colours to create still life and landscapes. Using water colours and oil pastels we drew our own representation of one of his paintings called, Rocks. Our pictures have turned out very well!

P6 continue to learn their songs for the school show this week and will hopefully have the words home by the end of the week for them to memorise. P5 have been using this time to learn more about Rabbie Burns and this week created a fantastic collage of his very famous portrait.

As you walk by our classroom window have a look at our new year resolutions for in the school playground. They are there to remind us the importance of playing kindly, showing respect and being inclusive to ensure that everyone has fun during playtime and lunchtime.

In science Primary 5 have been learning about bridges and mad paper bridges. Daniel and Leith’s bridge carried 180g.

Have a lovely weekend,

Primary 5/6

Maths

For maths we did real life maths where made nets of cuboids. We are making gift boxes for cakes for the Christmas fair. We had to do a lot of measuring to come up with the  best size. we decided not to make lids as we want people to see the cakes. We  did doubling and halfing in numeracy.

Art

We made baubles that had famous landmarks in France. These are going to be hung on the Christmas tree in St Michael’s Church.

IDL

We had a debate on climate change and made posters. Primary6 continued to find out about the Scoittish Parliament. Mr Corr is coming to talk to us on Monday about his work there.

PE

We did  Scottish dancing and we played games on Thursday and Wednesday. The P5 had their last session of golf and rugby.

Primary 6 had their Rotakids meeting where Dr Mackenzie told us how well we did with our assembly on Purple for Polio. He would like us to deliver it at a Rotary meeting.

At music we continued with learning how to play the recorder.

In science , we were report writng our investigation into what happens when you add bulbs to a series circuit. We are always very good with the practical activities but the writing is a bit harder……the bulbs get dimmer!

However we are going to try it with parallel circuits in a couple of weeks. Find out how we are going to make electricity from fruit!

by Callum and Rose

Art

For art, we made a tree and coloured it in autumn colours. We drew a tree outline with branches in black pen and then used oil pastel in warm autumn colours. They  are beautiful.

Maths

For maths this week we did multipcation in word problems and also for mental maths. We practiced are 3,4,6,7,8 and 9 times table. We have been playing multiplication wars to help with our recall.

Spanish

For spanish we watched High Five Spanish and practiced conversation.

Assembly

Our asswmbly is going to be on Purple for Polio, through our Rotakids committee. Dont want to give too much away.

We wrote our scripts and we got in groups and made our slides. Also, we made  posters for the classes and to advertise that we are going to  dress in  purple and bring in £1 for polio eradication.

We worked really hard in music and Ms Bain loved our tunes we wrote.

Primary 5 are working in groups for their social enterprise and have some fabulous ideas. More to follow.

 By Rose and Maisie