Author: Mrs Gordon

We managed to cram a lot of learning into a short week. In PE we are doing a series of yoga lessons with Mrs Gordon. We learnt about posture, breathing and different poses. After following some body balance tracks Mrs Gordon asked us to get into 2’s or 3’s and create balances using the poses we had learnt. Look at our creativity..

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We really enjoyed the relaxation at the end…

On Thursday we had a fantastic trip to the risk factory. We won’t say too much about it so we don’t spoil it for younger siblings, however it was a great hands on learning experience where we could experience risks and make decisions in a safe environment.

In numeracy we started our focus on decimals by looking at place value, ordering decimals and rounding decimals.

In literacy we were working on finishing our Cake Fest recount pieces where we tell our personal Cake Fest story and what we learnt in the process.

Happy weekend!

Another busy week in P7a saw us finish our mini theme of “Cake Fest”. In groups of 4 the children presented their proposed monuments and how they would construct them out of cake. It was a very close competition with marks being awarded for feasibility, creativity, cost effectiveness, presentation and team work. The President Pineapples (Sophie D, Melissa, Rebecca and Beth) won and made their monument “The Dunmore Pineapple” out of cake. The team really worked hard designing and creating their cake which was a very tricky design to make. Thanks so much to our wonderful parent helpers Craig’s mum, Rebecca’s mum and grandad and Mrs Woolsey. Well done to all of P7 for their wonderful entries. Here are some photos. 

As it was maths week this week we continued our work on inspirational maths by looking at Pascal’s triangle and patterns within it. We also looked at building 2D and 3D shapes with one loop of rope. Each child had to have one hand on the rope. Not as easy as it sounds…We have had a lot of fun whilst realising that maths is not about speed, but deep understanding, teamwork, patterns, sharing ideas and strategies.

In IDL we started our new Brazil theme by asking the children what they knew and what they wanted to learn. In groups of 5 the children are researching and presenting their chosen area of Brazil (Amazon River, Carnival, Rainforest Wildlife, Landmarks, Tropical Birds and Rio de Janeiro). In their presentation they are aiming to share facts about their topic and compare it to Scotland.

We had a lot of extra-curricular achievements over the past few weeks. Erin C walked over the new Queensferry Crossing with her family. Amelia and Erin C took part in a gymnastics competition and were runners up in their categories. Jack played rugby for the S1’s, Alastair got his Level 5 skiing award and Beth got a 6 second PB on her front crawl. James is seen below with his Om Lite maps. He took part in an orienteering  competition with his dad in the Yorkshire Dales. They won the family category and came 9th overall. They walked/ran a total of about 56km…Arran pictured below took part in the 10 mile Linlithgow to Edinburgh cycle as part of Pedal for Scotland. Busy, busy children….well done to them all and to their families for supporting them.

Have a great long weekend! See you all on Wednesday.

Mrs Gordon and P7a

Primary 7 were extremely busy this week as they started their Cake Fest Project. Each team is coming up with a design of a Scottish Monument that can be made entirely of cake…the children will plan, design, model and present these ideas and the one winning cake will be built by that team. To start off Mrs Gordon worked with each class to do food hygiene and then used those skills and many more to make apple pie for 62 children…The children now know how to peel, core and chop and apple and make a basic crumble mixture from scratch. I will attach the recipe so they can make this for you at home. Here are a few pictures of us at work…

We had the first of our skill share sessions this week where Mrs Gordon teaches us French or Spanish and Mr Logan teaches us PE. This week was French focusing on “tout sur moi” all about me. We learnt how to say our favourite things in French and really challenged Mrs Gordon with jobs like atomic scientist and ninja!

In PE Mr Logan is focusing on extreme dodgeball this term.

During buddy time we helped our P1 buddies with their ICT skills. We helped them to log on and off the netbooks and play some maths games. We all had great fun. Here are a few photos of us.

We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at our assembly next Friday 8th September at 10am.

Mrs Gordon and P7a

Here is the fabulous P7a looking so smart in their shirt and ties. What a lovely week we had getting to know each other. We did lots of different activities and worked in different groupings. Throughout the whole week the children have been fantastic at helping their buddies, they have really risen to the challenge of P7 and their responsibilities.

Creating our class charter allowed us to talk about the UN Rights of a Child, and remind ourselves of the need to respect each other, our classroom and resources and the environment.

We each filled in an “all about me” sheet which we put in an envelope with a letter to our future selves and a piece of string to show our height. The envelopes were all placed in a Time Capsule which won’t be opened until the last day of P7 when we will see how much we have grown and changed over the year…

Here are a few photos of us being measured…

We had a fun afternoon yesterday problem solving. Mrs Gordon split us into teams of 4 an gave us some spaghetti and marshmallows. The challenge was to build the tallest tower, or the longest bridge with these resources. We all learnt a lot about planning, estimation, stability, weight and of course team work and compromise. Here is the winning tower and bridge.

We can’t wait to find out what we will be learning next week, have a great weekend.

P7a and Mrs Gordon

Well that’s it…the end of P7…

I was so sad to say goodbye to P7a today that I couldn’t say much. I will miss each and every one of them, they have all worked so hard, but achieved so much. I know they will do us all proud at the Academy !

We opened our time capsule which we created in August. Look how much we have grown (string was measured in August 2016). We also looked at our goals and how we have changed since August. It was a lovely way to end our year and look forward to new beginnings…

Happy holidays

Mrs Gordon and P7a x

Cheryl from St Michael’s church visited us on Thursday to present the award for the P7 “Good Samaritan” for session 2016/17. It was a very difficult decision to make, as many of the children often go above and beyond in Springfield PS. Neve Leishman from P7b was our very worthy winner, and was commended for her ability to demonstrate acts of kindness within school (a particular focus within P1 and our buddies). Neve also recognises when something needs done and will do it without being asked to do so. Well done Neve, we are very proud of you !

Literacy

This week we were fortunate to visit the Book Fair at the rugby club where author Lari Don spoke to the cluster P7’s about her Spellchaser’s trilogy. There was lots of audience participation as we helped create our own chase within a story.

We also wrote a recount of P7 camp where we had to share what we enjoyed, what we didn’t, our personal challenge and our next steps. It was lovely to talk together before we started writing and share the challenges we had which were all very varied.

We finished creating our wall display in art for “The boy in the striped pyjamas” where our focus was on using different materials and teamwork to create the final version which you can see below. We then started watching the film with an aim of writing a comparison of book and film afterwards.

Health and Wellbeing

Michelle from WLDAS (West Lothian Drug and Alcohol Service) visited us again this week to deliver sessions 2 and 3 of the tobacco education programme. The focus was very much on giving the children tools and words to use when faced with a tricky situation. The children were very engaged and participated fully in the session which taught them all strategies which could be used in any risk-taking situation. We also had the dummy demonstrate the damaging effects of smoking just one cigarette.

Numeracy

Our focus this week was on shape. We did a whirlwind tour of properties of 2D and 3D shapes using mathematical language and nets of shapes. We then looked at the different types of triangles and angles using estimation, measurement and problem solving.

P7 Cluster Rugby Tournament

We took part in the P7 cluster rugby tournament on Friday. Luckily the rain stayed away for most of the morning and each team enjoyed 4 or 5 games of tag rugby. Well done to everyone for giving it a go.