Author: Mrs Gordon

Both P7 classes were very fortunate this week to have a Moneysense workshop brought to us by RBS. 6 RBS volunteers (some of whom were parents of children in our school) very kindly helped Mr Logan and Mrs Gordon deliver the workshop.

The children had to consider mobile phone characteristics and order them in terms of importance. In groups they then had to match a customer with a phone contract based on their needs. Each group presented the phone contract that best suited their customer with the reasons why.

Everyone was very engaged with the topic, and we hope it helps them to better understand the process we go through when thinking of purchasing something new. At a minimum they may now better appreciate their lovely parents and carers, who in most cases were the source of funding for their own mobile phones…

Mr Logan and Mrs Gordon

This week in PE we played handball. Mrs Gordon was on a handball course a few weeks ago so was keen to try out some of the warm up games she had learnt. Next steps are to look at our technique and tactics.

For World Book Day we finished our latest class novel – Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden. The children then went on to discuss the cliff-hanger ending whilst predicting what they think would happen in a sequel. Thanks to the parents who popped in to see us.

P7a and Mrs Gordon

This week we had a fencing taster session. The children coped very well and followed the instructions carefully.

In numeracy we have been continuing our work on fractions, decimals and percentages and conversion of these. The children really enjoyed our M&M and Skittles challenges where they had to convert the skittles into fractions, decimals and percentages per colour. This was interesting as the packets had 17 skittles, making things tricky…

As a number talk this week I gave the children a word problem which we worked through together using a real life example of fractions, decimals and percentages and car insurance costs. There was a real buzz in the room as the children helped eachother to find the answers.

In literacy/IDL we learnt about air raids in WWII and wrote instructions of what to do when the air raid siren sounds. We learnt what imperative (bossy) verbs were to do this.

For World Book Day on Thursday we voted to change our door into the book cover of A bear called Paddington. We write some weird stories, where the children wrote one paragraph then passed it on for the next person to continue.

Here we are all dressed up for World Book Day.

We started our World War II topic this month, and the children are all very engaged. Quite a few knew some facts about the war from their conflict topic last year. The children are keen to find out more about weapons, evacuees, concentration camps, rationing, key battles and much more over the next month. We created a washing line of the key events of WWII in chronological order and completed amazing pencil portraits of the leaders of the Axis and Allies.

In French we have focused on food. We could use what we already knew from likes/dislikes to create role plays in cafe’s and ice cream shops using je voudrais, c’est combien etc

In maths our focus for the last few weeks has been fractions. We have been simplifying, exchanging to equivalent fractions, fraction problems, conversion to decimals and much more.

Don’t forget to bring in your “Reflections” photos on Monday for the Rotary competition. The very last day they can be accepted is Tuesday 21st February. Each child can enter a maximum of 2 photos and they must be a minimum size of 6″x4″ and a maximum size of A4.

Bon weekend

Mrs Gordon and P7a

 

 

Yes it’s true P7a switched roles with Mrs Gordon this week as they became teachers whilst she was the pupil.

As part of our Famous Scots focus the children were split into 3 groups and given a famous Scot. They were then tasked with creating and delivering a sequence of 3 lessons that would help Mrs Gordon and the rest of the class learn about their Scot, their place in Scottish history and what they were famous for.

It was a fabulously engaging activity, and armed only with: lesson plan templates, copies of the outcomes and a group discussion on what makes a good lesson, the children duly delivered 3 sets of lessons. I was very impressed by the creativity of the lessons.

They all created different activities to help us learn about either Robert Watson-Watt, Sir James Young Simpson or David Steel. The most entertaining was definitely Ruby’s group who had everyone make a barometer out of tins and test it outside, linking to Robert Watson Watt’s invention of radar.

When asking the children what they found most difficult, the most common answer was keeping their classmates quiet and on task …

Mrs Gordon and P7a

 

Primary 7a had a great morning outside on Thursday with the lovely ladies from the RSPB. We learnt about how we can provide homes for animals and insects and how this can improve the environment.

The children took part in teams, in a dragons den style “design a habitat” game. The winner was the hedgehog with a webcam within its new purpose built home.

The children are now very keen to see if we can try our any of their ideas…watch this space…

P7 have been very busy this week with the start of our visits from professionals. Within Curriculum for Excellence it is important that children learn skills for life, learning and work. As part of this we invited our very talented and diverse group of parents to come in and talk to our P7’s about their careers, and how they got there. P7 have been asking some great questions, and have been fully engaged throughout these sessions.

Our guests range from dentists, solicitors, transport planners, investment consultants, Procurator Fiscal’s and many more. Here are some photos of some of this weeks visitors. We look forward to meeting more professionals over the next couple of weeks.