Author: Mrs Gordon

This week we had a big focus on anti-bullying week. The slogan for this year is “All different, All equal”. We worked in groups through several scenarios this week, which really made us think deeply about our actions. In groups we wrote definitions of respect and then voted on the one we liked best to use as a class motto, the one which celebrated being different. We looked at gender differences and stereotyping, and power. The children were very mature with their discussions and were easily able to identify the correct actions to take in different real-life scenarios.

Chloe’s mum has a Brazilian friend who let her borrow some items to show the class. We got to see some Carnival headdresses, a statue of Christ the Redeemer, a traditional doll and carving and a flag. Having a look at these items got us in the mood to finish our rainforest tanka poetry.

In Numeracy we continue our work with fractions, this time making equivalent fractions and simplifying fractions. We also did work with money and budgeting as part of our Christmas Fayre Enterprise project. Mr Fryer came in to talk to us about budgeting and helped us think about the profit each group can expect to make at the Fayre. Lots of very important links to skills for learning, life and work.

In French our focus was on “moi-meme”, myself. We were looking at how to tell people about us and our families. In PE we started our block of basketball by looking at dribbling skills.

In literacy we used the new “Big Writing” resource to start a series of lessons on report writing, the topic is about orangutans in the rainforest.

Next week we have auditions for main parts for the Lion King on Thursday, scripts will be sent home on Monday for the children to practice with. They already have a note of any songs that were required.

Mrs Gordon and P7a

This week we started our Christmas Fayre Enterprise project. The children put themselves into groups of 5 across both P7 classes and started work on their products. Each team is tasked with creating a product/products or services to sell at the Christmas Fayre on December 8th. We learnt about lots of key areas including product planning/design, resource planning, marketing, budgeting, pricing and production. We now understand the difference between a net and gross profit, and talked a little about supply and demand too. We are very lucky that one of the P7 parents Mr Fryer is going to come and talk to us about budgeting next week.

In literacy we continued with our Poppy Factory Recount pieces, and in the “Big Write” on Tuesday learnt about Tanka poetry. Tanka poetry is 5 lines long and has a 5,7,5,7,7 syllable make up. These poems are often about nature and feelings and so were perfect to allow us to write about the Amazon rainforest. We were inspired by some rainforest sounds in the background. The children created some very creative, emotional and heart-felt poetry.

In art we have been very busy finishing our junk models of Brazilian monuments. They should be ready next week, watch this space… We also created our own poppies for our very own “Flanders Fields”, have a look below. These were fantastic, each child created their own design of poppy using materials of their choice. It was great to see so many of them choosing to sew their poppy.

On Wednesday we took part in the P7 Sportshall Athletics cluster competition. The children performed excellently in the track and field events and it was lovely to meet all the P7’s from the different cluster schools.

Mrs Gordon and P7a

P7a finished their decimal focus this week by making anchor charts with key information about working with decimals. They then moved on to use their knowledge of addition, multiplication and subtraction of decimals in the maths café. Each child could pick their challenge level “mild, spicy or hot” and had to answer questions from that menu. The next stage was to create their own maths café. They could create a menu for a restaurant/café of their choice and then a partner had to visit their restaurant with their “family” and order. The waiter then had to add up the bill (without a calculator) and provide imaginary change. Some children will finish off this activity early next week. Although fun to create the menu and pretend to order lots of food, the children were using key transferable skills for learning, life and work.

In literacy this week we were very lucky to visit Linlithgow Primary on Monday for a theatre performance of “up to speed”. The performance touched upon feelings, being different and changes ; all relevant topics for the children.

In Guided Reading groups the children worked together to ask and answer questions using Blooms Buttons and Blooms Flowers. These tools help promote higher order thinking and questioning skills by challenging the children to think in depth about what they are reading.

 

 

P7a had a fantastic trip to the Poppy Factory this week. It was great to learn lots about World War 2. Mrs Gordon, Beth and Aidan got to dress up as well !

We learnt about the history of the poppy, and then had a tour around the factory where we saw how the poppies and wreaths were made. A lot of us were surprised that the majority of the process is done by hand, by volunteers who are all ex-servicemen.

We then got the chance to make some poppies. Have a look at our photos below.

Happy weekend from P7a and Mrs Gordon

As it was national chocolate week this week, and one of Mrs Gordon’s most favourite things in the whole world, we decided to have a chocolate focus this week…

For homework we had chocolate maths questions and during our problem solving numeracy sessions this week we had to solve chocolate mysteries. These involved lost of different mathematical concepts including place value, co-ordinates, fractions, roman numerals etc. One group had to work out the smallest number of breaks for a 100 square bar to be broken into individual squares…

Chocolate production in Brazil was part of our weekly research. We learnt a lot of facts and watched a video which showed us the journey from pod to supermarket shelf. We were all surprised at how long the process took, and how manually labour intensive it was. Here we are with some cocoa pods, and our own chocolate treat that Mrs Gordon gave us today for working so hard this term.

In Portuguese this week we learned about colours, and played matching pairs. Everyone picked them up very quickly and we noticed connections to Spanish with colours like yellow – amarillo in Spanish and amarelo in Portuguese.

We received lots of praise this week for helping the teachers as timekeepers at parents night. We were courteous, accurate and polite; and added these to our growing repertoire of skills for learning, life and work.

Happy holidays!

Mrs Gordon and P7a

Ola e bem-vindo a Brazil. Hello and welcome to Brazil. This week P7a have been learning Portuguese as part of our topic on Brazil. We learned greetings and phrases such as “how are you?” and numbers from 0-10. We noticed some similarities to Spanish too. Here is a game we played where we had to match up the English and Portuguese words as quickly as possible. Our winning team was Tamzin, Aidan, Alastair and James.

We did lots of research this week on deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest, we were focusing on the environmental impact of human activity. We found the information quite alarming, especially statistics like the equivalent area of 6 football fields per minute is being destroyed, and that had deforestation continued at the rate it was in 2004, there would have been no rainforest left by 2030. Luckily the rate has slowed significantly, but P7a feel this is still not enough. Next week we will investigate further.

In literacy we learned about figurative language and used our knowledge to create feelings poems using personification to celebrate world poetry day on Thursday. We were inspired by the movie “Inside Out”. We worked in groups of 4 to describe a feeling eg joy, sadness, happiness etc.

To help remember our spelling words we played the games we had created for homework last week. Everyone had great fun whilst also remembering their words. Here some of the girls were playing their version of scrabble.

We had some good news at assembly this morning when Alexander Rankin won the upper school prize for Miss Baillie’s Autumn Writing competition. Alexander had gathered facts about Autumn in Linlithgow and presented them beautifully including some lovely pictures of Beecraigs in the Autumn. Alexander won a book token, well done Alexander!

Happy weekend from Mrs Gordon and P7a.

Bienvenue a notre blog, nous avons passe une semaine pleine de langues…Welcome to our blog, we have had a week full of languages. On Tuesday it was European Day of Languages (EDL) and as Mrs Gordon loves languages we did lots of different things this week. We revised dates, days and months in French, asking each other “C’est quand ton anniversaire?”. We also split into pairs and researched a European city that we were given. We had to show it’s place on a map, draw the flag and find out key facts such as currency, capital city and interesting facts. We then shared these with the class so we all learnt something new. Today we presented a multi-lingual assembly to celebrate EDL and learnt about reasons why learning languages is important. Did you know that you can earn up to £5k more in a job if you speak a language…Here are some photos of our assembly.

In  numeracy this week we have been working with rounding decimals and problem solving. We learnt all about the RUCSAC method to help us solve word problems.

In literacy we wrote poems, stories, songs or facts on the topic “Autumn in Linlithgow”. This was for Miss Baillie’s writing competition.

5 of our groups presented their mini research presentations on Brazil. Each group had to pick an area of Brazil and involve their audience in learning some facts about that topic. We all gave each other feedback to help us improve our presentations next time. We also had to compare our area of Brazil with Scotland. Here are some photos of us presenting.