Category: Primary 4

P4A Blog Week Ending 22.11.19

Literacy and English

In literacy we have been learning to write explanations about how things happen or work. We learned about the water cycle and how the process is shown in order and that there is often technical words used in explanation writing such as evaporation.

In grammar we learned when to use verbs which are doing or action words. WE learned that imperative verbs are bossy verbs that tell you what to do in a command style. E.g. shut the door, put the eggs in. For spelling this week, we were learning to spell words that start with ‘un’ or end in ‘d’. We had some ERIC time (Everyone Reading in Class) to enjoy reading of our choice. We are continuing to focus on non-fiction books for home reading this week.

Numeracy and Mathematics

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been practising our mental maths strategies every day. This week we were learning how to use ‘doubles and near doubles’. We have been playing lots of active games to practice. e.g. dominoes, racing board games counting in doubles, using 100, 10 and 1 wooden cubes to practise with our partners. We are now able to use a range of strategies and are getting to know which strategy is the quickest to use depending on the calculation.

Have a lovely weekend!

P4A and Ms McAlpine

P4A Blog Week Ending 8.11.19

Literacy and English

In literacy we have been learning to write in the discussion writing genre about a boy and an ant. We learned how to find arguments for and against whether the boy should stand on the ant and give our opinion of which side we agreed with. Before writing we had discussions around whether the boy had the right to act on his more powerful position and whether the ant had feelings.

We did a short read on Monday to fill in the gaps of a story with a word that would make sense. In handwriting we were practising forming the letter ‘i’ correctly. In grammar we learned when to use ‘ier’ and ‘iest’ at the end e.g. happier and ‘happiest’. For spelling this week, we were learning to spell words that have a double letter in the middle and had ‘ed’ at the end and also words that start with ‘re’. We had some ERIC time (Everyone Reading in Class) to enjoy reading of our choice. Our focus for home reading this week has been on non-fiction books.

Numeracy and Mathematics

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been practising our mental maths strategies. This week our focus has been on partitioning numbers to help us add them mentally. We learned that we should put the largest number first and then partition the second number so that we can add on the tens and then the units. We also learned more vocabulary to help us to understand what kind of calculation we were being asked to work out.

Learning across the Curriculum

The Primary 7’s taught us a French lesson to help us to know our colours and numbers better. We have been playing lots of instruments in music with Ms Bain. In Health and wellbeing we have been learning about the different food groups and what proportion we should have of each group to stay healthy. We also talked about food groups that people may not be able to eat or chose not to eat and discussed the reasons. We are still enjoying our book study of Aesop’s fables and finding out the morals in the story.

P4A and Ms McAlpine

P4A Blog Week Ending 1.11.19

Literacy and English

In literacy we have been learning how to use the ‘discussion’ writing genre. We used a story about a lion and a snail from our book study, Aesop’s Fables to discuss arguments for and against the lion winning the race. We also had morning starter discussions on whether we should wear school uniform, if it was better to be an adult or a child, should we be allowed to bring mobile phones to school and should sweets be allowed in school.

In handwriting we were practising forming the letter ‘s’ correctly. We learned to use a different ‘s’ so that we could use it in joined up writing. We also learned how to make words plural using ‘s’, ‘es’ or changing the’ y’ to an ‘I’ and adding ‘es’.

For spelling this week, we were learning to spell words that have a double letter in the middle and words that start with ‘al’. We learned that the ‘al’ can sound different depending on whether there is a vowel or a consonant after it.

We had some ERIC time (Everyone Reading in Class) to enjoy reading of our choice.

Numeracy and Mathematics

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been focusing on addition and subtraction, using number talks and addition games including snakes and ladders, bingo, and addition dice. We have also been practising mental maths. This week we learned that the Commutative Law means we can add in any order. In subtraction the first number stays same order but we can add the others in any order. We learned that there are lots of words that mean add e.g. sum, altogether, total and plus.

Learning across the Curriculum

In P.E. we continued to develop our skills in Short Tennis. We had an assembly on Monday about our new behaviour policy. We now have no traffic lights showing in the class but Ms McAlpine will still record. Instead of golden time we will be having play learning. Our focus this term is construction and we used our construction activities in class to create models and drawings together. In health and wellbeing we talked about friendships and shared our experiences and lots of strategies to help each other. We continued our focus on healthy eating. Zara made her own powerpoint at home about healthy eating and presented it to the class! Well done Zara!

P4A and Ms McAlpine

Hope you had a lovely holiday!

Literacy and English

In literacy we have started a book study on Aesop’s Fables. These are short stories that have a moral or a meaning. They often involve animals, such as The Hare and the Tortoise, or The Grasshopper and the Ant. This term, discussion writing will be one of our focus genres. These stories will help us to discuss what the meaning is and what we think about what happened in the fables.

In punctuation and grammar we were learning how to use speech marks. We learned that speech marks should go round all the words said including any punctuation.

For spelling this week, we were learning to spell words that we had tried to use in our writing, which we had copied onto a card to practice.

We had some ERIC time (Everyone Reading in Class) to enjoy reading of our choice.

Numeracy and Mathematics

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been focusing on addition and subtraction, using number talks and various addition games. We have also been practising mental maths.

Learning across the Curriculum

In P.E. we started learning Short Tennis. We found it similar to badminton but easier with a ball than a shuttlecock. We impressed ourselves at how quickly our skills progressed as we practised counting how many times we could bounce the ball off our rackets, against the wall and to each other. Some of us are aiming to beat Andy Murray! We will be learning the rules of tennis, how to improve our skills, learning to be competitive, work well with others and give positive feedback. We already knew some technical language of tennis e.g. ‘volley’.

In health and wellbeing we have started to learn about simple nutritional needs at different stages of life. We discussed which foods were healthy and which were unhealthy and what foods were needed for various ages. We sorted food into different food groups and studied a food plate to see what proportion of each food group we should be eating.

P4A and Ms McAlpine

P4A Blog Week Ending 27.9.19

Literacy and English

In reading we read our books to Ms McAlpine and discussed our reading comprehensions with each other. We had some ERIC time (Everyone Reading in Class) to enjoy reading of our choice.

We also read a passage about India including what people ate and where they worked and answered questions in our jotter. We practised the letter ‘y’ in handwriting and tried lots of spelling activities to learn our words.

Numeracy and Mathematics

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been learning about 2D and 3D shapes and also adding tens and hundreds. We practised reading data from bar graphs on Sumdog. We have also been learning more about different strategies that we can use to help us with number talks.by writing how we worked out the answers to questions on a post-it, then comparing to the post-its of strategies that others had used.

Learning across the Curriculum

In Health and Wellbeing we learned about different emotions and played a board game where we discussed the emotion we landed on. We enjoyed making fantastic Indian music with Ms Bain.

Achievements

Well done to CA for receiving a kindness certificate at assembly for always being helpful.

Coming Up

• Wednesday – Parents Evening 4.30-7.30pm
• Thursday – Parents Evening 3.30-6.30pm

Have a good weekend!

P4A and Ms McAlpine