What a great virtual sports week we had last week! Huge thank you to Mrs Reid for organising our daily sports challenges and gathering together all of our scores and also to our class teachers for sending out lots of fun and engaging sport-related tasks and activities for us to try.
Well done to all of our pupils, parents, carers and families who got involved, it was lovely to see photos and videos of what you’ve all been getting up to! We’ve had over 180 pupils submit scores, 1,800 daily challenges completed and travelled the equivalent of Edinburgh to Leicester in the house distance challenge! That’s a massive 391 kilometres!
I’m sure you’re all eager to hear who is this year’s winning house and the new holders of the House Cup, but there’s one more little step to take before you can find out. Click on the link below to see the results from the week, including: our winning house, the highest scoring pupil in each class, the winners of the house distance challenge and even our top 3 parents!
We were delighted to find out that Springfield Primary School have become a Social Enterprise School having been awarded the ‘Start-Up Award’ by the Social Enterprise Academy. P5 worked hard throughout the year to run small businesses and take forward various projects. The aim being for their initiatives to have a social purpose and ultimately give something back to causes that are meaningful to them. In total, P5 have raised over £2,500 during this academic session which is an incredible total given the year has been rather disrupted since March. Super job P5, we’re incredibly proud of your efforts! The framed certificate will be in school for you all to see in August. Aimee Lamb has also been awarded a ‘Community Champion Award’ for her response to Covid-19 – she’s been making masks for ‘whoever needs them’. Very well done Aimee!
From Monday 15th of June – Friday 19th June I would like to invite all our pupils and families to take part in our Virtual Sports Challenges.
For each challenge you complete you will score points for your school house and at the end of Virtual Sports Week we will have a winning house for 2020.
Each slide in the attached Powerpoint will explain one of our 11 challenges and give details on how to score points for your house.
Keep a note of your score for each challenge and then fill in the score form attached and send it back when all your challenges are complete! This can be done using the Forms link on the final slide.
Everyone in your family is welcome to get involved so lets get active and have lots of fun!
Click on the link to access the Powerpoint with all the information you need – Virtual Sports Week
This week we have continued to work on division strategies as well as some revision on addition and subtraction.
We have enjoyed listening to lots of class talks on the Vikings and have been impressed with the effort everyone has put into their presentations so far and how confidently they have been delivered! We have also had lots of brilliant props brought in to support the talks such as a shield, a sword, Viking runes and jewellery. Well done everyone!
We also learned a bit more about what Vikings might have worn. We created our own Viking characters and designed some outfits for them. These look great on our topic wall in the classroom and we had lots of fun making them. We enjoyed listening to some Viking myths about Thor and Odin online.
We worked with our reflective reading partners and completed a ‘Blankety Blank’ activity which was an extract from Willy Wonka. This week we have also written letters and postcards to practise our skills within functional writing.
We have also enjoyed some learning through play, both inside and outside, and we particularly enjoyed playing outside in the sunshine yesterday with our friends!
We began a new topic in numeracy this week as we move onto multiplication. To help us to understand the concept of multiplication we created arrays so we had physical representation of what multiplication actually is. We used lots of resources to make our arrays – Numicon, stones, Lego, counters, to name a few. We also have a some tuff trays set up in the classroom to allow us to practise during our learning through play time. We revisited counting in 2s, 5s and 10s, counting both up and down. We will be practising the 3 and 4 times tables next week. If you would like to do some at home, Education City website would be good for this – www.educationcity.com
We made an array wall display, making the windows on buildings into arrays. We made sure our rows and columns were straight! They look really effective, good job everyone.
We continued with imaginative writing this week. As we enjoyed watching Mr Benn during 80s day, we wrote our own Mr Benn adventures. We chose what he would become and where he would go as he went through the fitting room door. There were lots of great ideas, he became and dog walker, a soldier, a driller on an oil rig, a scientist and a zoo keeper… to name a few! The children are really beginning to check their common words using our word wall display and the word mats they have on their tables, these have improved a lot recently which is great to see. Through imaginative writing our descriptions have become more detailed and a lot of us are using joining words to make our sentences more interesting. Some children are beginning to learn how to use speech marks too.
Our Reflective Reading task was a ‘Blankety Blank’ on a non-fiction text called ‘Wild Weather’ We read the book together and then read extracts taken from the book with words missing. We filled in the missing words and then suggested other words that would fit to help expand our vocabulary. Good collaborative work, reading aloud and discussing vocabulary really helped our learning.
In French we have been learning months of the year, we are really good at it now – ask us to see if we remember 🙂
Where to start with everything that has been going on in P7B over the last two weeks…
After showcasing their outstanding musical theatre talents in the FAME! performances, P7B have been settling back into their classroom routines (while also showing Miss Kennedy the Springfield ropes!) and showcasing a whole range of other talents.
Mysteries have been the name of the game in our Maths learning. In Number Talks, using clues to estimate, justify, challenge and defend answers have been key to solving the ‘Esti-Mysteries’. Meanwhile, multi-step word problems have caused a Maths Curse, with everything in our day becoming a potential Maths problem. Fear not though, P7B know exactly what strategies to use to approach these problems now, not only solving them but demonstrating their understanding by writing their own. They are well on their way to breaking the Maths Curse!
In Literacy, we have been investigating the structure, features and literary devices used to write theatre reviews.
Our week started with a very competitive ‘Blankety Blank’ Short Read. Our ‘Blankety Blank’ champions from this week even earned a Classroom Economy bonus for their efforts (more of that later). We have started to look at the Reading skills needed for a Long Read activity, with a focus on the Read and Understand and Explore Some More skills sections of the Comprehension Compass. In preparation for writing our own theatre critic reviews, we also started to experiment with ‘SPAGHETTI Sweeps’ to analyse texts, looking for features and literary devices to include in our own.
To test our understanding of persuasive literary devices (A.F.O.R.E.S.T), we watched this….
How many persuasive literary devices did you notice?
Our class novel ‘Shadow Jumper’ by J.M. Forster has been inspiration for other areas of our learning too. In Art, we discussed the element of form and used this to create models of the main character, Jack. Our poetry from last week, using the literary device of personification, was also inspired by the main character’s love of ‘shadow jumping’. We also spent some time researching and understanding (and experimenting with) the sport of Parkour.
In Science, we are preparing to submit our entries for the ‘If You Were An Engineer What Would You Do?’ competition. After identifying a problem that we thought could be or needed to be fixed, we explained our ideas using annotated diagrams.
In our Learning Through Play, we had a chance to test our logic, team work and perseverance skills!
And finally, a couple of new additions to P7B, the introduction of ‘First Chapter Friday’ to share and discuss new books that will be added to our class library. And, the first pay day from the Springfield Savers Bank as part of our Classroom Economy. Full employment, saving and spending starts next week!
Phew…..it’s a lot! Now time to relax and enjoy the weekend.
P7B and Miss Kennedy
Our week started off brilliantly with a visit from M.G.Leonard and Sam Sedgman. They told us how they wrote the book – right from the planning when they came up with the idea of a mystery adventure set on a train to how they researched information about trains and then eventually were ready to actually write the book. We were enthralled and some of us bought the book, so have already started to enjoy it. Mrs.Burton has bought the book so we will be reading it as a class very soon.
In Numeracy we have continued with fractions and some of us have made fraction walls so that we can workout equivalent fractions. We are getting good at calculating fractions of numbers and not just the easy ones.
This week we planned and wrote a newspaper report. Our subject was a Viking Raid. They were very good and it certainly appealed to some of us as we could actually write about the violence of some of the Vikings.
In hockey this week, we started to play mini games which we enjoyed. Our skills are really progressing well.
Our short read this week was finding the silly words which we always like to do and we answered questions on a text, using our deductive skills.
At NYCOS we focused on reinforcing the stave and ta rest and then the new pitch La was introduced.
So a busy week for everyone. Have a lovely weekend and keep well.
From P4B and Mrs.Burton
Following P5’s obstacle courses last week the class were organised into groups and created their own mazes with building bricks. Using these mazes their task was to code the Sphero’s through from start to finish. They did a great job and every group managed to complete the challenge! Next week we hope to complete the Chariot Challenge!
P5/6 have been loving their digital literacy and this week we focused on creating a Microsoft Team for our class. This is a super learning tool that we can use when completing homework tasks and working collaboratively in class.
In Numeracy this week we started learning about Fractions. We have explored the meaning of the numerator and denominator while beginning to identify equivalent fractions. The class will investigate this further next week.
We are continuing to learn about the Scottish Wars of Independence and this week we were learning about Robert the Bruce and his journey to becoming the King of Scotland.
While the P6’s were enjoying their after show treat the P5’s had fun trying to replicate some Celtic art. We discussed the intricate patterns that can be seen and how we could create our own. It was a challenge!
This week we started our ‘Relationships’ trail in P2. We will be learning about the tasks required to look after a baby, talking about how the type of food we need changes as we grow and exploring food chains. To begin our ‘Relationships’ focus, we looked at the tasks involved in looking after a baby. We thought about our own personal experiences and discussed if we had helped to look after a baby before and what we did to help. Afterwards, we learned about the tasks required when looking after a baby and we drew pictures of things a baby needs and things a baby doesn’t need.
In writing we created instructions on how to look after a baby! On Tuesday, we drew four different pictures of tasks involved in looking after a baby to help us to plan our writing. On Wednesday, we looked at creating a list of equipment needed and we learned how to use bullet points to list our ideas. Our challenge was to explain why each item was needed in our instructions. We created fantastic instructions which were clear and we used bullet points to list each item and step.
In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been learning to make money amounts using different coins. We had to tick the coins we needed to make different money amounts and we had to lay out and list the coins to make totals to 20p. Some of us also learned to make money amounts to £1. We played ‘Show Me the Money’ on Education City and ‘Toy Shop Money Game’ on Topmarks to revise our learning. On Thursday, we learned to calculate time durations in hours. Using digital clocks, we learned to find times one hour before with o’clock and half past times. In Number Talks, we have been using the strategies ‘Doubles’ and ‘Near Doubles’ to solve different number sentences.
This week we learned the ‘u-e’ sound. We made ‘u-e’ words on our magnetic boards and we used our blending skills to spot which words were real ‘u-e’ words and which words were nonsense words. Some of us were also revising our common words. We played a common words Snakes and Ladders game and we played Bingo to help us to identify our common words.
This week we have been continuing to explore non-fiction texts. We discussed the difference between fiction and non-fiction and we looked at the contents page, glossary and index. There were also different diagrams which helped us to find information. One of our non-fiction books was about the solar system so we used it alongside EaRL to name and locate each planet.
This week we have been continuing to use EaRL during play to create programs and to learn to correct errors/bugs. We have also been exploring simple electrical components. Some of us have also been busy creating images and models using different materials. There is always so much going on in P2B!
Thank you for reading our blog post. We hope that you have a happy and healthy weekend,
This week we went on a magic train ride to lots of imaginary lands! We drew pictures of what we could see out of our train window and then we wrote about our adventure. We did this independently so that Mrs Bell could see how we are getting on with sounding out words and writing in sentences. Mrs Bell was so impressed!
Here’s a link to the Magic Train Ride story:
In Numeracy and Maths we worked on finding the difference and giving change using subtraction to help us. For example, if I pay for an item that is 7p with a 10p coin, I can do a subtraction sum to find out the change: 10p-7p = 3p
Here are links to some games to practise giving change:
