Category: Whole School

What a busy week!  I suspect this may be the way of things for the next few weeks too as we begin our Christmas preparations.  We have begun production of items for our stall at the Christmas Fair.  We will be selling Reindeer lollipops and wooden christmas tree decorations.  We have also been working on our business skills – working out how much each item has cost to make and deciding on a good selling price to make a profit – but not too expensive that no one will buy them!

We have also entered Tesco ‘Design a Snowman’ competition – using the template given to us by Tesco, we have come up with some pretty funky designs.  Winners will be announced next week and even if none of us win anything I’m certain our designs will really brighten up the store – please keep an eye out for them in window.

In science with Mrs McVay we have been continuing to explore forces.  We learned about friction this week and got to use some great equipment with lots of different surfaces to see what works for fast movement and which materials will slow things down.  We have also been playing with these resources throughout the week as we learn best when we are given time to investigate and try out our own ideas and increase our understanding.

We had a go at a tricky problem solving task on Thursday.  Mr Zuckerman (Charlotte’s Web) had just been to market and he was counting his profits, he had to sort his coins into 3 bags, there were several different problems, but the one most of us looked at was:

Mr Zuckerman has 10 gold coins, he sorts them into three money bags.  The first bag has three fewer gold coins than the second bag.  The second bag has two more gold coins than the third bag.  The second bag has an odd number of coins inside.  How many coins are in each bag?  

How quickly can parents work this one out? Test them!

In addition to practising our numeracy skills, we were also looking at good ways to approach problem solving.  Usually Mrs Kennedy tells us how to solve maths problems but not this time! We used the RUDE method!  Read, Underline, Draw, Estimate.  Working on maths activities like this one was quite new to most of us and it is something we will be doing more regularly as it is important to practise the skills required then questions like these are not so scary and we know how to approach them.

As many of you will remember, Mrs Kennedy is a big fan of learning through play.  This is planned play with a specific set of learning outcomes.  It is so important to a child’s development as it is a great way to develop many of the skills that are likely to be required in the world of work that the children will go onto: creativity, complex problem solving, STEM skills, people skills and critical thinking to name a few.   This week we have been trying weaving and sewing.  Not only is it very good for fine motor development and creativity, it also requires patience, problem solving, as well as resilience and it is a bit of mindfulness too.  The children have been really engaged in this (far more than I actually thought they would be!) It hasn’t always worked first time but they have kept at it 🙂

We are looking forward to seeing you at the Christmas Fair next Friday, all profits from our stall can be spent by the class so we’re hoping for a successful day.

Have a good weekend, P3B and Mrs Kennedy

Following on from Miss Baillie’s assembly on kindness on Friday, the whole school have had an Anti-Bullying focus this week.

This has tied in very well with our book study too as we learn about the value of friendship through Charlotte and Wilber.

On Monday, we began to think about the qualities that make a good friend.  We thought about our best friends and why we like them; is it the way they behave or maybe the way they make us feel?  Is it the things we enjoy doing together that make us good friends?  Is it because we are very different but our differences complement each other?

We played a pairs game to begin our discussion.  The cards had pictures and sentences showing attributes of a good friend.  This was good fun and we had some good group discussion too.  Then we each wrote notes on the qualities that we look for in a friend.

On Tuesday, we used these notes to write ‘A Recipe for a Good Friend.’  The words we had on our list from Monday helped us to write them.  Mrs Kennedy had a lovely time reading the recipes, the children worked hard on them and each one had the perfect ingredients to make a good friendship.

We have also been celebrating our differences this week, we had a great discussion when thinking about what the world would be like if everyone was the same. We spent some time discussing what the consequences would be if everyone in the world was a fantastic builder but they couldn’t do anything else.  We would have no doctors, farmers, teachers, scientists, artists… We came to the conclusion that it just wouldn’t work, we need everyone’s different skills and qualities to make life interesting, much more fun and actually to allow us to survive!  Without talking to anyone else we wrote down what our personalities are like and our very favourite things to do.  We decorated handprints to celebrate all the things that are unique to us.   They really are very good and I can see all the children’s personalities reflected in their work.

I actually took a couple of photo’s of maths this week!  The children are continuing their addition work, improving mental maths methods of adding 2-digit numbers.  One of their favourite things to do is to be the teacher  and explain how to solve problems to the class.  It is really good for me too as I can observe how well they are picking up the skills I am teaching.

We had a great time at the benchball festival at Linlithgow Academy on Thursday.  It was good to meet children from every school in our cluster.  It was a very busy afternoon and we each played a lot of games.  The children showed excellent teamwork and put all of the skills we have been learning into practise.  Their behaviour was very good too, they showed all the Springfield values and were very good representatives of Springfield School.

I think we have earned some well-deserved rest this weekend.  Thanks for reading our post, P3B and Mrs Kennedy

It has been a very busy time in Primary 7, we apologies for the delay in posting our updates, but we will fill you in on what we have been doing over the last two weeks.

Literacy:  It was lovely last week to have some parents come along and to take part in our active spelling activities. During active spelling we play a range of spelling games, that helps us to consolidate our knowledge on spelling rules and tricky common words that we often spell incorrectly in our spelling. During active spelling we use our weekly spelling words and we play hangman games with our partners and we play scrabble to help us to extend and build on our vocabulary.  This week in active spelling we used our weekly spelling words to create a crossword puzzle, reinforcing how the words are spelt as well as testing our knowledge on the definition of the words.

A couple of weeks ago we had a lovely visit to the Poppy Factory, during literacy we consolidated our understanding of writing a recount, we used the features of recount writing and wrote about our trip to the Poppy Factory. In our recount we concentrated on our vocabulary, punctuation, the use of figurative writing, writing in past tense and first person, it was such an enjoyable visit that we all enjoyed writing about our experience and describing our emotions, sharing our opinion.

Over the last few weeks we have been reading the class novel, Holes. We are all getting really stuck into the story and with every chapter that we read we are getting more and more drawn into the story. Over the last two weeks we completed two pieces of writing which was inspired from the novel. We learnt about persuasive devices and how they can be used to persuade an audience to buy an invention that we had created. In our novel, Holes, the main character writes a letter to his mum. After discussions on different purposes and types of communication, it was very clear that letter writing was not the preferred form of communication. None the less, we stepped into the shoes of the main character, Stanley, and wrote a letter to our ‘mum’. We focused on the layout of an informal letter, the language that is used and rhetorical questions. Perhaps this will inspire more letter writing to friends and family in the future.

During guided reading we have been concentrating on punctuation. We have been identify the types of punctuation that is used in a text, why it has been used and how it can be used in our writing.

Numeracy: We have been very busy during numeracy, extending and consolidating our understanding of fractions. Over the last two weeks we have worked on identifying and simplifying fractions, we have been adding and subtracting fractions with the same and different denominator and this last week we have been multiplying fractions and calculating ratios. It has been a challenging two weeks, with a lot of different ‘rules’ and calculations that we have had to learn, but with a confident attitude and resilience we have been doing great. Please ask us to show you what we have learnt.

Enterprise: With only 3 weeks to go till the Christmas Fayre, we have been working hard on our enterprise projects. It has been challenging at times, but we have learnt the importance of patience, team work and accurate resource ordering and budgeting. Over the last two weeks, we worked with our chosen groups and decided on a product or service we would like to sell at the Christmas Fayre, we had a budget of £20 to buy all our resources. We needed to research products and their best prices, and together we needed to calculate how much we will be selling our product for, making sure that we will make a profit. We have been discussing adverting and the use of persuasive devices to help us to promote our product or service.

HWB: #hecanshecan… during health and wellbeing we have been discussing gender stereotyping and respect. We all designed a poster which will be entered into the West Lothian #hecanshecan competition. Through a lot of discussion it was clear that we all agreed that gender equality is important and that all genders require the same amount of respect, but we are also very aware that gender equality is still not happening all the time and that we need to raise awareness and show our respect to all.

PE: Over the last two weeks we have been practicing our athletics skills with Mrs. Reid. Last week Thursday these skills were put to the test at the Cluster Athletics Festival. Mrs. Matos and Mr. Logan were so proud of all the Primary 7 children that took part, it was a fantastic afternoon, where everyone who took part, showed kindness, confidence and resilience. Way to go Primary 7!!

Leadership: During leadership this week we discussed the importance of planning and organization. Mrs. Matos gave each leadership group their own folders and jotters, where we will be keeping a record of all our planning and activities that we do. It is also important that to be a great leader we need to evaluate our leadership skills and activities that we have been doing. We found this a very difficult task to do, but with support from Mrs. Matos and Mr. Logan as well as good communication with our team, we identified our strengths, things that have not gone well and things we would like to improve on.

1+2 French: French with Mrs. Gordon we learnt vocabulary to use when we want to say that something is sore. We would just like to thank Mrs. Gordon for taking the time to teach us in a fun and exciting way each week.

Last week EM took part in a 5k run with her mum. EM brought along her medal and some photos and shared her experience with us. It was her first 5k run so a massive well done to EM and mum too!!

P7b and Mrs. Matos