Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

January 19, 2018

Springfield in the Snow

This was the week the snow came! We couldn’t resist going out and having some fun together. We stacked, rolled, squashed and squeezed.

In Maths we started a new mini topic on Money. We were learning how to recognise and identify different coins. We were also adding coins up to 50p and £1. We linked this to our work on place value and could identify the tens and ones. We practised our skills by playing lots of Money games.

Miss Mudd set up a new Finger Gym activity this week. We had to use the coins to make up different totals. We then had to use the giant tweezers to put the coins in the right cake cases.

In Literacy we have been learning how to give feedback to our friends. We wrote a sentence then went round the circle and listened to the feedback given. We then had to write the sentence out again and make improvements. We enjoyed doing this because we could see our sentences improving every time!

On Monday Miss Baillie set us a challenge to research Polar Bears and create a fact file to give other people information. We watched videos, analysed pictures and shared our own knowledge to come up with some key facts.

This week we also started our block of Futsal. A big thank you to Neil for teaching us new skills. It was hard work!

The Isle of Struay role play area was finally open for business. We have loved playing in the Post Office and have been practising paying for items and giving change.

For Scottish week we learnt about the artist Steven Brown. We loved how he used bright colours and long wavy lines to create his pictures. We had a go too!

On Thursday we had a very special visit from Travelling by Tuba. We participated in a workshop and learnt to play music from around the world. We had to stay in time to the beat and experimented with different instruments.

At the end of each day Miss Mudd has set out our P2A learning log. We roll out the piece of wallpaper and write down all of the things we have learnt that day. It is important for us to be able to identify what we have learnt so we can reflect on it. As you can see, we have learnt a lot this week!

Miss Mudd and P2A x

January 19, 2018

Primary 3/4 Blog Week Beginning 19.1.18

Dear All

This week in literacy we did a book review on our reading books. We had to answer questions on the board and then write the answers in our literacy jotters .We did dictation. In dictation we did the PH sound. We did EA spelling. We had a sheet on EA words to do. We did handwriting and in handwriting we did ! ? – “ and s.

In french we did commands. The girls went to one side and the boys went to the other side and had to give each other commands to do e.g. Silence! and Levez-vous! (stand up!)

In numeracy we did the ball game doing our times tables and we went up to the 6 times table from the four times table. We had to look at what number it was at and what letter it was at. We also did grid references for maths in the morning.

In health and wellbeing we did Gaelic football in PE. Most people liked it. We did walk a mile. We had assembly. It was all good.

In learning across the curriculum we did music with Miss Bain and played instruments to Katie Bairdie song because it was Scottish. Travelling with Tuba came in to play Tubas. It was very loud and people tried to blow on it. They got loads of people to come up to make a band. NYCOS came in to practise rhymes with us and we learned what ‘pulse’ meant.

Hope you have a good weekend!

Typed by Mark, Cori, Sienna and Mairi

January 18, 2018

P7b Weekly Blog

Numeracy and Mathematics

We have been continuing with our work on angles this week, but our focus has moved to the naming and measuring of them. Mr. Logan is insisting that we use the mathematical language when referring to the ‘lines’ and ‘corners’ of an angle. The lines are arms, and the point where the two arms meet is called the vertex. When naming an angle we have learned that they would have 3 uppercase letters and the vertex would always form the middle letter for the name. On Wednesday we estimated the size of various angles before using a protractor to check the exact size. We tended to find that our estimations were quite accurate. Our final challenge was to hunt for angles of specific sizes around school. Sam and Charlie were the first to return to the classroom having completed this, well done boys!

Literacy and English

Our note taking and summarising skills continue to improve through practise, and we’ve certainly had lots of that this week! Our guided reading task this week was to summarise the key points and main events from our previous reading. We were able to do so; using bullet points to format our work and not writing in full sentences to keep our notes short and concise. On Thursday we had to apply these skills when Mr. Boiling and Mrs. Dallas visited as part of our STEM work with Mrs. Tulloch. As they presented to us and answered the higher order questions prepared in advance about engineering, we took notes to record the information shared.

Health and Wellbeing

In football, we further developed our dribbling skills and close control of the football when moving around the gym hall. At the end of each session we were given the opportunity to apply these skills in 2v2 scenarios. It was highlighted that small, light touches of the ball would allow our opponents less opportunity to win possession from us so we did our best to keep it close to both feet at all times. Next week our focus will move to passing with further consolidation of the skills we’ve worked hard on over the first two weeks of our football block. Our football team embarked on their league campaign on Monday, with 17 boys and girls from P7 playing in 5 fixtures at Xcite Linlithgow. Both teams were hugely successful, with one team managing to remain unbeaten and not concede a single goal! Well done Callum for keeping 5 clean sheets! The other team managed to win 3 of their games with some very impressive team play throughout. The attitude demonstrated, encouragement of each other and sense of fair play shown at all times was particularly pleasing to see. Well done to all involved! Go Team Springfield!

Expressive Arts

As part of our Lion King focus ahead of the school show, we were keen to create character sketches of some of the main characters and animals that will be seen on stage. We used images found online and YouTube tutorials to provide us with step-by-step instructions on how to accurately sketch our assigned character. Mrs. Gordon and Mrs. Matos complimented us on how impressive these all were and Ramsay has even been given the additional role of making headdresses and doing some costume design! Great job! Our rehearsals continued on Thursday and Friday where we have been working on preparing all aspects of the show. Only 7 weeks to go! On Thursday we were also lucky enough to be visited by the Travelling by Tuba music group. They took us on a trip round the world, exploring different instruments found in various countries. Some of these were hundreds of years old.

Have a relaxing weekend!

P7b and Mr. Logan

January 18, 2018

Travelling by Tuba and P2/3

Travelling by Tuba came to visit us today, it was a musical success!

In the morning we enjoyed watching Chris and Stewart perform, listening and responding to the music.

In the afternoon we took part in a workshop, where we got to try the instruments and play along to music. We even put on a wee show for the Primary 1-3 children at the end of the day. Miss Prince was very impressed by our sense of rhythm!

Love P2/3 and Miss Prince

January 16, 2018

Primary 6

We had a visit from Mr Hogg and Miss Saigle during science. They spoke to us about renewable energy sources and sustainability.

In maths we have explored rules of divisibility. For example if a number is even it can be divided by 2. Ask your child about the other rules we have explored.

In literacy we have begun to look at the story of Edward Tulane and will follow his journey throughout the term

Our IDL covered the changing states of water and the scientific language associated with this. Again, the children should be able to give you some of the language we discovered.

Yours

Primary 6B

January 14, 2018

Bonne annee et bon retour de vacances

Happy New Year and welcome back from holidays ! It was lovely to get back to school and find out all about our holidays and resolutions.

Target Setting

In Literacy and Numeracy we reviewed our targets from last term, evaluating ourselves against them and then using this information to create new targets for this term. We also created reflection triangles where we were able to think about what we had learned last term, what we had improved at and what had challenged us. As a class we shared some of these targets and successes.

New Years Resolutions

Also along the same thread of review and new beginnings, in health and wellbeing we created our resolution and broke it down into little steps. We will monitor our progress of these resolutions/goals and once we achieve a mini step we will put it on the wall to chart our progress towards the final goal. The children could choose anything they wanted, and many chose health and fitness options which was very encouraging.

Numeracy

In Numeracy as we draw our work on fractions, decimals and percentages to a close, we focused on converting between the different measures. In our problem solving Mrs Gordon gave us a real-life budgeting project, where in teams of 3/4 we were given a scenario about a family of 4 planning a once in a lifetime trip to Sydney. We had to find out about flight costs, accommodation, car hire, passport costs etc This was part of our continued work on “skills for learning, life and work” and it allowed the children to use lots of different skills whilst completing a fun activity.

Literacy

In literacy we continue our focus on our class novel “Wonder” and began our guided reading groups again for this sessions. Our focus for writing this term will be note taking, questioning, summarising and report writing. Mrs Gordon gave us a quick talk about her career and we had to take notes, she spoke very quickly to test us! This was to prepare us for taking notes next week when we have our 2 engineers coming into to talk to us about their careers as part of our STEM project. We also worked on effective questioning and have created high level questions for our visitors.

IDL – Lion King

In IDL we started our “Lion King” focus with rehearsals for all cast members, song practice, acting/drama and costume design. First efforts on scenes 1-7 were fantastic, and we are all very excited about this project.

Mrs Gordon and P7a

January 14, 2018

P7b Weekly Blog

Numeracy and Mathematics

This week we started learning about angles and coordinates. We were reminded that an angle is when one line rotates onto another line and is measured in degrees rather than centimetres. The five main types of angle we consolidated our learning of were acute, right, obtuse and reflex angles as well as straights lines. We came up with definitions of how to identify each of these angles, for example, a straight line has to be exactly 180° otherwise it is not a straight line. After spending some time identifying angles in class we moved outside the classroom in small groups using our clipboard to find examples around the school building. We noticed that when you find an example of an acute angle, you have also found a reflex angle. Next week we will be looking for examples around the playground and outdoor areas before discussing uses of angles in the wider natural and built environment. For homework, we consolidated our learning of algebra from before the Christmas holidays by creating our own algebraic problems for a peer to solve. Some of these look incredibly tricky!

Literacy and English

In spelling, we are continuing to extend our learning of unfamiliar spelling patterns and rules, and applying this learning in our written work. We recapped on where we are with our groups novels by summarising the stories so far. In guided reading we have been developing a range of reading skills through our varied independent tasks. Two of our key focuses in writing this term will be note taking and report writing. We are becoming increasingly competent in taking concise notes before using these for other purposes. When engineers, including Hannah’s Dad, visit us next Thursday as part of our STEM work with Mrs. Tulloch, we will be taking notes as they speak and using these to write a follow up report about their visit. We will also be posing them with some pre-prepared higher order questions which we discussed last week with Mrs. Doran. Over the coming weeks we will be learning about creative Scots, particularly famous Scottish musicians from 1970 to the current day. During this time we will be split into groups and provided with the opportunity to plan, prepare and deliver a series of lessons on a musician, band, genre or era of music of our choice. We understand that presenting to an audience is an important life skill and we are looking forward to developing our skills in this area.

Health and Wellbeing

In P.E this week we began a block of football. As many of us have played football before, we spent a brief period of time recapping on the basics before practising our dribbling. It is important when dribbling that we take small, light touches of the football and keep it close to our feet at all times. We were encouraged to use both our feet and have a look around every 2/3 touches in order to move into free spaces. Moving on from this, we used varied surfaces of both our left and right foot (inside, outside, sole, laces) to manipulate the football. Next week will continue our focus on dribbling and close control of the football before applying these skills in small sided games. For homework this week we have been taking selfies doing the actions for our new school values of being kind, respectful, resilient, confident and included. We emailed these to Mr. Logan using Glow and now have them displayed in class on our Health and Wellbeing wall. Come in and have a look!

Coming Up…

Monday 15th January – Football league meeting, Xcite Linlithgow, 4.00 – 5.30pm
Thursday 18th Janaury – Interviewing engineers as part of STEM project, 9.00am
Monday 22nd January – Netball league meeting, school hall, 4.00 – 5.30pm
Thursday 25th January – Scots Family Quiz, 6.00 – 9.30pm
Tuesday 30th January, Wednesday 31st January, Thursday 1st February – Lion King school show tickets on sale outside P7b, 3.15 – 3.45pm
Tuesday 6th February – Parent Council meeting, library, 7.00 – 8.00pm
Thursday 8th February – Linlithgow Academy tour, parent help required, 9.30 – 11.00am
Monday 12th February, Tuesday 13th February – HOLIDAY
Have a fantastic weekend!

P7b and Mr. Logan

January 14, 2018

Primary 2B

Cosmic Yoga Wow words in Phonics

Happy New Year to everyone and hope that you all had a good Christmas.

We’ve settled back in quickly although I wouldn’t say quietly!!

This week we’ve been talking about our school values and have been concentrating on kindness. Each week I plan to work with the children on one of them. Your children should be able to tell you what each one is. We’ve talked about what kind acts we could do this year, both in and out of school.

We have completed our block on subtraction and will be moving onto money.

Our Scottish focus is on famous Scottish artists, namely Jolomo and Steven Brown. This week we’ve looked at Jolomo and the chidren have done some brilliant paintings.

Miss.Baillie read the children a story called “The Polar Bear Son” and they have been discussing and retelling the story.

We did Cosmic Yoga with P2A and really enjoyed it.

January 12, 2018January 27, 2018

Happy New Year from P1B

Happy New Year everyone! We’re back from our holidays raring to go.

We have a fantastic new board at the entrance to the school showing Springfield School Vision and Values. We have been learning about our key values – we are ‘resilient, respectful, kind, confident and included.’ To help us to understand what these words mean we have been learning songs and actions. Here we are doing the actions:

We are resilient

We are respectful

We are kind

We are confident

We are included

In phonics we learned the sounds ‘qu’ and ‘x’ These sound a lot like other sounds (s and c) and are tricky to hear in words but we were trying really hard to tell the differnce. We liked making treasure maps with ‘x’ marks the spot and drawing x-rays.

In maths we were so busy Mrs Kennedy forgot to take any photos! We have been doing really hard maths, as hard as P7, as we tried equations. We sometimes call them ‘missing number sums’ as this is easier to say. We had to recall our addition facts for 3, 4, and 5 to fill in the missing numbers. Next week we will look at missing number sums for addition to 6, 7, and 8.

Mrs Kennedy brought in lots of empty boxes she has collected over the holidays (mainly chocolate boxes!) and we have been very using them in our creative area, some great designs and excellent teamwork.

M, R and C built a fantastic castle together.

Have a good weekend everyone.

From P1B and Mrs Kennedy

January 12, 2018

Values and Missing Number Equations! (P1A)

Happy New Year and welcome back to our P1A blog! We have had a busy first week back at school.

This week our two new sounds were ‘qu’ and ‘x’ and our common words were ‘want’, ‘saw’ and ‘no’. We drew ‘qu’ pictures and made ‘qu’ words on graffiti walls, practised writing ‘qu’ words on our whiteboards, made ‘qu’ with play dough and played ‘Queen’s Quiz’ on Education City. When we were learning the ‘x’ sound, we practised writing ‘x’ with rainbow writing, played ‘Roll and Read’ and drew our own ‘x’ pictures. We also wrote ‘qu’ and ‘x’ words and sentences in our jotters. To learn our common words, we also played a pairs game on the smartboard, practised writing our common words on our whiteboards and played ‘Beat The Teacher’.

When Miss Baillie and Mr Wells came into our classroom this week they couldn’t believe that we were learning to solve missing number equations in maths and numeracy! We have been working really hard to find the missing number in our addition sums. We played Hexabonds on the smartboard, found the missing numbers on challenge cards and revised our number bonds for 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

This term our gym day will be on a Thursday. On Thursday afternoon, we went to the Community Wing hall to practise our motor skills. We were jumping, hopping, skipping, balancing, kicking, throwing and catching. We had to listen carefully to instructions, use the equipment correctly, share with others and take turns.

This week we have been talking about our school values. We decided to make a Values display in our classroom and took photographs of us doing the action for each value. Our school values are resilient, respectful, kind, confident and included. Can you guess which is which?

Thank you for reading our blog post. We hope that you have a lovely weekend.

P1A and Miss Harrison 🙂