P5 Weekly Blog

Literacy and English

We are continuing to read War Horse with an emphasis on analysing plot, character and setting. This week we built up a word bank of adjectives that could be used to describe the main character, Joey. We highlighted which 4 best described him before scanning the text for evidence of where he has demonstrated this particular skill or quality. For example, Joey demonstrated empathy when he felt the pain of Topthorn’s illness and nursed his wounds.

Whilst reading chapters 14 and 15, we summarised the main ideas and events by note taking. We discussed the features of good note taking and how we can do so more effectively. This included using bullet points, not writing in full sentences and drawing out the key information.

In writing, we wrote instructions of how to create a volcanic eruption. This style of writing required us to apply various features such as sub-headings, a numbered list and sequencing openers and connectives (e.g. firstly, next, afterwards, finally). Next week we will carry out our volcanic eruption experiments and write a scientific report based on our findings.

Numeracy and Mathematics

We have been continuing to use written methods for multiplication and will shortly be introduced to the inverse operation of division. This week we consolidated our learning of our 6, 7, 8 and 9 times tables before multiplying 4-digit numbers by a single-digit and multiplying 2-digit numbers by smaller 2-digit numbers. Here’s a reminder of the method we’ve been using…

Learning Across the Curriculum

Social Enterprise – This week we will be meeting up with our group’s to prepare a Dragon’s Den style pitch for Mr Logan. In this pitch we will set out who our group are, what cause we want to raise money for, why it’s important to us and how we intend to go about raising the money. There have been lots of exciting suggestions so far. Keep an eye out for information on the Christmas Hampers we will be organising for the residents of St Michael’s Day Care Centre and what we’ll be doing at this year’s Christmas Fayre.

P.E – In P.E we have been introduced to the basic rules and principles of handball. This is going to be our focus in P.E up until January as we prepare for our Linlithgow cluster schools handball festival. We watched this video to introduce us to the rules of the game…

Art and Design – We have been using layers and textures of paper this week to create Remembrance Day artwork and reading the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ by John McCrae. These will be displayed in class, come and have a look at them next week and ask us what the poppy symbolises.

Our News and Achievements

We’ve been super busy over the October break, here’s what we’ve been up to:

Jude has been on his travels to Castle Douglas and brought in various types of stone to show us including rainbow quartz.
Freya shared her news about her trip to Oban over the holidays.
Sofia told us of her trip to LEGO Land and showed us the brick she created.
Eighlin went to visit Eilean Donan castle which is what she was named after.
Nairn had a tour at Manchester United’s stadium and brought some items to show us.
Ava continues to excel in gymnastics and has a number of upcoming national competitions.
Lucy told us about her visit to a lighthouse and seeing her Grandparents.
Finlay B and Jack G attended the Hearts v Rangers match which, luckily for them both, was a draw.
Oliver travelled down south to Northumberland and Manchester over the holidays.
Eva told us all about her sister’s birthday and what they got up to.
Finlay M was also in Northumberland over October for his Gran’s 70th birthday.
Mairi flew to Copenhagen and visited a number of attractions whilst there including the original LEGO shop.
Megan spoke about her segway tour and her trip to watch Scotland beat San Marino 6-0.

Coming Up

10.19 – Rugby taster session (1), sports gear to be worn to school
11.19 – Homework grids for Term 2 to be sent home, due for 13.12.19
11.19 – Rugby taster session (2), sports gear to be worn to school
11.19 – Golf session (1) with Stephen Gallagher Foundation at Kingsfield
11.19 – Open Morning (Number Talks) at 09.00
11.19 – Remembrance Day Assembly
11.19 – Rugby taster session (3), sports gear to be worn to school
11.19 – Golf session (2) with Stephen Gallagher Foundation at Kingsfield
11.19 – Rugby taster session (4), sports gear to be worn to school
11.19 – Golf session (3) with Stephen Gallagher Foundation at Kingsfield
11.19 – Learning Showcase event at 14.00 – 15.00
11.19 – Golf session (4) with Stephen Gallagher Foundation at Kingsfield
12.19 – Christmas Fayre event at 09.30 – 12.00
12.19 – Christmas Church Service at St Michael’s
12.19 – Christmas Carol singalong event
12.19 – 6.1.20 – Christmas Holidays

Have a great weekend everyone!

P5 and Mr Logan

October 24, 2019October 24, 2019

Days of the week, more/less and Castles in P1B

Welcome back everyone, we hope you had a lovely October break!

We got straight back to it this week and learned two new sounds – d and o. Letter formation:

d – around the dinosaur’s bottom, up his neck, down to his feet (it also helps to remind them it starts like an a!)

o – all around the orange (remember to start at the top)

In Numeracy we learned about ‘more’ and ‘less’. We looked at two groups and identified which group had more/less. Here’s an online game to practise:

http://www.ictgames.com/mucky.html

We then challenged ourselves to find out one more and one less than a given number, eg, what is one more than 8? What is one less than 5? Some of us found this quite tricky but using a number line and concrete materials helped.

On Wednesday we began learning about Time – days of the week. We discussed what we usually do on each day of the week. We then looked at the starting sound of each of the words, this helped us to read the days of the week and put them in the correct order:

This song helped us to remember the order:

In IDL we continued with our Fairyland topic and designed castles for Fairyland. Lots of fantastic ideas, including a floating castle!

Thank you for all the signs of autumn collected over the holiday, we are enjoying exploring them. We had lots of fun outside this week in the autumn sunshine:

We were very impressed by DK who designed this tower in the block play area, we think he will be an architect one day!

Check out LR’s super homework – great effort!

Next week we will begin our book study focus, we will be focusing on books and stories about hedgehogs. If you have any at home that you wouldn’t mind us borrowing that would be fab! Any hedgehog experts out there, we’d love to hear from you 🙂

Have a great weekend,

Love P1b and Mrs Bell x

October 13, 2019

P4A Blog Week Ending 11.10.19

October 12, 2019

Powerpoints in P4B

Another hectic week in P4B. We have been finishing our powerpoints on Comparisons of Indian/Scottish life and then presenting them. We all spoke very clearly and did some very good presentations. Some of us need to add more detail and that needs remembering for next time. Hope to include some photos of some of us doing our presentations.

We have continued with diary writing this week. We pretended we were Jonah from our class novel – “Lucky Button” and wrote some brilliant descriptions of our day. Well done P4B and we are getting to grips with doing Peer, Self and Teacher assessments. We have worked on a comprehension exercise, answering questions on information about India and revised the punctuation we have covered this term. Just need to see regular evidence of this now!

In Numeracy we have continued with addition and adding doubles and near doubles. Also we have been describing the properties of 3D shapes and are using straws and flat shapes to construct these.

So the end of a busy term. Enjoy your holidays and look forward to seeing you on 22/10/19.

With love from P4B and Mrs.Burton
Sorry no photos.

October 11, 2019

Revision, hot chocolate and harvest

We had a busy week in P1 doing lots of revision in numeracy and literacy. In literacy we focused on being able to recall our sounds and then use them to make and write cvc words (consonant, vowel, consonant) like pat, sit, men etc Mrs Gordon was very impressed with how well we are blending our sounds together to read and write words. Here we are practising…

In numeracy we did lots of activities within 10 to ensure we are confident in ordering, missing numbers, dot patterns and ten frames. In shape we continued with 3D shape recognition and played a game of bingo with real life 3D shapes. It was really fun trying to recognise them.

We had a lovely harvest assembly with Mrs Hocknall on Wednesday and loved singing the songs especially Big Red Combine Harvester.

Today was really exciting as we got to have a BEAR event… Be Excited About Reading! We loved bringing in teddies, books and blankets and reading stories whilst having hot chocolate, yummy!

Happy holidays to all, from Mrs Gordon and P1a x

October 11, 2019

P3B Week commencing 7th October 2019

This week in our topic about Hawaii we have been looking at where the islands are located using a map of the world. We discovered that Hawaii is made up of over 100 islands but it is best known for its main eight. They are called Kahoolawe, Kauai, Molokai, Lanai, Niihau, Oahu and Hawaii also known as “big island”. The capital city is called Honolulu and it is situated on Oahu Island which is the most popular with visitors. We then worked with our learning partners to research the weather and made weather maps using the weather symbols. We then presented the weather report after the Hawaiian News on the TV. We had lots of fun role playing as weather reporters and discovering that the weather is very different from Scotland.

In PE we divided ourselves into four teams and played Bench ball on the full sized court. The winning teams then challenged each other in the final. We are getting much better at moving and passing the ball around the court.

In maths we have been continuing with our addition by adding a two digit number to a single digit. Some of our questions were written as word problems so we had to read the questions very carefully to work out the sums. We are getting much better at using our new square papered jotters to correctly lay out our work. On Wednesday we also completed our work on symmetry. After the October break we will be moving onto Data Handling and looking at tally marks, pictographs and bar charts.

In writing this week we looked at creating character profiles. We chose to create a profile all about Percy the Park Keeper. We learned how to describe what he looked like, his personality and also wrote a little bit about his life so far in the stories. We are continuing to work on presentation, writing neatly and trying to improve our spelling and punctuation.

Today we took part in a “BEAR” event – “Be Excited About Reading”. We all brought our favourite books into school together with our teddies and a cuddly blanket. We discussed and shared our favourite books in class over a nice cup of hot chocolate and marshmallows. After the holiday we will be start to become more “reflective readers” by introducing comprehension activities to further develop our reading skills.

We are all now looking forward to having a nice break as we have been working very hard at school. The time has just flown past!

Have a lovely time over the holidays and we will all meet up again on Tuesday 22^nd October ready to start Term 2.

Best wishes,

Mr Ritchie and the Tiggerrific P3B’s.

October 11, 2019October 11, 2019

Hawaii and Hot Chocolate in P3A

I actually took some photographs of maths this week! We are getting really good at using the text books and writing our sums neatly in our jotters. We are continuing with addition, looking at what happens to the 10s number when adding a 2 digit number to a 1 digit number e.g. 4 + 3 = 7, 14 +3 = 17, 34 + 3 = 37. Some children were also doing some addition word problems.

In outer maths on Thursday we were organising data using tally marks and reading the information. We did a group task and then carried out our own survey’s on our favourite sports – recording the answers in tally marks. We then used our data to answer questions about it, e.g, which was the most popular sport? How many more people liked football than tennis? We enjoyed doing a survey and we’ll be doing more data handling after the October break.

As we continue our study of Hawaii, we have been learning the names of the islands. We also compared the weather in Hawaii this week to the weather in Scotland. We noticed that the temperatures in Hawaii are much higher than scotland and the UV is higher too, however, Hawaii still gets a lot of rain and thunderstorms. We made our own weather maps and presented a Hawaiian weather report to the class. We all worked really hard on our maps, writing the names of the islands, temperatures and weather symbols. We also all showed a lot of confidence when presenting in front of the class.

We have been learning about Hawaiian Tikis, these are found in many places in Hawaii, including wooden masks hung on walls and even on jewellery. Each mask has a different facial expression and has a different purpose. A Tiki mask in a home might be thought to protect people from danger, while another mask might bring good luck. We had great fun making scary masks to ward off danger or nicer expressions for good luck.

On Friday we had our ‘Be Excited About Reading’ event. We had a great time reading our books and sharing them with our friends. The hot chocolate and marshmallows were tasty too! After the holiday we will begin to increase our reading skills further as we become ‘reflective readers’ through lessons targeting reading comprehension.

What a quick first term! P3A have worked extremely hard and always give 100%, it is lovely to be teaching such enthusiastic and eager to learn children 🙂

Have a lovely break, see you on 22nd October.

P3A and Mrs Kennedy

October 11, 2019

BEAR (Be Excited About Reading) in P1B

A busy final week of the term in P1B. We have been revising our sounds, counting and ordering numbers to 10, making a beanstalk for Jack (thank you to those who sent green material in for this!) and learning all about Harvest time.

We had to best end of term treat ever today. We loved snuggling up under our blankets, sharing our favourite books with our friends and drinking yummy hot chocolate!

If you go on any autumnal walks over the holidays please can you have a look out for and collect any signs of autumn (conkers, autumn leaves, etc) for our tuff tray. We will be learning about autumn in our first week back. Thank you 🙂

Have a lovely, relaxing holiday!

Love P1B and Mrs Bell x

October 11, 2019

P7b

We’ve had another productive week in P7.

We consolidated all our learning in maths and numeracy by planning a Party for Zelda (fictional character). We used our budgeting skills as well as our knowledge of area and perimeter.

Discussing the harmful effects of smoking to the human body

We decided to enter the competition for essay writing being run by the Rotary Club of Linlithgow Grange. We individually wrote what the word ‘connections’ mean to us

We created PowerPoint Presentations about our Brazil topic and we found information about the climatic conditions differences/ similarities between Brazil and Scotland.

Have a lovely break everyone!

October 11, 2019

Primary 5/6 week ending 11.10.19

This week we have been investigating hydro power in science. We made a water wheel turn and it generated enough power to light an Led bulb. We are using a solar panel after the holidays and looking at how Scotland is meeting its targets for renewable energy.

Primary 6 were finding out about polio as they are going to be running Rotakids and will be organising a dress down day fpr purple4polio.

Primary 5 have been working in their groups for their social enterprise work. They have been deciding on the causes and events they want to carry out.

We completed our 3d shape work and will be looking at 2d shape next term.

We painted pictures of animals that live in and around the Ama

by Daniel and Finlay