Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

September 13, 2019

Lots of Questions in P3A

We flew to Honolulu on Monday! When we arrived at P3A we had to check in our luggage, then we were all given boarding passes which were checked before we boarded our flight. We listened to the onboard safety instructions and took off on our journey.

Mrs Kennedy had a suitcase filled with pictures and items to stimulate discussion on what we would like to learn about Hawaii. We all wrote three questions and our lessons will be planned to answer these as we explore the topic.

Some P7s came to teach us maths on Monday. They had planned some place value activities for us. They were good teachers and we enjoyed having them in our class.

In literacy this week, we were practising our questioning skills. We listened to and watched a story on the Oxford Owl website. The story was called Paris Adventure. After the story we worked in groups to come up with questions beginning with the words – who, what, where, when, why and how to check if our friends had been listening carefully. We came up with really interesting questions and they they were mostly answered correctly 🙂

The Oxford Owl website is free and the ‘e books’ section has some of our reading books. You can also search for books at the same level as the children are reading in class.

Some busy Play leaders this week. P1 had a lot of fun.

The school is taking part in the Aldi sticker challenge and P3A have been asked to collect the stickers for the whole school! We need to collect 300 to get some sports kit and to be entered into a competition to win £20,000 for the school. Please send in any stickers you get.

In PE, we begun to play full games of benchball – it was very fast and noisy and we were really good. Next time we will work on looking for spaces so our teammates can pass to us easily.

In art we created new front covers for James and the Giant peach using collage. They are all quite different and there are lots of super designs.

After that busy week, we are ready for a long weekend. Have fun 🙂

P3A and Mrs Kennedy

September 13, 2019September 13, 2019

P2A

It has been another busy week in P2A where we have worked hard and been resilient when facing new concepts in Maths.

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been learning about numbers to 100. We have looked at what the words ‘before’, ‘after’, ‘less’ and ‘more than’ mean. Using this knowledge and by practising our counting (forwards and backwards) we have been able to complete problems which use these words. We especially enjoyed using the ‘Splat Square’ as a class on the board to help us. It makes a funny noise when you press a number! We have also been helping each other out when some of us have found a question challenging. Miss Muir was really pleased to see this and the resilience we have had to overcome these challenges.

In Literacy we have been learning the digraphs ‘nk’, ‘ng’, ‘ou’ and ‘ow’. We have used the magnetic board on the Promethean board as a class for sounding out words.

We read the Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch and loved that the lunch was put on a zip line to the lighthouse for Mr Grinling. Although, the seagulls kept eating his sandwiches so we thought of ingredients to put in a sandwich to keep the pesky seagulls away. We thought of mud, sand and slime just to name a few! We then wrote instructions of how to make our sandwiches.

During story and milk we read a story called ‘One Magical Day’. We enjoyed hearing about all the different animals on the farm and what they did when they woke up in the morning to when they fell asleep. Some of our favourite animals were in the book! We changed the tuff tray with farm animals who were in the story. We liked playing with them, pretending we were at a farm.

In R.M.E this week with Mrs Bergarnie we learned about the Hindu Festival of Raksha Bandan. This is a special day that is celebrated by lots of children, especially by brothers and sisters. We made cards and bracelets to give to our brothers and sisters. We enjoyed drawing and colouring in our cards and making the bracelets with bells.

We also met our P6 Pals on Thursday afternoon where we played games outside in the playground. We were very happy that it didn’t rain and stayed dry for us!

Thank you for reading our post and we hope you have a lovely September weekend.

September 13, 2019

The Great P1a Bake Off

We had a lot of fun in P1 this week. Inspired by her love of the Great British Bake Off Mrs Gordon thought that P1 might enjoy their own cake design competition. Our Cake Week however was not of the edible variety….we used washing up sponges, shaving foam and food colouring icing, rice and sequin sprinkles to make our creations. What fun we had…Mrs Gordon was very impressed with how carefully we completed our task. Mrs Hocknall was the judge and pronounced the top 3 as follows : Rose, Marisa and Nathan.

Our new sounds for this week were i for igloo and s for snake. We can now make and write a variety of words like sat, pat, ant, sit, pan etc Have a look at our wonderful letter formation.

In numeracy we looked at the numbers 6 and 7 which were quite tricky to write, and we revised our 2D shapes and drew our own shapes.

Happy long weekend, Mrs Gordon and P1a.

September 13, 2019

P7b

This week our P7b class demonstrated confidence in tackling learning experiences offered to us.

For Numeracy and Maths, we learnt to calculate the area of right angle triangles and composite shapes. Then we revised on our multiplication and division strategies. We also practiced finding and simplifying equivalent fractions.

For Literacy, we read a poem. We used our inference skills in order to comprehend what the read. We researched the importance of the Amazon rainforest to the rest of the world. Using our netbooks, we searched for the causes and effects of deforestation. Then we wrote our persuasive essay on Brazil’s deforestation problem.

For Modern Languages, we counted from 1 to 20. We played a game of bingo using French words too.

For HWB, we looked at how drug misuse and we learned how they affect the human body.

Have a great weekend everyone!

September 13, 2019

Talkative P7a

On Monday we taught our first classes as part of our Leadership roles. Sports leaders taught P4, Literacy Leaders taught P5/6 (and got 2 stars and a wish feedback!), Digital Leaders taught P2, Numeracy leaders taught P3, Buddy Leaders worked with P1 and the Newspaper Leaders started interviewing people and some continued writing the paper. 2 of us also had our first visit the the Linlithgow Day Care Centre.

We undertook research on the impact the fires are having on Brazil and the Amazon Rainforest, we then used this information to write persuasive arguments about deforestation.

In Science we were sorting living things into vertebrates and invertebrates and looking at the five kingdoms.

We had a workshop on the mosiac project, this sounds interesting and we need to start gathering old or broken tiles.

In PE we have been focusing on our throwing skills in Dodgeball- we have found it easier to play when we have smaller teams, listen to each other and actually picking up the balls!

On Thursday we had our first French session with Mrs Gordon, she told Mrs Newton (who was with the P1’s, so small compared to us) that we were amazing 🙂

Assembly this week focused on Responsibility- this is when you show a good example to someone else. We then had some Buddy time outside, this was a lovely way to end the week.

Don’t forget that next week is a short one as we are off on Monday and Tuesday.

Deposits for camp need to be paid by the 30th September (thanks to everyone who has already paid 🙂 ).

Have lovely weekend, the sun is supposed to shine!

P7a and Mrs Newton

September 13, 2019September 17, 2019

P5 Weekly Blog

I can’t believe we’ve reached the September weekend already! Time flies in P5, here’s what we’ve been up to this week and a look ahead to next…

Numeracy and Mathematics

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been applying our learning of place value when using written methods of addition. Firstly, we ensured that our 3-digit numbers’ columns were lined up correctly and that we had noted which operation was being used with an addition sign (+). We reminded ourselves that when we have 10 or more in one column we have to ‘bridge’, ‘carry’ or ‘regroup’ by passing our tens to the left. When reading questions, we realised that a lot of mathematical words and phrases for addition mean the same thing; both, altogether, how many, find the total, plus, combine, increase, find the sum of and join. Next week, we will be furthering our knowledge of written methods when we look at the inverse operation of addition, subtraction.

We’ve also been doing some Number Talks this week to improve our mental agility. Mr Logan has been calling us the ‘Mathletes’ and asking us to verbalise varied strategies used to tackle addition problems. For example, when posed with ’20 x 25′ we were able to find the solution in a number of ways. We decided that the most efficient method was to multiply 25 by 10 then double our answer.

Literacy and English

Whether it’s an ocean quest with Magnus Fin, seeing the world through August’s perspective or studying Sputnik’s Guide to Life on Earth, we’ve been getting excited about reading this week in P5!

Mr Logan has been springing reading time on us with the use of some acronyms and images, e.g. ROBOTS – read one book off the shelf, BEAR – be excited about reading. We’ve enjoyed dropping everything and having some quiet time to immerse ourselves in a text that we really enjoy. It doesn’t matter what this is, it could be an atlas, a newspaper, a fictional story or comic! Whatever the text is, it’s important that we want to read it and get excited before turning each page. We’ll be studying a range of texts this year and looking to develop our reading skills and strategies to better understand them.

In writing this week, we’ve been finding out about Japanese poems called haikus. Haikus are usually written about an aspect of nature, e.g. the seasons or a particular animal, and express different feelings and emotions associated with these themes. The structure of a haiku is important; there must be 3 lines and a total of 17 syllables. The first line should have 5 syllables, the second 7 syllables and the third 5 syllables. There is no need to use rhyming but some of us chose to try this with the final word of the first and third lines. We’ve been word processing these and adding some relevant images. You’ll be able to see them on our Literacy wall, come and have a read!

Learning Across the Curriculum

Our focus in P.E this week has been control and maintaining possession of the basketball. We worked on the height at which we bounce the ball and using our body position to shield the ball from opponents. After some skill practises we tried to apply our learning in small-sided games.

We’ve been researching Japanese landmarks this week and taking clear and concise notes on these using bullet points. We’ve travelled from Mount Fuji to Kinkaka-Ji and on to Nara Park and Hiroshima Peace Park. In groups, we began creating informative posters which we will present to the rest of the class next week.

Mr Logan met with Claire Fraser from the Social Enterprise Academy this week about a project that P5 will be starting in October. Stay tuned for more information on what P5 will be doing to raise money for a worthy cause in the local community!

Achievements

Sarah and Olivia – Well done for your solo and partnered successes in gymnastics!
Lucy – Fantastic achievement completing the 10 mile Pedal for Scotland cycling event!
Finlay B – Good job on starting football with Hibs! Keep training hard!
Cori – Great work in getting two 2nd place finishes at your swimming gala!
Mairi D – Super effort cycling 30km at the weekend! What a distance!
Sam – Second place at Inchcoonan’s cross country horse event. Fantastic!

Super proud of all my P5 superstars! Keep bringing in any of your recent achievements to share with us!

Coming Up

16.9.19 – Holiday
17.9.19 – Holiday
18.9.19 – Liaise with Leadership 4-5pm (P3 classroom)
18.9.19 – Parent Council AGM 7-8pm (library)
25.9.19 – Monitoring and Tracking of Wellbeing 6-7pm (hall)
27.9.19 – European Day of Languages
30.9.19 – Futsal with WLYFF begins for P5
2.3.19 – Parents Evening 4.30-7.30pm
3.3.19 – Parents Evening 3.30-6.30pm

Have a relaxing and restful long weekend!

P5 and Mr Logan

September 13, 2019

Primary 6 – w/e 13th September 2019

This week we have explored compass directions and degree turns in maths. We finished our week, putting our skills into practise with EARL, a floor robot. The pictures show us working on this.

We have put our river topic on hold for a couple of weeks, to focus on our assembly. We’ve researched mythical creatures, written our own assembly script and created factfiles about our mythical creatures.

In music, we have been creating our own song for assembly. We are looking forward to sharing this with you next Friday.

In PE, we have been practising our shooting and passing skills with basketballs.

We had a talk from Burgh Beautiful about an opportunity to help create a mosaic for Linlithgow.

Have a great holiday weekend!!

Primary 6 and Mrs Kerr

September 13, 2019

The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch (P2B)

This week we started our Geography trail, ‘From Front Door to Seashore’. Miss Harrison read us a story called ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch’ and we talked about what we would like to learn about the seashore. During play this week, some of us have made our own lighthouse pictures and pictures of the story and we have also changed our tuff tray into a rock pool!

In writing this week, we learned to write instructions. We made our own instructions for disgusting sandwiches to scare off the seagulls in The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch. First, we used bullet points to list our ingredients. Miss Harrison felt a bit ill as we had sandwiches containing eyeballs, slime, slugs, hot chilli sauce and nails! On Wednesday, we used our list of ingredients to write our instructions. We used numbers to order our steps and bossy verbs such as ‘spread’, ‘add’, ‘put’ and ‘gather’. Miss Harrison was very impressed with our instructions.

As well as writing this week, some of us learned the sounds ‘ng’ and ‘nk’ and some of us revised the sounds ‘ou’ and ‘ow’. We practised forming our sounds in our handwriting books, we used the magnetic boards to build words and we wrote sentences using words containing these sounds. In reading, we looked for our common words and Miss Harrison asked us some true or false questions about our reading books.

In Numeracy and Mathematics, we continued to work on our numbers to 100. We revised finding numbers before, after and between and then we learned to find numbers 1 or 2 more or less than. We played different games on the Promethean board and we practised finding numbers between and more/less than in our workbooks.

On Tuesday afternoon, Miss Harrison was a little bit silly as she started talking about Christmas! Each class were given Christmas card templates from the PTA and we designed our own Christmas cards. We drew fantastic Christmas pictures and we were able to add detail to our images.

This week we also had a visit from the P7 Digital Leaders. They helped us to log into the laptops and then we signed into our own Sumdog accounts to practise our maths skills.

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

P2B and Miss Harrison xxx

September 13, 2019

An Indian story in P4B

We read “A Pair of Twins”” by Kavitha Mandana and Nayantara Surendranath and although it was quite a difficult story, we managed some very good recounts of the story and used the elephants in the story as a stimulus for our art work. We created some wonderful decorated elephants. Brilliant work P4B.
In Numeracy we have continued to work on higher numbers – more and less and now understand what these 2 symbols mean . Some of us have also begun to work on estimating. We have finished off our block on symmetry by creating symmetrical pictures. Again some brilliant designs.
On Monday the sports leaders from P7 took us for team games and we really enjoyed it. We have also continued practicing our badminton skills and quite a few of us are now consistently hitting the shuttlecock – sometimes in the right direction.

We have been comparing the climate in Scotland to that in India or to be precise Linlithgow compared to New Delhi and have certainly noticed the difference.
Enjoy the holiday weekend.Hope the sun shines and see you all next Wednesday.
Love from P4B and Mrs.Burton

September 12, 2019

Word building, blending and the 5 point scale in P1B

In Phonics this week we learned i and s. We have learned enough initial sounds to start word building and blending, we built words on our fingers (rainbow blending), magnetic letter boards and using our bodies (robot blending). We are working hard to form letters correctly, s is quite tricky to form the correct way round but we will keep practising!

In Maths we have been learning about the numbers 5, 6 and 7. We also learned more about 2D shapes and had a go at making and drawing a circle, square, rectangle and triangle.

In Health and Well-being this week we learned about the 5 point scale.

If you are feeling a…

1 – You are not worried and nothing is bothering you.

2 – Something is bothering you a little bit.

3 – Something is making you feel nervous.

4 – Something is making you feel really upset.

5 – Something is making you lose control!

Most of the time we will be a 1. However, everybody feels worried sometimes! We talked about what makes us worried and what we can do to make ourselves feel a 1 again. Strategies such as taking deep breaths, thinking about our favourite things or cuddling a soft toy can help us to get back to a 1.

We are going to use the 5 point scale in our classroom and move our picture according to how we feel. This will help us to understand our feelings.

There will be no homework or reading books next week due to the short week. In class we will be revising the sounds and numbers we’ve learned so far.

Reminder that it is our P1 Curriculum Evening on Wednesday 18^th September at 6pm.

Enjoy the long weekend,

Love P1B and Mrs Bell x