Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

In Maths we have been continuing our work on number talks and subtraction.  We are now able to subtract a two-digit number from a two-digit number using both written and mental strategies.  We will be finishing off our subtraction work by looking at subtraction written problems set in a context.  Once we have completed this we will be moving on to multiplication!

In writing we all went to the library to select a book of our choice.  We read the books and then wrote up a book review.  We had to write down our opinions about the book giving reasons why we liked or disliked the characters, story plot and setting.  We then had to write up a recommendation for the book and give it a star rating.

Mrs Manlove our school librarian set us a competition to design a new book cover for our favourite book.  We discussed the importance of using colour, text size and making sure our overall design was in proportion to make the cover look attractive and encourage people to pick the book up to see what it was about.  We also looked at a range of different book covers created by different illustrators to see how they used different sizes of texts in different positions to create attractive and eye-catching effects.  We are looking forward to finding out the winner of the competition.

We also had a visit from P7 who did an art lesson and showed us how to make and design a bookmark.  They also told us about the new book club that will be starting in the library and also the book swap that is happening this week as part of World Book Day.

Thursday was World Book Day and Mrs Fleming was teaching us. We dressed up in some brilliantly creative costumes and took part in lots of fun learning activities.  In PE, we went on a bear hunt just like the popular storybook and learned how to move our bodies in different ways. We read “The Disgusting Sandwich” by Gareth Edwards and completed some fun reflective reading tasks based on this.  We even got to recreate the disgusting sandwich using real, squelchy, squishy ingredients! YUCK!!  We had 2 special visitors who read us stories throughout the day – Mrs Manlove from school and the author Lynne Rickards. Lynne read us one of her own books called Willow the Wildcat and we got the chance to ask her lots of questions about her job. We also got to watch P1b perform their World Book Day themed assembly which was hilarious! It was an action packed fun day for us all!

Today we invited our parents into the classroom to take part in our “BEAR” event.  We read and discussed the story “Wanted! Ralfy Rabbit, Book Burglar and then completed our Reflective Reading activity stations – Textplorers, Picture It, Find the silly words and Jigsaw Jumble.  We all had great fun working with our parents and completing the tasks at the different activity stations.

Mr Ritchie, Mrs Fleming and the tiggerrific P3B’s

Our new digraphs this week were ow as in show and oa as in soap. We found this quite tricky to master…but oa mostly goes in the middle and ow mostly at the end of words. Our new common words were you and one, again we can recognise these from our reading books, but can we spell them?

In numeracy we were focused on looking at our symbols and mixing addition and subtraction signs together. We get into the habit of always taking away even when there is an addition sign. Mrs Gordon and Mrs Bell made a worksheet where they had answered some calculations incorrectly, we had to tick or cross the answers once we had worked out if they were correct or not. This was encouraging us to read symbols carefully!

We also continued our money journey by looking at giving change. This is a very tricky concept and will need lots of practise. It would be good to try this out at home by making a little shop. We will practise this a little more next week.

In art we looked at line drawing, colour and proportion when we did still life drawings of daffodils. Some of us did a pencil drawing first and then added paint. It was quite difficult to get the sizes right, but Mrs Gordon was very impressed with our finished artwork. You can see it in our corridor on our new spring display!

For World Book Week we did lots of fun activities. We designed book covers for our favourite books, read lots of stories in class, had 2 mystery readers (Mrs Bell’s mum and Mr Logan), had Lynne Rickards (an author) in to read one of her books to us, went to P5/6 for a story session (including blankets, cushions, juice and a biscuit, yum!), dressed up and went to Mrs Bell’s class assembly on books! Phew that was a lot of things…

On Wednesday and Thursday night it was the P6/7 show Fame, Mrs Gordon was pleased to see so many P1’s come along and enjoy the show. They did so well.

Today we were so pleased to see lots of our parents come in for our BEAR event (be excited about reading). We read Handa’s Surprise and then with the help of our grown ups we made fruit from playdough, sequenced the story, retold the story with puppets and drew pictures of the fruit, animals and characters. At the teaching table Mrs Gordon was working with us to predict what might happen next in the story. We had to draw what we thought would be next. Mrs Gordon was very impressed with all the great ideas.

Happy weekend from Mrs Gordon and P1a.

This week has all been about FAME. We had our last full in school rehearsal on Monday and then on Tuesday we had two full dress rehearsals at the Academy. These went really well and we were very happy with what we had learned. Rebecca Holmes took pictures of us and they look amazing 🙂

Wednesday and Thursday were show days and we were outstanding. Mrs Newton (and all the other teachers) said we were FABULOUS and we came off stage on Thursday night on a high. We are happy that we do not need to rehearse any more, but also a little sad that it is all over.

On Monday we had a small break from FAME when Angus Gaillie, a Senior Mechanical Engineer from The Royal Observatory of Scotland, came into speak to us. We had lots of questions about his job and we loved hearing about the parts he has designed for telescopes that are going into space.

Today we had a reflective reading event for parents, This was a nice way to end the week as we were working in pairs and had the chance to share our learning with family.

Have a lovely weekend, most of us intend to sleep 😉

P7a and Mrs Newton

This week we had a very interesting visit from Mrs Jess Findlay, a retired farmer who works for the Royal Highland Education Trust.  She gave us a presentation all about her life on the farm and the crops that she grew.  We learned about wheat, barley and oats.  She brought samples of the actual crops so that we could touch and smell them.  We also saw what happened to them once they had been cut and processed through the combine harvester and discussed what the resulting grains could be made into.  She then showed us a poster about the different breeds of cows and explained that some are reared for producing milk and others are reared for producing meat.   She also brought in a huge carrot from her farm and explained that it would keep much longer than one bought from the supermarket as it was covered in earth.  The earth keeps the carrot cool so it lasts much longer than the washed ones we can buy in the supermarket.

In grammar we have been learning about past, present and future verbs. We learned that we could use “Uncle Ed” to help us write or identify a verb in the past tense.  The verb would end in “ed”.

In writing we used our class novel to help us write an imaginative story.  The story had to have a character who was sad at the start of the story and then something had to happen to them to make them happy at the end.  We worked with our learning partners to brainstorm lots of different ideas of what might make our character happy and added this to our writing plan.

To coincide with the school show “Fame” we all dressed up in costumes from the 80’s.  It was tiggerrific seeing everyone all dressed up during the school fashion parade in the hall.  Each class took a turn of walking the “catwalk” to model their costumes.  We then all took part in a “Jane Fonda” workout which involved us completing a dance exercise routine.  She was very fast, so we all had to move very quickly.  We were all tired out at the end and needed a rest before returning back to the classroom.  We then learned about what it was like to live in the 80’s by looking at the different types of clothing people wore, the music and bands they listened to, what cars and technology looked like. We also looked at the different TV shows and toys children played with.  We were amazed that we still play with some of the toys today and also the size of a mobile phone.  It was ginormous compared to the phones we have today and could only be used to answer calls.  The phone battery only lasted a few hours and the phone could not take pictures, play music or send text messages etc.  We loved watching some of the TV shows and cartoons from the 80’s.  Our favourite one is the adventures of Mr Ben.  To complete our day, we also learned some dances from the 80’s with our favourite being “Push pineapple” by the band Agadoo!

Mr Ritchie and the tiggerrific P3B’s

What a jam packed week we’ve had this week!

On Tuesday and Wednesday we made and tasted pancakes.

In Phonics this week we learned about the trigraph – igh, we learnt that this usually goes in the middle of words like light, might, fight. However, sometimes words break the rules, such as high and sigh.

We also learnt the other way to make this sound: -y, as in try, fly, cry.

It can be tricky to know which one to use. We played an action game you could try at home to help us to practice. If it’s an igh word, make a triangle with your hands, if it’s a –y word make a y (like in the YMCA!). Try it with these words:

bright, shy, try, light

In numeracy we continued our work with the number fact families. We are doing well with this but some of us are getting tricked by the + and – signs, we need to look at the sum carefully.

In Money this week we read a book called The Great Pet Sale. We loved making our own Pet Sale with our soft toys, and using coins to buy and sell them to our friends. Here’s a clip of the story:

We LOVED 80’s day! We watched P6/7 perform one of their songs from Fame, had a go at a 80’s dance routine, listened to stories from the 80’s and took part in a fashion show!

Admin for next week:

Thursday – World Book Day! Please send children in their assembly costume (or send it in a bag to change into) as we are having a dress rehearsal in the afternoon for P1-4 (we will try our best to keep our costumes clean!)

Friday – Please send children to school in their assembly costume

BEAR (Be Excited About Reading) event 9-10 in our classroom

10-10.30am Class assembly in the school hall

Love P1B and Mrs Bell x

Ps, apologies for the lack of photos – it isn’t letting me upload as the blog is full. I (think!) I have managed to upload some photos to Seesaw 🙂