Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

February 1, 2019May 8, 2019

P3B – Time Superstars!

This week we helped P1 children with Education City. We showed them how to log onto a netbook, helped them to find the website and type in their usernames and passwords and then helped them to play some games of their choice. Mrs Kennedy was very impressed with how patient we were and how well we explained what to do. We were also mindful not to do everything for the P1s but to help them to do it for themselves – they will learn much better that way.

In literacy, we worked on our spelling pattern – ‘ed’ ending words and revisited alphabetical order. Some children were becoming more secure with finding words in the dictionary – trying to open the book near the letter they wanted according to where that letter comes in the alphabet. Some children were putting words in alphabetical order – sometimes having to look at the third letter to do this as the first two were the same.

We also began our History trail topic. Last week the children chose the camera as the invention they would like to learn more about. We will look at the history of cameras, a little on how they work and how cameras are used today.

We began by thinking about all the ways cameras feature in our lives today. Together we came up with lots of answers. For example, to communicate – pictures in newspapers, magazines and on the internet, speed cameras, x-rays, to name a few.

Next week we will learn about the very first cameras and begin to think about how they work.

In numeracy and maths, we have been continuing with subtraction. It was quite tricky this week as we were learning mental maths strategies of subtracting near multiples of 10 (9, 11. 29, 31…) from 2-digit numbers. We were subtracting the nearest 10 and then had to remember to add one if the original number ended in a 9 and to take another away if it ended in a 1. This required a lot of resilience as quite a few had to keep trying when their first answers weren’t correct. We kept at it though and we’re getting there now.

On Thursday we looked again at time. Concentrating on quarter to and quarter past. Some children were learning am and pm times. When Mrs Kennedy marked our work, she discovered that a lot of children were struggling to read the correct hour when it was quarter to. To help us we made clocks and practised setting them to ‘quarter to’ times read the times out loud, explaining where the hands were. This seems to have helped and we are much more confident now.

We have also been very busy coming up with ideas and writing the script for our assembly – words will come home next week and I might be asking for some props too!

Have a lovely weekend, wrap up warm.

P3B and Mrs Kennedy

February 1, 2019

This Week’s News in School and Nursery

Today we held an assembly to mark UNICEF’s ‘Safe Internet Day.’ This term all classes across school undertake a block of work on Internet safety. Today was an introduction to the work that will follow. All children learned about how they should stay safe online and to approach an adult with any worries.

We take our responsibility in the area of Internet Safety extremely seriously as we work to safeguard all children in school. Please ask your children to share some of the information that they learned today.

Thank you to all parents who completed our recent Health and Wellbeing survey. We hope that you have managed to read our responses and how we have put in place actions for any points raised, in the ‘you say, we did’ document, which was emailed out to you all this week.

As always, please get in touch with any concerns or with feedback as to how we can do things better. We are trying very hard and we do want to get things right for each and every child.

There have been numerous achievements this week including the following:

-L in P2 brought along his Victorian coin collection to show me! What an amazing collection he has!

-Our Fizzy Fingers group, led by Mrs Scott have been busy making Scottie dog mobiles!

-A in P6 wrote an amazing letter to Scotrail to say how he thinks the train services could be improved. He got a very lengthy reply! Great writing A!

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Baillie xx💖

February 1, 2019

Computers, computers, computers (P3A)

This week we were given our own Education City logins and passwords. Instead of being P3 Play Leaders this week, we became P3 ICT Leaders! We helped the P1 pupils to access and play games on Education City.

In Numeracy this week we have been learning to subtract near multiples of 10. This can be quite tricky but we have been using our 100 squares to help us. When we have been subtracting 21, we have been subtracting 20 and then subtracting 1 and when we have been subtracting 19, we have been subtracting 20 and then adding 1. This week, some of us have been subtracting a two-digit number from a two-digit number and some of us have been subtracting near multiples of 10 from three-digit numbers.

This week we revised using quarter past and quarter to times and writing times on analogue and digital clocks. We played a game called ‘Wakey, Wakey’ on Education City and we played a time board game. Some of us were also learning to use am and pm times.

In Literacy this week we have been looking at alphabetical order and ordering words by their third letter. We have also been practising using a dictionary to help us to locate and spell words. In writing this week we learned to write a balanced argument! Miss Harrison showed us some headlines about computers being banned in schools! Although most of us were against this statement, we tried to think about another person’s point of view. We looked at arguments for and against with our learning partners and then we used bullet points to list our points on our planning sheets. On Thursday, Miss Harrison showed us how to write a balanced argument and then we used our planning sheet to write a balanced argument for and against banning computers in school. We were able to use an introduction, offer an opinion and use a conclusion.

This week we began our new learning focus, ‘Time Travellers’. We will be learning to compare aspects of people’s daily lives in the past with our own by looking at how computers have changed over time. We started by working in groups and looking at how we use computers in our everyday lives. Afterwards, we went back in time to look at the very first computers. Did you know that many of the early computers were the size of a large room or built into walls? To showcase our learning at the end of our ‘Time Travellers’ focus we will be presenting PowerPoints to P3B on how computers have changed over time. When we look at a different time period each week, we will be recording our learning on our PowerPoint presentations.

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

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

February 1, 2019

Subtraction Action in P1a

We have been very busy working on subtraction in P1a. We really enjoyed using our number tiles to make a number line in the corridor and get our friends to jump out number sentences. We also had to do a subtraction colouring Elmer where each number had a colour, we had to work out that 10-2=8 and then that 8 was black. You can see some more of our fun activities below such as ask a partner subtraction questions and farm animal subtraction.

In literacy we learnt 2 new digraphs this week, th and wh. We have found it pretty tricky to say f and th differently so have been practising making sure our tongue sticks out when we do th….Our new tricky words were ‘be’ and ‘she’.

In French we learnt more about “la famille” using our friend Camembear. We learnt ma mère, mon père, ma sœur et mon frère. We love learning French and Mrs Gordon hopes lots of us can come along to the family fun language event on Thursday 21st February in Linlithgow Primary School.

In ICT this week we worked with our P3 friends to log on to the netbooks and into our own Education City accounts. This allowed us to play numeracy and phonics games. We had great fun!

Happy weekend Mrs Gordon and P1a

February 1, 2019

P4 Class

Literacy

We learned how to use speech marks. MC

For Guided reading we focused on making inferences. We also revisited the types of story genre and the different kinds of story ending.

ICT/ Literacy

We were researching and taking notes about Ancient Egypt. RG

Maths/ Numeracy

We have been learning how to find objects in a map (Grid references). We were also plotting our coordinates.

We learnt to find the direction using compass points. We now know what it means to turn 90, 180 and 360 degree using the compass.

We also presented our personal projects to the class.

In Music, we were practising reading notes in a song.

We were learning different types of jumps. My favorite is the Tuck Jump (EM and MC).

Mine was the half turn (RG).

February 1, 2019

Singing Central in P6a!

This week in P6a we have been doing a lot of singing, both for the Museum Project and for the Scottish Opera. We started to write our song for the Museum and will continue this in two weeks time.

For Scottish Opera we have been rehearsing in our groups. This is going well and all groups are becoming more confident singing their songs.

We continued fraction work in class, next week we will be starting Time, looking at converting time units and elapsed periods of time. We also continue to work on multiplication and division.

In literacy we did planning for a non chronological report on the birth of the Industrial Revolution, next week we will be writing the report. We also looked at the differences between facts and opinions and revisited all our grammar work from the previous two terms.

In IDL we learned about the factors that led to the Industrial Revolution and next week we will look at child labour.

Have a lovely weekend, stay warm.

P6a and Mrs Newton 🙂

February 1, 2019

Primary 5 w/e 1st February 2019

We are the upper school class of the week this week!!

This week we learned a little bit about Charles Rennie MacKintosh. We then recreated a rose on a stained glass window in this style.

In maths, some of us were adding money and others were calculating best value for money. We’ll continue to explore this next week.

Our storywriting this week was based around a polar bear. We also included characters from our class novel in our stories.

We were reading graphic scores in music this week.

In science we were separating materials using sieves that we made ourselves.

We looked at speech marks and how to use them accurately in our written work. Some of us also explored indirect speech and how this is used.

We finished our handball block in PE this week, with a series of mini games.

February 1, 2019

P4/5 Week Commencing 28th January 2019

On Monday we welcomed Miss Fiddes our Student Teacher from Edinburgh University. Miss Fiddes showed us how to write an acrostic poem using our names. This helped Miss Fiddes learn interesting facts about us.

On Tuesday we took part in the fourth workshop provided by NYCOS (National Youth Choir of Scotland) where we learned how to perform a new song called “Star Bright Star Light”.

During ICT we practised our maths skills using SumDog and Education City. Next week we are going to receive passwords so that we can log into Education City at home. The passwords will be stuck into our homework jotters.

In Science we finished off our work on the digestive system and started looking at water. We watched “Reach out Reporter” and learned about a “hagfish” which produces natural mucus to protect itself from attack. Scientists are trying to use this for clothes and bungee jumping ropes.

In Maths we finished off our work on maps by asking each other questions and giving directions to reach different destinations. We also finished off our work on shape and will be moving onto money next week. During Big Start this week we used our problem solving skills to solve a number problem.

In reading we took part in our second “Literacy Circles” and carried out our different roles. We had more time this week to work in our circles as we did not have to go to a special assembly.

In writing this week we learned how to do a “Re-count” about our Assembly. We learned how to write this in order using sequential words and paragraphs. In handwriting we learned how to space our letters consistently.

We also started our new topic about the Egyptians by completing a “KWL” grid.

We have continued reading our new class novel which is Doctor Who “The Secret in Vault 13” by David Solomons. The Doctor has saved an alien species from the Space Lord and reprogrammed all the Mark 4 Army against the space lord. They all escaped using the Tardis.

By Mr Ritchie, Miss Fiddes and all the “Tiggerrific” P4/5s.

February 1, 2019

Arrays and Victorians in P2A

This week we met Miss Devonshire. Miss Devonshire is training to be a teacher and she will be with us lots from now until the summer. We all made her feel very welcome; she was very impressed by our enthusiasm for learning.

Our focus in Phonics this week was ‘magic e’ split digraph o-e. We are able to identify ‘magic e’ words in our reading books – this is something you could do at home too. Here’s an o-e memory game you could play:

http://www.galacticphonics.com/longvowels/o-e/interactive/memory/memory.htm

In Maths we started our new focus – multiplication.

We know that we might hear these words: sets of, multiply, times, arrays.

We learned how to draw an array to solve multiplication problems. When pictures or objects are put into columns and rows, it is called an array.

We know to use the first numbers to tell us how many dots to draw in the column. Then we take the second number to tell us how many rows to draw. As well as drawing arrays we made arrays using objects. We picked this up really quickly and loved making arrays with pictures:

We began our Victorians topic by making a mind map about what we already know and what we would like to know. Lots of us were interested to learn about toys Victorian children played with, jobs children did and what school was like in the Victorian times. Next week we are going to learn about the jobs children did.

In Art we looked at Victorian buildings and identified the features. We noticed that all Victorian buildings had chimneys and criss-cross windows so we made sure to include these in our drawings: