Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

January 26, 2019

A very Scottish week in Primary 2B

Well we have certainly been busy with our Scottish focus this week. We have been learning about Kirkpatrick MacMillan who invented the bicycle. He rode the first one, made of iron, all the way to Glasgow from his home in Dumfries. What a feat! The children then designed their own bicycles and either used straws or charcoal to create them. Some brilliant designs. Well done P2B.
We celebrated Burns today with singing some Scottish songs with Ms.Bain, then we watched A.L from P4 perform her Highland Fling. She was brilliant.

Our winners in the Poetry recital and the class dressed up.

This was followed by refreshments of shortbread and juice. We then listened to the Gruffalo in Scots. After watching a powerpoint about tartan, we designed our own. Some great results. The afternoon was finished off with some of the children reciting poems. Well done to the children who confidently stood up to do their poems.
On Friday some of the class presented what we have learnt in the last 2 weeks, at assembly.
In Phonics we have continued with the magic ‘e’ but with ‘i’. So some of our words have been pipe, kite and my particular favourite – wine. The other group have been learning words with ‘oa’ and ‘ow’ in.

Some model making:

Cosmic yoga in P2B.

We have continued with money this week and working out what coins we need to make up certain amounts. Next week we will move onto multiplication.
So a busy week for us all and now we can look forward to our Haggis, Neeps and Tatties this weekend. Enjoy everyone.
Love from
P2B and Mrs.Burton

January 25, 2019May 8, 2019

Busy, Busy P3B

During reading on a Monday, while each group is getting their new book, the others have reading tasks to work on. This week we looked at identifying the main features of a story – the main characters, supporting characters, setting/s, the problem in the story and how the problem was resolved. The children worked in their reading groups, deciding together which book to use for the task. The groups worked well and there was lots of good discussion as they studied the stories closely.

On Tuesday we looked again at punctuation – our learning outcome is to use capital letters, full stops, question marks and exclamation marks correctly every time we write. The tricky part is transferring our learning into all of our writing and not just the lessons when we are specifically looking at punctuation. The activities were good fun and hopefully memorable enough for us to remember correct punctuation, the first time, every time we write. A brought in the balloons from his birthday party last weekend, we had great fun trying to make as many words as possible with the letters. We wrote a long list of words and this was a very popular activity – thank you!

In numeracy we have been trying some problem solving at the beginning of each lesson – applying the skills we have been learning. This week we had to use our mental subtraction knowledge to think of as many ways to make a different number each day. We will continue with various problem solving activities to encourage the application of our learning to help us to deepen our understanding.

We finished our mini topic on Williamina Fleming this week. We did some space chalk drawings. It was good to work with chalk and we created some very good effects when we gently rubbed the colours together.

We also wrote diary entries of a day in the life of Williamina. We made the date 1888 and described what Williamina’s day might have been like the day she discovered the Horsehead nebula. We thought about what life might have been like in 1888, food, transport, etc and how Williamina might have felt on that day. We worked with a partner and typed our diary entries onto word. Our checklist helped us to remember to write the date, write in first person and to describe the day in the correct order. Everyone produced a very good diary entry and our word processing skills are getting quite good too.

On Thursdays I have been taking the children outside for PE. Last week we were very fortunate to have Mr Fyfe with us, who is an experienced football coach and referee. He took us for some drills and refereed a game at the end. I learned a lot too and I will be able to add the drills into my lessons.

On Friday, N, S and C presented at our ‘Famous Scots’ assembly. N read his detailed Williamina Fleming report and S and C read the very good diary entry they wrote together. Great work boys and well done for being so confident today too.

Have a lovely weekend, enjoy your haggis 😉

P3B and Mrs Kennedy

January 25, 2019

A Scottish Week at SPS and Bonnytoun

Our annual Scots focus ended today with children from each class presenting their learning at assembly. We listened to information about lots of famous Scots who have changed life for us today because of their inventions or actions.

Primary 7 helped us to celebrate Burns Night earlier on this week by organising a fantastic Burns Supper for their friends and families. Well done to all children who recited poems, danced or presented information to the audience.

Next week, all classes will be moving on in their learning to investigate an aspect of history that is of interest to them and that meets our curricular objectives.

On a Tuesday and Wednesday each class will get the chance to visit Dovecot Park for a short play session, for reaching the ‘1000 springs’ House target.

In the coming weeks, we are going to be looking at the quality of our children’s writing across school and working as a staff team to ensure that all children are being given the best support to fulfil their potential in this area.

We hope that you have enjoyed reading our school and nursery newsletters which were emailed to you all this week.

As always, if you have any comments, suggestions or feedback on the work that we do then please drop in to see us or send us an email via the school mailbox.

Your support is very much appreciated. We always try to listen to and act on your views to make Springfield and Bonnytoun the very best that they can be for our children and families.

Have a great weekend!

Miss Baillie x💖💫

January 25, 2019

Diaries and Nebulas (P3A)

In PE this week we have been continuing to develop our skills and techniques in football. We worked on different movement skills and then we went into teams and played some football matches. On Thursday afternoon we went outside with P3B and we played football together.

In Numeracy this week we have been learning to subtract a single digit from a two-digit number and we have been learning to subtract multiples of 10 from two-digit numbers. Some of us have been learning to subtract near multiples of 10 and some of us have been learning to subtract from three-digit numbers. We have been using our subtraction skills to solve different problem solving tasks at the start of each of our numeracy lessons. We are becoming more confident with explaining our strategies used and how we worked out the solutions.

This week we have also continued to look at time. We revised how to read quarter past and quarter to times and then we looked at writing o’clock, half past, quarter to and quarter past times in different ways. We also compared times and ordered times from earliest to latest. Some of us were learning to calculate time durations using a yearly calendar.

In Literacy this week we were looking at identifying the main features of a text, punctuation and writing a diary entry.

On Monday, we played a game called ‘Princess and the Pea’ on Education City which explored features of a story. Miss Harrison gave us different fairy tales and we have to identify the main characters, the supporting characters, the setting, the problem and the solution.

On Tuesday, we looked at using a variety of punctuation accurately. We rotated round different punctuation activities. We played a punctuation card game, we completed a counter full stop activity where we used counters to put in the missing full stops in different texts, we set up a ‘blether station’ and worked with a partner to create sentences using different punctuation and we used our knowledge of punctuation to correct mistakes on a letter.

On Wednesday afternoon we looked at writing a diary entry. We explored features of diary writing and then we worked in a pair to write a diary entry of a day in the life of Williamina Fleming. We included a date at the top, used time linking words and wrote in the past tense. On Friday some of us shared our diary entries and reports about Williamina Fleming at our Scottish assembly.

In art this week, we decided to create our own nebulas! We looked at the horsehead nebula which was discovered by Williamina Fleming and we also looked at photographs of other nebulas too! We used chalk to create our own space landscapes and then put our own nebulas in the sky. We looked at mixing colours and blending them and we got some great effects!

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

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

January 25, 2019

Chop Chop Choppity Chop in P1

Another busy week in P1.

In literacy our new digraph was “ch” Mrs Gordon was really impressed with how well we could switch between “sh” and “ch” and tell which was needed where. We had great fun singing “Chop, Chop, choppity chop” whilst we peeled and chopped vegetables and made vegetable soup. We all loved chopping…we also loved eating our soup the next day! Mrs Gordon had to scrape the pan as everyone wanted seconds…It was lovely to have warm soup on such a chilly day. Have a look at us making and eating the soup.

In numeracy we continued our subtraction journey. We really enjoyed jumping along a number line that we made in the corridor to show how to take away. We also continued with our money topic and enjoyed playing coin bingo and guess the coin. Make sure to have a look at some coins at home and see if you can tell your parents what they are.

We had a Scots focus this week and learnt all about our famous Scot “James Watt”. We learnt how he invented an improved steam engine and developed the term “horsepower”. We could not believe that his engine was as strong as 26,000 horses! What a lot of horses. We also made our own shape steam engines using 3D shapes, what fun!

Have a look at our confident individuals below. They presented a short summary about James Watt and our shape steam engines.

Happy weekend from all of P1.

January 25, 2019

P4

Literacy

We learnt to write a script for our presentation. ED

We did handwriting with Mr. Wells. LL

We learnt different strategies for reading comprehension. EM

Numeracy/ Maths

I made a PowerPoint presentation about how to read time (to/past the hour and am/pm). EM

We did time duration. MC

We learnt how to read and understand a timetable. SCD

We did (word) problem solving with time durations. FD

IDL

I learned facts about John Logie Baird using the netbooks. CC

Music

We learned about rhythm and pulse. HM

We also learnt a new song about Haggis. FD

January 25, 2019

Fabulous Fractions

This week we have been focusing on fractions of amounts, simplfying fractions and equivalent fractions. We are also working on word problems, multiplication tables and division.

In literacy we wrote a chronological report on Robert Owen and the work he did at New Lanark. Next week we will be writing a non chronological report on the birth of the Industrial Revolution. We also did a comprehension activity based on Oliver Twist.

We continued to rehearse for our upcoming Scottish Opera performance and have now been given our groups. Mrs Newton will Dojo the link to the songs later today.

Russell came to visit us and answer questions on our JASS work. We will see Russell every 2nd week and he will give us help and support as needed.

PC Murray came to talk to us about parking around the school. He explained that we are all responsible for keeping ourselves and others safe and we can do this in the following ways:

1-Walk to school

2- If it is not possible to walk, park further away and walk the last little bit

3- Do not park in the school car park

4- Do not walk through the school car park- EVER- it is very busy and dangerous

5- Always get out of the car on the pavement side

6- Do not run across the road, even if you are late or see a friend

7- Do not leave your engine on when waiting for someone

8- Finally do not park over driveways, on the zigzags or on the yellow lines

Next week we have our song writers in again, we will be looking at facts v opinions and we will be doing more fraction work and opera singing.

Have a lovely weekend 🙂

P6a and Mrs Newton

January 25, 2019

P4/5 Week commencing 21st January 2019

On Tuesday we took part in the third workshop provided by NYCOS (National Youth Choir of Scotland) where we learned how to perform more new songs, singing skills, rhymes and movement.

During ICT we practised our maths skills using SumDog and Education City. We also used a search engine to find interesting facts about Andrew Carnegie a famous Scottish philanthropist.

In Science we learned more about the function of the heart and we listened to our heart beats. We did tests to find out how our heart pumps and what happens to it when we exercise and rest. We also started learning about the water cycle.

In Maths we continued work on maps using directions and the compass. We have also written our new targets for Term 3.

In reading we took part in our first “Literacy Circles” and enjoyed carrying out our different roles we will have within the reading circle. We are looking forward to getting together in our reading circles next week and discussing our reading books and performing our different roles.

In writing we researched information on John Logie Baird and Andrew Carnegie. We then created a mind map to record all the interesting facts we found and used this to help us write stories about their lives. We are going to use our writing to make a nice display in the classroom.

On Thursday we had a talk by the local Community Police Officer – PC Murray about road safety.

We have also chosen our new class novel which is Doctor Who “The Secret in Vault 13” by David Solomons. It sounds very exciting……………

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

January 25, 2019

Primary 5 w/e 25th January 2019

This week we had the opportunity to put our handball skills to the test, at the Handball Festival at Linlithgow Academy on Thursday. We played against other schools from Linlithgow and had great fun.

In maths we have begun to explore money. We will continue to do this next week too. We have begun to use a new mental maths resource to help us with our mental agility.

Our storywriting this week was about The Arctic Circle. Our stimulus for the story was a character outside a small metal building in the Arctic. We then created our own stories about the character and the events that might happen to him.

In our Guided Reading Task this week we described what we might do if we could spend a day with a character from our reading book. There were some interesting ideas. We have also completed comprehension tasks.

We have looked at Alexander Fleming as our Famous Scot. We have created posters and powerpoints about both Fleming and Alexander Graham Bell.

January 25, 2019January 25, 2019

Joining letters, bicycles and Burns in P2A

In Phonics we continued our work on magic e; this week looking at i-e split digraph. We used magnetic boards and read the word before and after adding the magic e.

In Handwriting we are beginning to learn some joins. We are finding this tricky but we love a challenge! We know that we don’t join from a b or from a letter with a tail. If you would like to practise at home, here are some words to to have a go at joining: bed beg big

In Maths we continued with our work on money, this week exploring amounts more than £1. We know that the £ sign goes before the number and that we don’t need a p sign.

Here’s a great money demonstration tool you can use to support your child with counting money:

http://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/coinCalculator/index.html

For our Scottish focus this week we learned about Kirkpatrick MacMillian, the inventor of the bicycle. He was a blacksmith who made a bicycle out of iron. It must have been very heavy! Well done CS who listened carefully to the information and drew an excellent picture of Kirkpatrick and his bicycle.

We invented our own bicycles and labelled the parts, here are some of our creations:

On Thursday we had our Burns Celebration. AL from P4 came to perform ‘The Highland Fling’ and to talk to us about highland dancing, we were very impressed! We listened to the Gruffalo in Scots, ate shortbread and designed our own tartan. Some of us read a Scots poem to the class, well done to LC who won the prize for his poetry reading. The children all looked the part in their tartan, thank you for helping with this 🙂

RW has been busy making books to read to the class. She wrote an excellent book about hand washing, well done, RW! This has sparked enthusiasm and many children are now making and writing books during free play.

Well done to the boys and girls who spoke about our learning in assembly on Friday:

Next week we will begin learning about the Victorians. If you have any interesting books or artifacts at home that we could look at please send them in.

Have a lovely weekend,

Love P2A and Mrs Bell x