A big well done to P and L for completing their school values grid. We are so proud of them and celebrated their success by putting their names on our Springfield Hall of Fame. Well done!! A proud Primary 1 moment x 
Developing the Young Workforce – Skills for Learning, Life and Work Programme 2019
Developing the Young Workforce (DYW) is a seven-year programme (2014-2021) that aims to better prepare children and young people aged 3–18 for the world of work. This year, we will once again be running a Skills for Learning, Life and Work programme for our P7 pupils which will culminate in a Careers Fayre in May. We aim to help our children develop and acquire skills across all areas of the curriculum that are transferable to a workplace whilst broadening their knowledge of different jobs, careers and opportunities for further academic study.
Over the last two years we have welcomed in a number of our parents and carers as well as representatives from local businesses, organisations, colleges and universities to deliver a short presentation on their career, line of work or establishment to our P7 classes. This could be anything from 15-30 minutes in length with the opportunity for the children to ask some questions at the end. The programme of visits will run between Monday 11th February and Thursday 4th April.
If this is something you would be interested in helping us with, please contact Mr. Logan via email (ewan.logan@westlothian.org.uk) to arrange a suitable date and time to come in.
Mr. Logan
2019 Begins in P2B
We’ve had a busy beginning to 2019 in P2B. We began by talking about our Christmas holidays and then writing about what we did. Lots of exciting things and lots of lovely presents. What lucky children we are! New Years Resolutions have also featured in our work this week and we have talked about our hopes for 2019 and looked at how the New Year is celebrated around the world. We have done some Phonics revision, as well as practising the spelling of the days of the week and some of our common words. Next week and for the following few weeks we will be learning how to spell words with the magic ‘e’.
We have continued our work on subtraction and next week will move on to the recognition of coins up to 50p and adding up small amounts. So it will be Money, Money, Money in P2B!!
Our work on the school values has continued and we have particularly concentrated on Kindness and Respect. This was continued at our assembly on Friday.
We have begun our Scottish focus by making a mind map of things we already know. It seems lots already! Next week we will look at the life of Eric Liddell- a famous Scottish Olympian.
We’ve had a visitor this week who did some fitness work with us and lots of running. Red faces were in abundance when we came back to the classroom!!
Some great models have been made and F.W. Spoke well about one of his Christmas presents a ukelele.
Happy New Year Everyone.
Love from P2B and Mrs.Burton
Term 3 at SPS and Bonnytoun Begins
Happy New Year to you all!
We have had a lovely, calm and settled start to Term 3 and to the month of January in school and nursery.
This week all classes have been reinforcing our school values and this culminated in a ‘values assembly’ today in school. We talked about the ongoing need to be kind and respectful to each other. Staff are going to be looking out for positive behaviour in our dinner hall this term with the chance for one pupil to be crowned the ‘dinner hall champion’, before Easter, for showcasing good manners and behaviour.
Nursery children are going to be learning about the school value of ‘being included’ as they play games and learn to share and take turns.
Here are the achievements for this week:
-A huge congratulations to Zara in P7 for gaining Grade 1 in piano! What a brilliant achievement!
-Well dons to C in P3 who continues to perform well in Gymnastics.
Next week, our pupils are going on to begin a block of work learning about famous Scottish inventors and the contributions they have made to our lives today. This will form part of our work in Social Studies for this term.
You will receive your child’s home learning grid and Sharing the Learning sheet for the term, when they are sent home in school bags next week. We hope that you enjoy taking part in your child’s learning and helping them to practise skills learned in school.
Have a great weekend,
Miss Baillie xx💖
New Year, chimney sums and Scotland mind maps in P2A
Happy New Year! What a lovely welcome back the children gave me! It was lovely to see their happy faces on Monday, they’re all very good at calling me Mrs Bell (better than I am at recognising it as my own name!)
On Monday we learnt about New Year and how we celebrate it here in Scotland. We sang Auld Lang Syne and shared our New Year resolutions.
In Literacy we wrote about our Christmas holiday. The children had lots to write about, what exciting holidays they have all had! We also worked on spelling the days of the week, remembering to use a capital letter and the tricks to spelling them, for example, sounding out Wed-nes-day.
In Maths we learnt how to lay out a chimney sum. We know to add the ones first, then the tens. We are able to use this strategy to add together 2 2 digit numbers. We worked in pairs to complete this first, we were good at teaching each other and working as a team.
Here are some to have a go at:
44 + 32 62 + 15 81 + 12
We were full of energy on Tuesday afternoon, we had a special visitor who did some running and fitness games with us. We were determined to get to a higher level that P1 in the bleep test – well done to RM and OW who both reached Level 13! Lots of red faces at the end of the session!
Our focus over the next few weeks is Famous Scots. We began the topic by completing a mind map on what we know about Scotland, looking at a map of the UK and finding where we live on the map. MH did a super mind map:
We also started reading a story called ‘Tom’s Sausage Lion’ by Michael Morpurgo. Michael Morpurgo has written lots of short stories, if you have any at home you wouldn’t mind us borrowing please send them in.
Next week we will begin to look at ‘magic e’ in Phonics and Money in Maths. Homework, reading books and Sharing the Learning sheets will go home on Monday.
Have a great weekend,
Love P2A and Miss…Mrs Bell x
Happy New Year from P3B
Happy New Year! I hope you all had a lovely break and enjoyed the celebrations.
We are well and truly back into the swing of things, we began Monday setting some personal goals and New Year’s resolutions – something new we’d like to try and something we do already that we’d like to get better at.
Before Christmas the children decided that they would like to decorate the wall outside our classroom based on Antarctica. We began by learning about the wildlife in Antarctica – the only two land creatures to live there are seals and penguins. We had an art lesson on pencil drawing and how to use shading to enhance our pictures, then we drew penguins and seals using our new techniques.
On Tuesday, we worked in groups to create posters on a topic relating to Antarctica, the topics were: Antarctic Geography, Scientists in Antarctica, Antarctic Explorers, Antarctic Ships, Fun Facts about Antarctica, Antarctic Wildlife and Antarctic Weather. The children worked very hard and we all learned a lot from each other as we shared our learning. A group of children have also been working on some other art work for the wall, including a picture of the new Royal Research Ship ‘Sir David Attenborough’ and pictures of orcas which are often found in Antarctic waters. We are really pleased with the finished result and think the wall looks interesting and will encourage others to stop and read our work.
We had a HIIT (high intensity interval training) session with a personal trainer on Tuesday, it was a very active session and we did not stop moving for 45 minutes! We did a lot of running as well as burpees, press-ups and squats. It was hard work and great fun.
On Thursday we began our new PE topic with Mrs Kennedy – football. We were working on our dribbling skills this week and played different games that allowed us to practise dribbling. We are hoping that we can get onto the grass soon.
In numeracy and maths this week, we began subtraction. We started off with mental subtraction – practising different techniques and learning some new ones, finding out what works best for us. On Thursday we started our new outer maths topic – grid references, we looked at where they might be used and learned to use them to locate and describe positions.
We also competed our book study of ‘Charlotte’s Web.’ As an assessment, we showed our understanding of the story by summarising it. We selected the main points, ordered them correctly and then made cartoon strips showing these points. Every child was able to show that they had understood the story well as they not only identified the main points, they also realised the ’causes and effects’ that created the events in the story and made the story flow the way it did 🙂 Soon we will look at how to transfer this into our own writing.
We will continue to have Mrs McVay for Science this term. On Wednesday we started to learn about materials and began by sorting objects according to the material they are made from.
It has been a busy week with introductions to a lot of new experiences. Please look in school bags on Monday for more information on what we will be covering this term. We will soon begin our study on a famous Scottish person – Williamina Fleming.
Thank you for reading our blog, P3B and Mrs Kennedy
P4/5 Week commencing 7/1/2019
Happy New Year!
This week we all wrote our new year’s resolutions and made a nice display for the classroom.
We have been busy writing and preparing for our Assembly which will be held next Friday. We have been learning our lines and song ready for the performance. We look forward to seeing all family members next Friday 18th January.
We have been keeping fit this week by doing our walk a mile and taking part in the new “Boot Camp” taster session. It was very hard and we all had to have a little rest afterwards to recover! When we moaned the instructor made us do ten burpees!!
On Tuesday we took part in the first workshop provided by NYCOS (National Youth Choir of Scotland) where we learned how to perform new songs with movement and rhythm.
In literacy we finished off our work on the book study from the Firework Maker’s Daughter. We also updated our targets for both literacy and maths.
During ICT we completed the Health & Wellbeing survey for the school and practised our maths skills using SumDog.
In Science we looked at the function of the digestive system and made the contents of what the inside of our stomach would look like. When we saw the contents of it all mixed up it looked a little bit like “vomit”! One of the experiment bags exploded and went all over the classroom floor! What a smell it made!
By Mr Ritchie and all the “Tiggerrific” P4/5s.
Happy New Year from P3A!
Happy New Year and welcome back to our blog!
In Numeracy and Maths, we have started to look at subtraction. We have been revising our subtraction facts to 20 and looking at using different strategies to solve subtraction sums, including missing number problems. Some of us have also been learning how to subtract a single digit from a two-digit number and how to subtract a two-digit number from a two-digit number. This week we also started to learn how to describe, plot and use grid references. We will be creating our own pirate treasure maps and with a partner, guessing where the treasure is hidden using grid references.
This week we finished our book study on ‘Charlotte’s Web’. To show our understanding of the text, we created our own cartoon strips summarising the story. We listened to a summary of ‘Charlotte’s Web’ and then we worked with our learning partners to identify the main points. We tried to order the main points correctly. We used speech bubbles and thought bubbles in our cartoon strips to write what the characters were saying or thinking.
This week we had PE with Mrs Reid on Wednesday and Miss Harrison took us for PE on Thursday afternoon. This term we are learning how to play football. We played different games to develop our dribbling skills and we worked with a partner to develop our passing skills. At the end of our lesson we played a game where we had to use both our dribbling and passing skills to win! This week we also had a fitness session on Tuesday morning where we took part in different activities to improve our levels of fitness. Here are some photos of us in action!
This week we have been working hard on our winter display for the infant corridor. Before the holidays, we asked Miss Harrison if we could learn about polar bears. On Monday we used different materials to create polar bear images. We looked at using spirals and overlapping circles to create our backgrounds and then we explored using different shapes to create our polar bears. On Tuesday we looked at using the internet and non-fiction texts to read for information. We worked with a partner to find facts about polar bears and then we made our own polar bear fact files. Did you know that polar bears have forty-two teeth?
Thank you for reading our blog. We hope that you have a lovely weekend.
P3A and Miss Harrison xxx
Back to school in P6A :)
This week in class we decided to change the classroom around. We felt that a different seating arrangement would help us work more effectively.
In Maths we worked on multiplication and division word problems. This challenged our learning, which is a good thing, as it helps with our growth mindset, and we extended this using the Chilli Challenge. Next week we will work on fractions and their use in a real life context.
In Science we started working on board games to share with our P2 Pals. This will take us a couple of weeks to do, we hope to finish them next week and play these when we have our next P2 Pal session.
We had a taster session of Boot Camp, it was very, very hard work. However we all really liked it. In PE we did the BEEP test, we are going to work on our stamina over the next few weeks to see if we can improve our overall score.
In Literacy we wrote imaginative stories, continued with our reading and did a comprehension exercise on Robinson Crusoe.
In Art we used 1 pencil to create lines, shades and tones when drawing winter trees. We discovered that we had to hold the pencil at different angles to create different tones, lines and shades.
We discussed our new topic- The Industrial Revolution, talked about homework and the extended research task we will be doing. We also all set our own targets in literacy and numeracy, we will be reviewing these over the course of the term.
We start our music project, with the Linlithgow Museum, next week and we are also taking part in the Scottish Opera workshops in March with P7 (we will start learning the songs next week).
Finally we had a review of our Scottish Parliament work from last term in preparation for our visit next Monday.
It’s going to be a very busy term in P6, however we are all up for the challenge.
Have a great weekend,
P6A and Mrs Newton 🙂
Welcome back P1B
Happy New Year to everyone and a big welcome back. It was so nice to see so many smiley faces on Monday.
This week we have had a little revision week to recap on all of our sounds and numbers before we start our new concepts on Monday. We have had a tricky word day to practise our spelling. We also wrote all about our holiday news and wrote some beautiful sentences independently. The progress is incredible! We enjoyed writing thank you letters to Santa on Monday with Miss Baillie. We talked about how important it is to say thank you and show our school value of respect. In Maths we were revising our number bonds to 10 and the concept of addition. We will be starting on Subtraction next week.
We also had a special visitor on Tuesday to come and deliver fun boot camp taster sessions. We all enjoyed playing lots of fun games and even took part in the bleep test to see how fit we were. Some of the P1 boys and girls got up to Level 11!! Wow. Mrs McAulay was so proud. In PE with Mrs McAulay we were developing a range of different skills and worked our way around the stations to practise.
In HWB we have been learning all about having Growth Mindset. This means that we attack challenges with enthusiasm and make sure we keep telling ourselves that ‘we can do it’. We read a story called ‘My Fantastic Elastic Brain’ and it showed us how we can make our brain stronger when we learn new things and develop new skills. Did you know you can stretch and grow your own brain? Or that making mistakes is one of the best ways your brain learns? Just like how lifting weights helps your muscles get stronger, trying new things without giving up-like finding the courage to put your face in the water the first time you’re at a pool-strengthens your brain.
We talked about Neurons in our brains acting as little messengers and how they get thicker and stronger when we learn new things. So we made a collage of our brain…..we used string to represent the weak neurons and things we cannot do (………..yet!), we used thicker straws to show things that we are learning at the moment and we used strong pipe cleaners to represent things that we are really good at and feel confident at doing (because we have practised them lots). We each came up with examples of each. These will be sent home today so you can discuss them with your child to reinforce the important message.
A big well done to CH for filling his values sheet. He got to add his name to the Springfield Hall of Fame and we are very proud of him.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs McAulay and P1B x
