Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

November 30, 2018

P4/5 Week commencing 26th November 2018

In Maths we have been working more on our subtraction using the written method. With our work on shapes we learned we could make repeating patterns with them. We also did some problem solving using “Talk It Solve It and Ask It “on shapes and numbers. In Big Maths we have moved onto the multiplication challenge sheets to help us improve our table knowledge. We have also been working on SumDog. We have also been using “Number Talks” to explore our numbers and learn maths vocabulary.

In handwriting we have been learning how to join the letters “ed”. We have also been trying our best to keep our work very neat and our letters on the line. We have also been working on our pencil control techniques to help us.

In PE we have been playing handball and have played games against each other in teams.

In French we learned how to say the names for different types of biscuits and sweets. We have also been revising the names in French for different fruits. In addition to this we have been introducing ourselves to each other using greetings.

In our book study “The Firework Maker’s Daughter”. Chulak and Hamlet have met the Goddess of the Lake. Lila started to climb the Mount Meraki on her search to find the Fire-Fiend. On the way up the mountain there were loose rocks and she lost her footing and fell down. Eventually she found the Fire-Fiend’s grotto and entered it……

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

November 30, 2018

Diary writing and glitter in P2A

In Maths this week some of us challenged ourselves to solve addition and subtraction within 100. We found that we can use the strategies we learnt with numbers to 20 to help us solve bigger sums. Here’s a game to try at home:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/starship/maths/games/cross_the_swamp/big_sound/full.shtml

In Literacy we learned how to write a diary entry. We know that we put the date at the top, start with ‘Dear Diary’ and use the word ‘I’ in our sentences.

We imagined that we were Katie Morag when she got angry and threw her Ted into the sea. We did a plan to help us to write our diary entry, thinking about the questions…

What happened? How did you feel?

We made sure we put our sentences in the correct order, using First, Next and After That. We also used a joining word to link what happened with how it made us feel. We are doing so well with our writing!

In Phonics next week we will be doing a check up to see how we are getting on with consonant blends and our common words. I will share the results of this so you know which sounds or words need revision.

Finally, you know Christmas is here when you get the glitter out! Our Christmas crafts are nearly finished and we can’t wait to show you!

We’ve enjoyed building during free play:

Have a great weekend!

Love P2A and Miss Prince x

November 30, 2018

Snowmen, Reindeer Lollipops and Christmas Tree Decorations (P3A)

In Numeracy and Mathematics, we have been learning to add a 2-digit number and a teens number. We looked at adding the tens, adding the units and then adding our answers together. We have also been learning to add two 2-digit numbers. Some of us have also been doubling 2-digit numbers, adding several numbers and adding a multiple of 10 to a 3-digit number. This week we have been using our addition strategies when looking at costs, prices and profits for our Christmas Enterprise.

In Literacy, we have been writing character profiles about Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web. We watched a video about describing characters in a story and then we looked at some characters from different texts. With our learning partners, we discussed what the characters looked like, their personalities and what they liked and disliked. Afterwards, we worked in groups and we wrote words and sentences to describe Wilbur’s character. Finally, we worked on our own to write character profiles about Wilbur.

This week we have also been learning to answer questions about texts. We listened to a poem called ‘Market Day’. We played a game on Education City about rhyming words and then we identified the rhyming words in the poem. We answered questions about the poem and we tried to write our answers in sentences. We also used clues from the text to draw a picture of the market.

This week we took part in Tesco’s Christmas Competition. We received a letter from Tesco in Linlithgow asking us to make snowmen to be displayed in their store over the festive season. They asked for the snowmen to be bright and colourful. We used a variety of media such as glitter, paint, oil pastels, material and pens to create our snowmen. Hopefully you will see lots of our snowmen at Tesco soon!

This week we have been busy planning and preparing for our Christmas Enterprise, the Christmas Fair. We began by making reindeer lollipops. Before we started the production process, we worked out the cost of each lollipop, decided on a price for each lollipop and then worked out our profits. When we were making our lollipops, we had to work really hard to make sure that they could be sold. Some of the cutting was quite tricky but we were resilient and we now have fifty cute reindeer lollipops ready to sell!

We have also been making wooden Christmas tree decorations. Again we looked at the cost of each decoration, decided on a selling price and worked out how much profit we would make if each decoration was sold. We painted our decorations and once dry, used glitter glue to decorate them. We will continue to prepare for the Christmas Fair next week. It really is like Santa’s workshop in P3A!

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

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

November 29, 2018

Handa’s Surprise and fruit tasting at Tesco P1a

We had a lot of fun this week with our book focus on Handa’s surprise. After our fantastic puppet/drama performances last Friday where we retold the story of Handa we had our first ever school trip…We went to Tesco to find out all about where fruit and vegetables come from. Emily was a wonderful guide and she showed us lots of different fruits from Africa to link in with our topic. We were then very lucky to get to go to the storeroom and then upstairs to do a fruit tasting of different fruits from Africa. We all loved the nectarine, strawberries and blueberries. Lots of children tried the pink grapefruit and apricots but were not so sure of those. It was lovely to see them try new things including dried mango which Mrs Gordon really enjoyed. We got a wee treat on the way out when we go to go in the freezer…

In literacy our new sounds this week were “j” and “v” and we had new common words his, put and was. We enjoyed making and tasting some “j” for jelly!

In numeracy we continued our addition journey by looking at all the different ways to make 9 and 10. We realised this is quite tricky, but luckily we have 10 fingers which can really help us work things out. We enjoyed lots of fun ways to work out our number bonds.

Happy weekend, Mrs Gordon and P1a

November 28, 2018May 8, 2019

Problem Solving, Weaving and Enterprise in P3B

What a busy week! I suspect this may be the way of things for the next few weeks too as we begin our Christmas preparations. We have begun production of items for our stall at the Christmas Fair. We will be selling Reindeer lollipops and wooden christmas tree decorations. We have also been working on our business skills – working out how much each item has cost to make and deciding on a good selling price to make a profit – but not too expensive that no one will buy them!

We have also entered Tesco ‘Design a Snowman’ competition – using the template given to us by Tesco, we have come up with some pretty funky designs. Winners will be announced next week and even if none of us win anything I’m certain our designs will really brighten up the store – please keep an eye out for them in window.

In science with Mrs McVay we have been continuing to explore forces. We learned about friction this week and got to use some great equipment with lots of different surfaces to see what works for fast movement and which materials will slow things down. We have also been playing with these resources throughout the week as we learn best when we are given time to investigate and try out our own ideas and increase our understanding.

We had a go at a tricky problem solving task on Thursday. Mr Zuckerman (Charlotte’s Web) had just been to market and he was counting his profits, he had to sort his coins into 3 bags, there were several different problems, but the one most of us looked at was:

Mr Zuckerman has 10 gold coins, he sorts them into three money bags. The first bag has three fewer gold coins than the second bag. The second bag has two more gold coins than the third bag. The second bag has an odd number of coins inside. How many coins are in each bag?

How quickly can parents work this one out? Test them!

In addition to practising our numeracy skills, we were also looking at good ways to approach problem solving. Usually Mrs Kennedy tells us how to solve maths problems but not this time! We used the RUDE method! Read, Underline, Draw, Estimate. Working on maths activities like this one was quite new to most of us and it is something we will be doing more regularly as it is important to practise the skills required then questions like these are not so scary and we know how to approach them.

As many of you will remember, Mrs Kennedy is a big fan of learning through play. This is planned play with a specific set of learning outcomes. It is so important to a child’s development as it is a great way to develop many of the skills that are likely to be required in the world of work that the children will go onto: creativity, complex problem solving, STEM skills, people skills and critical thinking to name a few. This week we have been trying weaving and sewing. Not only is it very good for fine motor development and creativity, it also requires patience, problem solving, as well as resilience and it is a bit of mindfulness too. The children have been really engaged in this (far more than I actually thought they would be!) It hasn’t always worked first time but they have kept at it 🙂

We are looking forward to seeing you at the Christmas Fair next Friday, all profits from our stall can be spent by the class so we’re hoping for a successful day.

Have a good weekend, P3B and Mrs Kennedy

November 26, 2018

Mostly Katie Morag, Addition and Nativity in P2B.

We have completed our block on Addition and will be going onto Subtraction this week. The children did well at their addition assessments and are looking forward to the challenge of subtraction.
In Phonics we have been working on more consonant blends and did really well in our dictation on Friday.
We have been reading more Katie Morag stories and have particularly been looking at Katie Morag and The Tiresome Ted. We have being doing a plan so that this week we can write a diary extract pretending to be Katie Morag and write about her feelings. Can’t wait to read them.
We have been practising our Nativty with words and stage directions and this week we will sort costumes and start using the microphone.
We have been busy preparing items to sell at the Christmad Fair but the children should be keeping it a secret!!
Love From Mrs.Burton and P2B

November 23, 2018

SPS and Bonnytoun News

We’ve has a fairly quiet week here at Springfield and Bonnytoun which ended today with our assembly on ‘being active.’

We learned about how to stay healthy by eating a balanced diet and taking part in a range of physical activities.

All children in school are kept active each day though their P.E lessons, outdoor learning, outdoor play, The Daily Mile and after-school clubs. Our nursery children have free access to the outdoors and may spend the entire nursery session in the outdoor area should they choose to do so.

We also provide a wide-range of sporting opportunities through our cluster schools events. This week, our P3 showcased excellent behaviour and ‘sportsperson-ship’ when they took part in a Benchball festival at Linlithgow Academy.

Our Pupil Council held their ‘pyjama day’ today with a sea of children coming to school dressed for bed! It was an interesting sight this morning with a host of different pyjamas, dressing gowns, slippers and onesies on display and we also managed to raise lots of money for school funds. Thank you to you all!

Here are some pupil achievements from this week:

-Well done to K in P1 for her Enjoy-a-Ball trophy!

-A super effort from 0 and S in P4 for their gymnastics achievements. Well done girls!

-A group of our P6 girls have raised a great sum of money for Cancer Research over the last few weeks and we are delighted with their efforts!

-Finally a mention for R in P4 and also her little brother, M in P2, who were recently bridesmaid and best man at their Auntie’s wedding in Mexico. I loved seeing the pictures!

Have a great weekend! Stay active!

Miss Baillie x💖🏀🏸🏏⛸🏌🏿‍♀️

November 23, 2018

Subtraction Success and Sheep in P2A

Another busy week in P2A, our Nativity practices are now in full swing. This week we began staging, we are getting good at remembering when it is our turn to go on the stage. Next week we will be sorting out our costumes and having a go with the microphones.

In Maths we continued our work on subtraction, moving on to subtracting teen numbers.

For example; 16 – 12

We know that we can take away the 10 first: 16 – 10 = 6

Then take away 2 more: 6 – 2 = 4

Here’s a game to practise subtraction sums:

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/subtraction-grids

We understand that we all learn in different ways so we tried out lots of strategies and decided which worked best for us. Some of our strategies:

Hopping on a number line
Using cubes
Counting on from the smallest number

We are all working so hard in Maths and getting quicker at solving sums. EM and RW independently completed all their subtraction sums, we are very proud of them!

In Phonics, we worked on some more consonant blends and wrote sentences using our spelling words. We are getting good at spelling words that begin with a consonant blend; next week is our last week on this.

In Drama with Mrs Hogg we invented a machine that a character in our story could use.

Our P7 helpers helped us make fluffy sheep to decorate the hall for Christmas.

On Wednesday Miss Prince took some of the P6/7 choir representatives to sing at an awards ceremony. We went to see other teachers in the lower school and joined in with Art and PE. We all had a lovely time and all the teachers commented on our enthusiasm and good behaviour.

We LOVED PJ day!

Have a fab weekend,

Love P2A and Miss Prince x

November 23, 2018May 8, 2019

The Perfect Recipe for Friendship (P3B)

Following on from Miss Baillie’s assembly on kindness on Friday, the whole school have had an Anti-Bullying focus this week.

This has tied in very well with our book study too as we learn about the value of friendship through Charlotte and Wilber.

On Monday, we began to think about the qualities that make a good friend. We thought about our best friends and why we like them; is it the way they behave or maybe the way they make us feel? Is it the things we enjoy doing together that make us good friends? Is it because we are very different but our differences complement each other?

We played a pairs game to begin our discussion. The cards had pictures and sentences showing attributes of a good friend. This was good fun and we had some good group discussion too. Then we each wrote notes on the qualities that we look for in a friend.

On Tuesday, we used these notes to write ‘A Recipe for a Good Friend.’ The words we had on our list from Monday helped us to write them. Mrs Kennedy had a lovely time reading the recipes, the children worked hard on them and each one had the perfect ingredients to make a good friendship.

We have also been celebrating our differences this week, we had a great discussion when thinking about what the world would be like if everyone was the same. We spent some time discussing what the consequences would be if everyone in the world was a fantastic builder but they couldn’t do anything else. We would have no doctors, farmers, teachers, scientists, artists… We came to the conclusion that it just wouldn’t work, we need everyone’s different skills and qualities to make life interesting, much more fun and actually to allow us to survive! Without talking to anyone else we wrote down what our personalities are like and our very favourite things to do. We decorated handprints to celebrate all the things that are unique to us. They really are very good and I can see all the children’s personalities reflected in their work.

I actually took a couple of photo’s of maths this week! The children are continuing their addition work, improving mental maths methods of adding 2-digit numbers. One of their favourite things to do is to be the teacher and explain how to solve problems to the class. It is really good for me too as I can observe how well they are picking up the skills I am teaching.

We had a great time at the benchball festival at Linlithgow Academy on Thursday. It was good to meet children from every school in our cluster. It was a very busy afternoon and we each played a lot of games. The children showed excellent teamwork and put all of the skills we have been learning into practise. Their behaviour was very good too, they showed all the Springfield values and were very good representatives of Springfield School.

I think we have earned some well-deserved rest this weekend. Thanks for reading our post, P3B and Mrs Kennedy

November 23, 2018

Fibonacci, Wonder and MSP’s

This week in P6a we have been learning about Fibonacci numbers. These are really interesting and we have started to look at where we can see them in nature.

In Literacy we wrote our draft letters to different MSP’s. We all had really interesting thoughts and questions. Next week we will finish writing them and then post the letters, hopefully we will get lots of replies!

We have also been continuing our work on the novel Wonder, by R J Palacio. The story is really interesting and is helping us think about how what we say can affect others. We have been discussing how Via might feel about Auggie and what strategies she uses to deal with these feelings.

Next week is the last week of Golf for those who have been going, it has been fun. We will continue with our work on Fibonacci and Mrs Newton has set a specil Sum Dog Challenge for us to complete in class.

Have a lovely weekend,

P6a and Mrs Newton