Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

As it was Scotland Loves Languages week we have had a few language lessons.  P6 Language Ambassadors came into our class on Tuesday and we played some French counting games.  Mrs Gordon set a challenge for every person in the school to choose their favourite word in another language, P3A had a great variation – from Japanese to Irish!  We made a poster showing us all saying our favourite words, we also wrote what language it is and the meaning of the word in English.  On Friday, we had a French lesson on days of the week, we are building up our knowledge to be able to say the date in French each morning.

On Thursday we made clocks to help us as we learn to tell the time.  We painted the quarters first, then added the numbers and hands, finally we wrote how many minutes past the hour each number represents.  Mrs Kennedy showed us some times on a digital clock on the smartboard and we had to make the same time on our analogue clocks.  These clocks have now gone home so we can practise there too.

In other maths we are continuing to subtract – multiples of 10 and near multiples of 10.  Most of us have found a 100 square really helpful for this – let me know if you’d like to have one at home.  When subtracting multiples of 10 we move up the 100 square counting in 10s, for near multiples ending in 9 we subtract the nearest multiple of 10 and then add 1, for near multiples ending in 1, we subtract the 10s and then another 1.

In literacy we are learning some editing skills.  We ‘up-levelled’ sentences on Wednesday.  We were given short sentences with no capital letters or full stops.  We up-levelled them by adding correct punctuation, adjectives and joining words to make them more interesting, e.g. ‘three frogs swam in the pond’ could become ‘Three green frogs swam fast in the cool pond as it was a very hot day.’  Next week we will be correcting sentences with incorrect grammar and spelling.

We had PE outside this week, continuing with football.  We did some dribbling, passing and shooting drills.  It was good to be outside, there a few signs of spring beginning to emerge.

We got some great news at the beginning of the week! M won the Linlithgow Rotary Club design a poster competition.  Her design has now been made into an official poster to be used around Linlithgow – keep n eye out for it!  M also won a book token.  Well Done!

Have a good weekend everyone, P3A and Mrs Kennedy 🙂

 

The children have been amazing this week and coped so well with the changes of classrooms, where they line up etc. We are now back in our own classroom with a lovely, new green carpet and woe betide anyone who messes it up!
The highlight of the week was the visit from the Vikings Cathbad and Sigurd on Tuesday. We and P4A had a fantastic day learning about Viking life and looking at many artefacts. We began the day with a story where we learnt all about Viking life and some of us got to dress up as Vikings. Then we split into 4 groups where we got to look at artefacts close up and talk and ask questions about them. We also made a game called ‘Game of Sea Kings’, using clay to make little pieces for the game. We really enjoyed this and we also got to sketch some of the items found at a Viking burial site. We learnt that these can give us information about Viking Status. After lunch we went outside and fortunately the weather was kind, and played a game called ‘Settlers to Sea Kings’. The children were split into groups and learnt how Vikings built their settlements and travelled to other lands. We had to collect what we needed for building our village but also had to protect it at all times from other Viking raiders. It was great fun and we all worked well as teams. The day finished with some of us getting the opportunity to try on chainmail – very heavy, play the lyre, and look at some weapons and shields. We all had an amazing day and talked and then wrote a recount of our day. Hope you learnt lots P4!
We have also been learning about Viking longships and have begun to design our own. Next week we will use our designs to create our own longships.
In Maths we have continued with division and next week we will go onto Money.
We are beginning to plan our assembly and are all very enthusiastic about it. One guess as to what it might be on??
Next week we say goodbye to a member of our class and will have a little party to say farewell.
Have a lovely weekend everyone.
Love from P4B and Mrs. Burton

This week we have been celebrating “Scotland Loves Languages” with our P7 Language Ambassadors who came to teach us a French lesson involving our numbers.  We practiced counting forward and backwards up to thirty and then played a variety of games to improve our counting and pronunciation skills.   We then chose our favourite foreign language words and made flags of the countries the words were from to create a nice display for our classroom.  We chose foreign words from Spain, Scotland, South Africa and Italy.

In writing this week we have been looking at how we could make our imaginative writing more interesting for the reader.  We discussed how we could improve our sentences by up-levelling them using “wow” words to describe the different characters or the scene the story was set in.  We came up with some fantastic adjectives and then used these to up-level different sets of sentences.  We also had to remember to check that we had used the correct punctuation when we wrote the sentences.  After the sentences had been up levelled, we then looked at using different linking words to expand the sentence to make it longer and add more detail about what was happening for the reader.

In Maths this week we have been learning more strategies of how to subtract 9, 19, 29 … from a two-digit number by rounding up to the nearest ten and then adding back on.  We have had to think about the place value of the numbers and also to lay our work out very neatly to show our workings.  With Mrs Doran we have been continuing to work on time and have been using the mini clocks to help us work out and display the correct times to solve our problems.

We have also continued to enjoy the new outdoor play area with Mrs Stapleton especially as more items are being added.  We are all looking forward to playing in the “muddy kitchen” area when it opens next week!

In Reading we have been enjoying our new class novel “Flash the Sheep Dog” by Kathleen Findler,  and learning about the adventures of Tom as he settles into his Aunt Jane and Uncle John’s farm in the Scottish Borders.  Tom went to visit the cattle mart in Peebles with his Uncle so to help us understand the story we have been watching some videos about real life cattle marts in Scotland.  We are all amazed at the speed the auctioneer speaks when he is selling the livestock – you have to listen very carefully and not raise your hand in case the auctioneer thinks you have placed a bid. Tom is finding life in the Scottish Borders very different from the one he had in London with his mother.