Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

September 14, 2018

Our School and Nursery News From This Week…

P7A led an informative assembly about resilience this morning with all classes watching video clips of different Disney characters who show resilience.

Resilience is one of our 5 values in school and nursery and something that we continue to develop in our children. Our nursery staff regularly assess children though observation and comment on the children’s ability to persevere on task from as young as 3 years old. Across school, staff look for a child’s ability to keep trying in the face of adversity as they undertake tasks. We always give the message that it is okay (and normal!) to make mistakes.

You all spoke so well P7. What a super effort! Thank you Mr Logan for your efforts in putting this assembly togther.

As well as speaking about resilience, this week, all classes have been working to embed the 5-point emotional scale into their daily classroom routine. We are gauging childen’s emotional well-being throughout the day and intervening where necessary. Supporting mental health is something that is a major part of our ongoing work at Springfield and Bonnytoun. We believe that teaching children about their emotions and helping them to have healthy coping strategies for times of upset, is a vital life skill.

Please come along to our family learning event on the 5-point scale at the end of September to learn more about our current work on promoting positive mental health and wellbeing.

Next week, we will be launching our new Springfield Values ‘Hall of Fame ‘ initiative which will be a further method of encouraging and celebrating children’s wider achievements. We will email all parents in school about the Hall of Fame at the end of next week. We hope that you will support your child in this endeavour and help them to get into our Hall of Fame by the end of he session, if they can.

Have a wonderful September holiday weekend everyone! See you all back in school next Wednesday!

Miss Baillie xx 🍂 💖

September 14, 2018

P6B Maths week and Christmas cards!?!

This week was Maths week. We worked in groups to solve five tricky Maths problems based on news articles and then made up our own problems. We did some revision on decimals, rounding, fractions and place value. We also learned how to use protractors and we wrote some definitions for all the different angles.

We spent some time with our P2 pals and we helped them research one fact about a woodland creature and wrote them down or to change the font to write their names.

This week in PE we practiced our ball skills while throwing and catching basketballs with partners

We made maps of Springfield and the school and coloured them in bright colours. We also did some topic work on the rivers we had been given to research.

In reading we did comprehension and reading.

In French we learned how to say the alphabet and did a sheet on it.

In Music we listened to the song we recorded the week before and evaluated it before playing a rhythm game.

We have also designed Christmas cards and begun to design the Book Challenge display board for the library which will be used to keep track of how many books we have all read this year. The login to record books online is https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=oyzTzM4Wj0KVQTctawUZKR-Dl-1GHsVKvmaSsUcIHCtUREQ3OE1FV0NDSDBISThZOVBPRzA5T1lWOS4u

Enjoy the long weekend!

September 14, 2018

Primary 5

Hi,

It was lovely to see you all at Meet the Teacher this week and to share an overview of the year. If you missed this evening, you should have received an overview of some of the activities we will be covering this term.

In Primary 5 this week, we have continued to work on teamwork games in PE, discovering how difficult it can be to complete tasks when working together.

In Literacy, we have looked at comprehension, dictionary skills and completed tasks related to our home learning reading books. We created a setting for our Aliens to have an adventure in in our story writing, thinking about sights, sounds and smells around us.

Numeracy involved looking at rounding numbers. We also took a maths challenge that involved us seeing how many ways a square could be halved. This got us thinking outside the box!!

As an enterprise task, we designed our own Christmas Cards, which will be printed for you to see soon.

Music saw us creating a song and playing instruments.

In science we learned about sundials, and discovered that we have two sundials in our school grounds.

In HWB we had a class discussion around different types of bullying and how a person who is being bullied may feel.

Have a lovely holiday weekend.

Yours

Primary 5 and Mrs Kerr

September 14, 2018

P3B Place value, Painting and Parlez-vous français?

As its ‘Maths Week Scotland’, I thought I’d share some pictures of numeracy in P3B this week. We are continuing to work on place value, using our knowledge of thousands, hundreds, tens and units to order numbers, find the numbers before, after and between. The tricky part was when we crossed a barrier, e.g., ‘What is the number after 699?’ or ‘What 2 numbers are between 398 and 401?’ Through lots of practice and playing with place value on the smartboard, netbooks, our ice cream stack game and place value dominoes we’re really getting the hang of it.

On Thursday, we extended our learning on Symmetry. We listened carefully to the demonstration on how to find all the lines of symmetry and joined in explaining to others, using the examples on the smartboard. We used a text book for this lesson. Maths text books are relatively new to us and we are working hard to learn how to lay out our answers, numbering them and making sure there is only one number in each box of our squared jotters. We used mirrors again to check that our thoughts on the number of lines of symmetry were correct.

We had a lot of fun on Wednesday learning some new French words that we can use in the classroom, some of them might be good for mums and dads too! You could try: ecoutez – listen, regardez – look, asseyez-vous sit down, levez-vous – stand up. We also played a version of ‘Simon Says’ called ‘Jacques a dit’. Mrs Kennedy is trying to remember to tell us to line in French at break and lunch – Mettez-vous en ligne, s’il vous plait?

In literacy, we have been working on our Literature Circle skills – trying out the role of ‘Questioner.’ We wrote a question beginning with each of the words – who, what, where, when and why, about The BFG. We then asked a partner to answer our questions and began discuss the book further.

We have begun work on a big BFG wall display for just outside our classroom, today we used water colours to paint dream jars to be used as templates for us to write our own special dreams on. We will work on the writing next week, using our imaginations to create dreams we’d really like to have. We will also be looking at interesting sentence openers and joining words.

We introduced ‘The Incredible 5 Point Scale’ this week. This helps us to think about how we are feeling and to use strategies to help us to feel better. We also know to ask for help when we need it.

What a quick four weeks since we returned from the summer break, it has been a fantastic four weeks and everyone has settled in really well, P3B are the hardest working class in the school too. (I may be a little biased) 🙂

Have a good long weekend.

P3B and Mrs Kennedy

September 14, 2018

P4/5 Week Beginning 10th September 2018

In literacy we have been learning how to use and recognise adjectives, verbs and nouns to help us improve our writing. We have also been revising the importance of making sure that we are using capital letters and full stops correctly.

In ICT we have been using SumDog to help us with our Maths and take part in the SumDog challenge which we won.

In Art we have been designing Christmas cards and our designs will be sent off to the printers to make lovely cards and to help raise funds for the school.
We have been using our “Incredible 5-Point Scale” to help us feel calm at school and trying out our strategies that we made to help us.

Today we have been looking at people connected to Linlithgow to help us with the poster design competition for the new Linlithgow Museum which we will be entering after the September holiday.

In Maths we became Maths Detectives to try and solve the mystery of the “Mixed up Scarecrows” using our knowledge of number, time, shape and patterns to solve the clues.

This morning after our spelling test we took part in the Big Maths challenge to improve our mental maths skills.

In class this week we have been continuing to read our new class novel entitled “School Ship Tobermory” by Alexander McCall Smith. Ben and Fee have now moved into their cabins and are exploring the different parts of the ship. They have met Captain Macbeth, Badger, Matron, Poppy, Flubber, Henry the dog and Shark. We are looking forward to find out what happens next.

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

September 14, 2018

The 5-Point Scale arrives in P3A!

Congratulations to two members of our class who took part in Pedal for Scotland last Sunday. Well done boys! We are very proud of you!

In Literacy this week, we have been looking at answering and creating questions about texts. On Monday we looked at the role of a questioner and in pairs, we constructed our own questions using ‘who, what, where, when, how and why’ openers. We played a game on Education City called ‘Wild River’ where we had to answer who, what, when, where, why and how questions about events in the story. Afterwards, we read an extract from Jack and the Beanstalk and we answered questions about the events to show our understanding.

In Numeracy and Maths we have been working with numbers to 1000. We have been learning to find numbers before and after a given number and to find numbers between. We used different songs and a Splat Square to revise numbers before, after and between to 100 and then we used this knowledge to find numbers before, after and between to 1000.

On Thursday, we continued to learn about symmetry. We revised finding lines of symmetry using a mirror and then we looked at shapes which have more than one line of symmetry or none at all. We also explored how to make pictures and shapes symmetrical.

This week we started to use the 5-Point scale. We looked at different cartoon faces and discussed how we felt each of the faces was feeling. We listened to a story called ‘When My Worries Get Too Big’ to help us to understand the 5-Point scale. Miss Harrison read out different scenarios and we had to rate how we would feel and decide where we would be on the scale. We will be using the 5-Point scale in our class everyday as it is very important that we are able to talk about our feelings.

Thank you for reading our blog post. We hope that everyone has a healthy and happy long weekend.

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

September 14, 2018September 14, 2018

P7a Weekly Blog

Literacy and English

To tie in with our Brazil learning, this week we have been creating rainforest tankas in writing. Tankas are Japanese poems, similar to haikus, but have two additional lines. They have 5 lines split over 2 verses and always add up to a total of 31 syllables. Often tankas are written about nature, love or sadness and portray strong feelings or emotions. We discussed deforestation and the feelings that this may evoke for both the animals and indigenous tribes living there, as well as the impact that this is having on the natural environment. When reading examples, we also identified the regular use of simile, metaphor and personification within tankas and were encouraged to incorporate figurative language into our own work. Please read one or two of our efforts below:

We have also been working as groups to research the Brazilian city that our tables are named after. Firstly, we had to identify the location of our city on the Brazilian map before marking this on our class wall display. Using our notes and relevant information from our research, we started creating informative posters about each city that detailed various aspects of life in that location. Some of us chose to focus on landmarks and places of interest, whereas others opted for a focus on the natural environment or the artistic influence that can be seen there. These will be completed next week and we will share some photos of the finished articles in our next blog post.

Z and J passing on their knowledge of tanka poetry to M, J, L and F

Numeracy and Mathematics

This week we celebrated Maths Week Scotland as well as continuing to extend our knowledge of multiplication. On Monday and Tuesday, we consolidated our learning of multiplying 4 or 5-digit numbers by a single digit using a standard written method before applying specific rules to effectively multiply by 10, 100 and 1,000. To build on this further, we multiplied decimal numbers by 10, 100 and 1,000, paying particular attention to how many places our decimal place would move to the right. Next week we will continue to strengthen our knowledge and understanding in multiplication before making the link the the inverse operation, division. As part of Maths Week Scotland, we took advantage of the good weather on Wednesday morning to team up with P7b and do some multiplication orienteering. Various multi-step word problems we positioned in 15 different locations around the school grounds where we worked with a partner to solve these using the written method taught earlier in the week. If we failed to do so, or did not include units of measurement, we were given a time penalty or asked to recalculate. Zak and Ambra were our winners, just pipping 2 other groups to the prize.

Health and Wellbeing

We have been focused on one value this week in P7a, resilience. Throughout the week we took the time to refine our class assembly and develop our confidence when presenting to an audience. We hope that you all enjoyed it and would like to thank you for coming along to support us. If you couldn’t make it along today then please feel free to have a look at our presentation by clicking the link (P7a Class Assembly). Resilience is something we are all looking to build during P7 as we prepare for our transition to S1. Next week, we are looking forward to a visit from the RNLI to speak to us about water safety as part of our Keeping Myself Safe learning with Mrs. Newton. We are hoping to further our knowledge of how to respond in an emergency situation near water.

On Wednesday, we teamed up with those in our leadership groups to finalise what our remits will be for this year. From newspaper writers to sports leaders, we’ve got a number of areas in which we will be working hard to develop across school. Each group will be allocated one hour per week to carry out their responsibilities and we’ll keep you updated with our progress over the coming weeks and months. As our new upper school display states there really is a leader in all of us, and we’re beginning to demonstrate the skills and qualities that a great leader might possess:

Effective communication
Enthusiasm
Boldness
Self-assurance
Intuitiveness
Teamwork
Empathy
Charisma

Thank you for all showing up in such numbers for both Meet the Teacher and our class assembly this week. Both the children and I appreciate it.

Have a great September holiday everyone!

P7a and Mr. Logan

September 13, 2018September 13, 2018

Counting in tens and ones, the Daily Mile and Hedgehog Road Safety in P2A

This week we have made lots of progress – today we all remembered to gather all our belongings and check our trays at the end of the day, Miss Prince was delighted!

Thank you for coming along to Meet the Teacher evening, it was lovely to see so many of you there.

In Maths this week we have been counting in tens and ones. We found this really tricky at first (we were great at counting the tens but kept forgetting to add the ones!) Here is a fun game we played in class that you could play at home:

http://www.ictgames.com/sharkNumbers/sharkNumbers_v5.html

In Literacy we have been focussing on using capital letters, full stops and finger spaces. Some of us are using joining words to make our sentences longer. Miss Prince’s Phonics group worked really hard on the ay/ai sounds this week. We know that ai usually comes in the middle of a word and ay usually comes at the end.

We love our new class novel – Hodgeheg. Not only is it a great story, it’s also teaching us about road safety. We have thought of some great ideas to help Max the Hedgehog get across the road safely.

We’ve had some super show and tells this week. MP told us about his Taekwondo achievements and HM told us all about her fundraising for Cash for Kids – we are very proud of you both!

We are enjoying doing the Daily Mile, we try and run for longer each time. Some of us are very speedy!

We did a PE lesson with P2B this week, Mrs Burton taught us a game called Cat and Mouse and we taught P2B our yoga poses.

Some photos of our free play fun – well done to the girls who did some beautiful writing. Mr Wells was very impressed!

No homework next week, just reading books.

Have a relaxing long weekend and we’ll see you all again on Wednesday.

Love P2A and Miss Prince x

September 13, 2018

Caterpillars and counting!

This week we have been learning the ‘i’ and ‘s’ sounds. We have now started to build simple words using our sounds. In our challenge area we had to try and build an igloo out of sugar cubes but could not use our fingers. We had to use the tweezers. It was very tricky but we all showed our value of ‘resilience’.

In Numeracy we continued learning our numbers to 10. We worked really hard on our formation this week as we have been finding that a bit difficult. We had lots of active stations to help us get used to the shape of the numbers. We read stories about our numbers ‘7’ and ‘8’ in the number zoo and in PE we were doing lots of actions in groups of 7 and 8.

In PE we have been following our Better Movers, Better Thinkers programme to work both sides of the brain. We practised our dribbling skills and did lots of tricky sequences with the basketballs.

In IDL this week we did a little descriptive writing lesson. We looked at different pictures of dragons and came up with lots of describing words. Then we created our own friendly dragon and tried to write some words to describe it. We listened hard for the first sound in the word and all had a great attitude towards writing. We just had a go!

On Thursday we read the story ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ and spent the afternoon working around the 4 different activities linked to the story. We talked about healthy eating and foods that are good for our bodies. We designed healthy packed lunches for the caterpillar. We also made paper plate butterflies and used collage materials to decorate them. We did some finger painting of caterpillars and practised our counting. We also worked in groups to use the story stones to sequence the events in the story. We worked very well together and showed patience and kindness.

Hoping you all have a lovely long weekend.

Mrs McAulay and P1B x

September 11, 2018September 11, 2018

P6A Meet the Teacher

22_08_2018 yearly overviewLM

Thanks to everyone who managed to come to the ‘Meet the Teacher’ night. It was good to meet you and to see a few familiar faces. I’m looking forward to working with you throughout the year.

Please see link above to the yearly plans as discussed at ‘Meet the Teacher’ event. (Unfortunately the powerpoint is too large to upload). Please note this is a draft overview and is subject to change.

There was also a handout for this term’s learning which some parents did not get. Please ask your child to collect tomorrow if you didn’t get one.

Kind Regards

Louise McAlpine