Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

LITERACY

I am using this week to catch up with some of our news. With snow days, trips and lots of visitors – we have got a lot of learning to fill you in on!

Over the last few weeks we have been on a Big Writing Adventure with Little Red Riding Hood. We had a video message from Agent Fizz asking us to help him and Finley (The Woodcutter’s son). We re-told the story using fabulous sentence starters. Then we had to use WOW words to describe the big, bad wolf. We used these lovely describing words to make a wanted poster. We also created a collage of the setting using natural materials. We wrote some brilliant description to describe the forest and set the scene.

“Little Red Riding Hood tiptoed through the deep, mysterious forrest” (ET)

“I was walking along the bright, open path until everything went silent and mysterious” (EM)

“I feel like someone is watching me and I am scared. I hear crunching of the leaves and the trees are tall and dark” (CL)

We have been doing some drama with Ms Crombie about the lonely dragon. We were learning about different feelings and how our feelings change in different situations. We enjoyed creating our own dragons, building a scary cave our of material and working in groups to create a freeze frame.

We have also been looking at non-fiction books and learning all about how they are different to stories. We learnt about the Contents page and the Glossary.

MATHS

We have been learning about Measurement. We used our hands and feet to measure the length of objects around the classroom. We then introduced the Metre stick and used our estimating skills to guess the length of objects. We then went on to look at Weight. We explored how to use different types of scales and used our skills to measure out ingredients to make Easter chocolate nests.

 

IDL and other

ZC sent in some photos from home to show us that she had been making porridge and gruel. She was comparing them and rated them out of 20! It is so nice to see the learning continuing at home too. RB and TK created a workhouse scene at after-school club. They had thought about the different facts we had learnt about the conditions in the workhouse. It showed a lot of detail. BW brought in his Beavers jumper and talked to us about the different badges that he has achieved. We are very proud of your hard work B.

Miss Mudd found a box of Victorian artefacts so we had a great afternoon looking at these and discussing their uses. We compared an old hot water bottle to a modern day one. We compared a metal iron to our electric ones. Some of the boys had a game of marbles and played with some Victorian toys.

We were also learning about Florence Nightingale and Victorian hospitals. We looked at some pictures of the conditions of the hospitals before Florence Nightingale tried to help. We learnt about the difference that she made to nursing and how many lives she had saved. We then spent some of the afternoon playing with the hospitals role play pack and comparing the instruments and equipment we have now to the past.

 

We have had a Roald Dahl problem solving afternoon. We have been reading Fantastic Mr Fox so he had asked us to help him plan a great feast! We had to choose items from the shopping list and work in a group to stay within a budget. We had to think about how many guests we had coming and how much we had to spend. We then had to add up the different items and calculate how much we had spent altogether. As a challenge Miss Mudd asked us to work out how much money we had left over. We fed our ideas back to the class.

We then had to plan where everyone was sitting. We got given some clues and had to make sure our seating plan followed the rules

‘Mrs Twit sits opposite Sophie’

‘James sits in between Matilda and Willy Wonka’

We found this quite tricky and had to show a lot of resilience. We had to try out different ways and change it if it didn’t work. We then went on to write our own clues for different groups and made it really tricky!

After returning to school after a few days off due to the bad weather. It was good to be back this week and to continue with our learning.

Numeracy:  We continued to practice division using  the formal written method. Miss Bailie was in our class on Tuesday morning and she was very impressed with what we have been learning, she was even more impressed that we were able to ‘teach’ her the formal written method using our division ‘family’ to help us.  We have been looking at budgets and calculating whether we are able to afford to buy a specific product or not. Budgeting is a life long skill to learn. We have been discussing the importance of budgeting and saving.

Literacy: Our character in our class novel, The miraculous journey of Edward Tulane, is beginning to change, both in appearance as well as personality. A good reader is able to visualise. To show our understanding of how the main character is beginning to change we created a visualisation of Edward. We used adjectives and similes to describe his appearance and personality. We compared the visualisation of Edward that we created at the beginning of the story to the visualisation of the Edward we created this week. Comparing the two has reinforced our understanding of how the character is changing.

IDL:  This week we have started to discuss the impact the Industrial Revolution had on the people, places, health, transport and work. We worked in pairs to spot the difference in two pictures which was an area in England, one picture was taken pre Industrial Revolution and the other was taken in the  1900s. It was very easy  to spot the difference and we were able to share what we had noticed. We continued to dwell further into the impact the Industrial Revolution had. This made for interesting conversation and we were able to draw up a list of pros and cons.

RME: St Michael’s church  had requested that we create a hanging display for their church. As it is soon to be Easter, we created the 14th Station of the Cross- Jesus lay in the tomb. This is a Christian representation of the last moments of Jesus’ ‘human’ life.  Over the Easter period please go along to St Michael’s church to see our lovely silhouette art pieces.

1+2:  Hola! This week we focused on Spanish greetings and feelings vocabulary. We played a variety of different games to help us with remembering the different vocabulary and  pronunciations.

PE: Hockey ball skills was our PE focus this week. A couple of weeks ago Mrs Matos and some teachers attended an afternoon learning skills that can be used for better movers and thinkers. This week, Mrs Matos used some of what she had learnt in our hockey lesson. Not only were we focusing on ball skill and ball control, but we also concentrated on our co-ordination. We found this challenging at times, but we were all very resilient and determined not to give up.

To top this all off, we have had a very busy week taking part in Fairtrade Fortnight. Everyone took part and  dressed ‘wacky’ for dress down day on Friday- Well done to everyone.  What could we get up to next week?

P6A and Mrs Matos