It has been such an inspiring week for P4 children as they got to hear ” Tom, the Piper” play some traditional Scottish music. His visit in the P3/4 and P4 classroom paved the way to question and answer opportunities. What a great way for children to practice their question making skills.
Our Viking focus is starting to become quite exciting. Children were able to produce imaginative writing pieces of work. Revision on VCOP strategies took place during this task.
Reading and Art-The P4s harnessed their comprehension skills during their longboat making activity (they had to follow written instructions). This also gave children a chance to practice their teamwork skills.
In Numeracy, we continued learning to calculate sums using mental subtraction method. The children used the numberline to help them get their answers. Revision work on symmetry was also done this week. The children created their own tartan pattern. They also had to apply their skills in estimation and measurement by using rulers to create the shape of a kilt.
For Music (NYCOS) the children explored the rhythm- how to make and follow it.
Thank you so much to Mrs McAlpine and P3/4 for their insightful assembly about Growth Mindset. We all really enjoyed it and learned lots of new things.
Here are our nursery angels who came to join us at assembly showing us our ‘resilience’ value. Look at those big muscles!!
Mrs Parlett and the boys and girls have been making ‘slime’ in the nursery this week which particularly fascinated our P7B boys when we went down for a visit last Tuesday morning. Mrs Fraser has also been busy making the Aurora Borealis at pupils’ request, above the ice palace in the Expressive Arts room. Imagine being able to see the Northern Lights in our nursery! How amazing!
Here is D in P5A with his chess achievement for this week. D took part in a big competition with lots of other children and won! We are so proud of you D! We are also very grateful to D’s Dad, Mr Kitaev, who comes into school each Monday lunchtime to run a Maths Club for our children. If you have a skill to share and would be interested in running a lunchtime or after-school club for our kids then please get in touch with me at school-we’d love to have you as part of our team!
We are delighted to reveal that we have this year’s Gala Queen once again, with the lovely Emilie Cunningham due to take up reign in June from our previous Queen, Ruby. This is a huge accolade for Springfield and for Emilie and her family. We can’t wait to support Emilie over the coming months as she prepares for her big day!
Keep an eye out for the next edition of our school and nursery newsletters which should be mailed out to you all next week.
At the request of one of our P1 girls, we are planning to rearrange the ‘Big Bedtime Story’ for nursery to P3 children which we had to cancel last month due to the snowy weather. We are so sorry that we had to cancel. Watch this space for a new date!
Finally, a very Happy Birthday to AL in P3 who got her birthday sticker in Assembly last Friday. We all hope that you had a lovely day!
It’s been another busy week in P7b, here’s what we’ve been up to…
Numeracy and Mathematics
This week we began a unit of work on data and analysis. We have been selecting appropriate ways to gather and sort data for given purposes and justifying our choice of method, for example, a survey, questionnaire or group tallies. Having gathered this data, we used a variety of methods to display it, including frequency tables, vertical bar charts and line graphs. These displays of data included suitable titles, labels on both axes (which are the fixed vertical and horizontal reference lines) and an appropriate scale. Next week, we will continue to explore different ways in which to gather, organise, analyse and display data including through the use of digital technologies.
Literacy and English
Having reached the floor with their compliment chain, P7b were lucky enough to escape homework this week and consolidated their learning of previous spelling patterns and rules. In writing, we wrote thank you letters to the STEM engineers who visited us and were interviewed ahead of our work to build movable buggies. We adhered to a set structure for our letters before redrafting and printing these using Microsoft Word. On Thursday, we started on an assessed piece of writing with only a picture stimulus to get our creative juices flowing (see below).
A dark picture of a savanna plain.
Having completed our initial planning, we will continue with the writing of our stories next week. As we write, we will be self-assessing our work alongside the criteria for a Second Level piece of work. Mr. Logan is looking forward to reading these once they are completed.
In reading this week, we continued our group novel studies and developed our reading skills using the comprehension box. We chose from a variety of texts before answering different types of questions. When faced with literal questions we looked carefully to find and lift the answer directly from the text. When answering inferential questions we tried to read between the lines using context clues and asking questions to help us make sense of the text. And finally, when posed with evaluative questions we offered our own ideas and opinions, or related our answer to our own personal experiences.
Health and Wellbeing
P7b visited Bonnytoun Nursery this week and enjoyed interacting with our youngest learners. We enjoyed drawing, paired reading, using ICT, building towers, playing with the slime and making sand castles. It was lovely to spend some time with them and we’ll be sure to visit again soon.
As we approach the end of our block of football for P.E, we have been further developing our ability to pass the ball accurately and introduced to shooting. We explored different ways to pass the football before establishing that the inside of our foot is most accurate. However, when shooting, the inside of our foot can be used to improve accuracy but we attempted to use the ‘laces’ to increase the power of our shot. Next week we will be applying these skills in small sided games, analysing our performance and officiating matches.
This week we started our focus on internet safety in the lead up to Safer Internet Day on Tuesday 6th February. We took part in a speed friending game which explored the nature of ‘friendship’ on social media, allowed us to identify risks and danger and taught us how to interact safely with others online. When we do encounter something online which upsets or offends us, we now know what to do in order to get help.
Coming Up
Monday 5th February: P7 after school football
Tuesday 6th February: Parent Council meeting, 6.00-7.00pm in library
Tuesday 6th February – Thursday 8th February : Lion King tickets on sale to all parents, carers and families from 3.15-3.30pm
Thursday 8th February: S1 transition tour for all P7s, 9.30-11.00am, please return EE2 forms by Tuesday
Friday 9th February: Pupil Voice Committees
Monday 12th February & Tuesday 13th February: HOLIDAY, return Wednesday 14th February
An exciting netball practice this week. The netball girls were very fortunate to have Rachel Johnston, from West Lothian Wild Cats, come along to practice and help the girls further develop their netball skills. Rachel helped the netball girls to focus on ball passing skills, as well as some footwork. We very grateful to have had this opportunity with Rachel, and Mrs Matos and Miss Harrison know that the girls have taken on board what they were shown , and are going to show their skills at the next upcoming netball tournament.
Just a reminder there is no Netball on Wednesday, 7th February 2018, but that training will be on Wednesday , 14th February 2018.
‘If a child cannot learn in the way we teach, we must teach in a way that a child can learn’ – unknown author.
Literacy: We continue to improve and develop our spelling skills. This week we concentrated on words with a shared spelling pattern, we completed a variety of active spelling tasks to help us develop our spelling skills and knowledge further. Figure of Speech was a focus in our writing this week. We learnt the difference between Metaphors and Similes and how they can be used effectively in our writing. We took our imagination and writing on a ‘Frozen Adventure’, we used creativity to write a descriptive story about our adventure to a snowy and frozen destination, our focus of learning was to use Metaphors and Similes as a way of describing our journey. We continued on from last weeks Scots language focus. Using the Scots dictionaries and some new Scots words that we have learnt, we wrote a play script.
Numeracy: A special message from Harry Potter came through our promethean baord, with a variety of negative number calculations. This week we consolidated our learning of negative numbers. Mrs Matos was very impressed with our enthusiasm and positivity of learning this week during numeracy. We have all grown confidently during number talks, and we continue to try and share a range of different strategies when solving multiplication equations.
PE: We continuing with volleyball skills this week with Mrs Reid and with Mrs Matos we continue to learn and practice hockey skills.
Scottish Colourists: Using the netbooks and some books that Mrs Manlove kindly let us use, we researched and summarised key facts about one of the famous Scottish Colourists. The artists’ work has inspired us to use the same key elements to create our own version, next week we will continue to sketch our still life.
Lion King: We’ve been working hard at our Lion King rehearsals. This is definitely one production you don’t want to miss. If you haven’t got your tickets yet, they will be on sale this week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoon, don’t wait they going fast!
Well done to Joseph and Erin who both received a values award this week in assembly. Please remember that we don’t only celebrate achievement in school, if you achieve anything outwith school, bring it to class and share your achievements with us.
Thanks to everyone who managed to come along to the children’s assembly today and for all your lovely comments. We really appreciated them!
Next Week’s home learning is:
Reading
Pages covered in class from reading books
Choose literacy task from Viking Home Learning Grid:
(• Write a Viking saga.• Write a fact file about a Viking god or goddess.• Read a novel about Vikings and tell a friend or family member about it.)
As recommended on dojo, these are not tasks that need to be all completed in a week. It is an independent project for the children to choose and work on over this term (to be completed by 12th March).
Spelling
Learn words written out from sheet. These are the last of the Level 2 words. I will be assessing the children again to see what improvement they have made.
-ed
-ed
dented
melted
dusted
mended
ended
planted
funded
rusted
grunted
tested
handed
hunted
landed
lifted
listed
Numeracy
Play number bonds games on Sumdog or Education City:
Bond the multiples of 5 with 100 e.g. 65 and 35, 55 and 45, 45
Optional
Choose an additional task from Viking home learning grid (not literacy or numeracy).
We have a few events coming up:
15.2.18 Author Natasha Rimmington will visit all P3 children
1.3.18 am Trip to Peel to do a workshop on animal tracks as we are doing farming next term (parent helpers needed)
6.3.18 (tbc) RBS are coming in to do a money sense workshop. Thank you to Mrs McLellan who informed me of this workshop.
P1B wanted to know how a steam engine works, with the help of a very good Thomas the Tank Engine clip, we learned about all the parts of a steam engine and how they work together. We acted out how a steam engine works, then coloured our diagrams and explained to a partner how a steam engine works to power a train.
In literacy this week we have been learning the sounds ‘th’ and ‘wh’ and reading and writing sentences – looking more closely at sentence structure. We have been looking out for capital letters, finger spaces and full stops as we read and then making sure we put these in as we write sentences.
In numeracy we are becoming very familiar with numbers to 20 and beyond. We have been using the language ‘before, after and in-between’ as we discuss the numbers.
We have had a ‘Kindness Bucket’ in the class for a few weeks. We begin each week with an empty bucket and Mrs Kennedy puts ‘kindness’ in it when we do something kind – being kind to each other, looking after toys and resources nicely and being kind to Mrs Kennedy and our friends by listening well and not interrupting. We filled the bucket this week and got an extra long Golden time on Friday – outside!
Have a lovely weekend everyone, it’s so nice to see the sun shining!
This week we completed our Shape Shifter stories and we peer assessed them. Mrs Tulloch read some of our feedback and we discussed how to improve our writing. We then went back again to our stories to up level them, choosing a few sentences that we could improve on by adding more descriptive vocabulary or starting the sentence in an interesting way.
In maths, we continued to work with money and also revised how to do chimney sums and decomposition. We are looking at the layout of bills and comparing amounts.
In science we completed our foil boat challenge. Well done Ada and Isaac…..196 marbles was amazing and Mr Wells and Miss Baillie couldn’t believe how many it could hold. We then were able to use all the hard science vocabulary to explain what made the best boat: buoyancy, density and surface volume.
At PE we continued to play handball. It was quite competitive.
We are still presenting our powerpoints on Charles Rennie Macintosh.
Everyone successfully recited or read aloud their Scots poems. Well done. Those that learned them off by heart went to a class of their choice to recite them. Mr Logan gave 10 house points as they were so good.
In Maths, we continued to work with money and also revised how to do chimney sums and decomposition. We also looked at planning a party and working out what items we could afford within a set budget. Next week we will be looking at the layout of bills and comparing amounts.
On Tuesday we went to the Rugby club and played a variety of different rugby based games. We especially liked the game ‘sharks and fishes’ because it gave us a chance to move swiftly and apply our dodging skills. We enjoyed the tag rugby because it allowed us to show off our rugby skills and try our best. Some of us felt tired out from the walking but we were glad to get the fresh air and exercise.
In the afternoon we had maths and we were learning about time, including minutes to and past the hour plus the 24 hour clock. We liked this challenging time work and were identifying aspects of time that we encounter in our daily lives.
On Wednesday we used our ICT skills to carry out research on Charles Rennie Mackintosh and have been making “flip style” display books to record the information about his life, work and achievements. We found out that his work is now very famous and can be found in building design, paintings, posters, jewellery, clocks, furniture and posters.
In science we completed our foil boat challenge. Well done Sam and Arran…..196 marbles was amazing and Mr Ritchie couldn’t believe how many it could hold. We then were able to use all the hard science vocabulary to explain what made the best boat, buoyancy, density, surface volume.
Everyone successfully completed reciting or reading aloud their Scots poems. Some also included actions which really made the poems come to life. Well done everyone!
In Numeracy and Maths, we have been learning to find numbers after, before and between with numbers to 20. We found numbers after and before on number lines, played ‘Eggs to Order’ on the computer, highlighted the numbers after on challenge cards and used our knowledge of after, before and between to sequence numbers. This week we have also been learning about pictograms. We played ‘Summer Fair’ on Education City and had to answer questions using pictograms. We also made our own pictograms.
This week our new sounds were ‘th’ and ‘wh’ and our new common words were ‘be’ and ‘she’. We played a memory game with ‘th’ words, made ‘th’ with loose parts, practised writing ‘th’ words and sentences and played ‘The Three Paths’ on Education City. When learning ‘wh’, we made ‘wh’ with play dough, drew ‘wh’ pictures and played a game to practise reading ‘wh’ words. We have also been writing some of our common words on our whiteboards.
This week we have been looking at non-fiction texts and talking about their features. We looked at the contents page, the labels and the photographs. For writing this week, we used our knowledge of cars to write our own car facts. We were able to use a capital letter, full stop and finger spaces. We knew lots of facts as we looked at photographs of cars from the past and we talked about how cars have changed through the years. Did you know that the first car only had space for two people? We also looked at how cars work and watched a video on how car engines work! On Friday we watched ‘Reach Out Reporter’ and listened to facts about hammerhead sharks and volcanoes. We have enjoyed learning through non-fiction texts and we will continue to look at different types of texts every week.
Thank you for reading our blog post. We hope that you have a lovely weekend.
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