Burke and Hare – Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

Here’s a summary of our slightly shorter week than usual…

Literacy and English

This week in our shared reading of Holes, Stanley Yelnats has made his escape from Camp Green Lake. He stole the water truck before ironically crashing it into one of the holes he had dug. As he struggled through the desert he has been reunited with Zero in the upturned shipwreck of Mary Lou. We’ll find out next week whether they make it to God’s Thumb or not…

In comprehension, we tackled varied questions based on our reading. Mr Logan has been impressed with the improvement in our responses to these. We have been providing evidence from the text to further explain our point and give additional detail where possible.

Our writing this week has been to apply the features of a newspaper article. We were writing our final drafts of an article about the life of outlaw Kissin’ Kate Barlow from Texas, USA. Next week we will be creating wanted posters

Numeracy and Maths

In Numeracy and Maths we have been using formulae to find the area and volume of 2D and 3D shapes. We found that the perimeter is the total distance around the outside of a shape and area is the space inside a shape. We had to show our units of measurement, formula used and all working to evidence our strategies and thinking.

To demonstrate our learning of volume we made mocktails using a recipe sheet. Have a look at the pictures of this below!

H and N with their accurately measured mocktail.

Learning Across the Curriculum

Art and Design – Our learning this week has been about an American artist called Keith Haring. He creates blob characters that move in different ways along with basic symbols. This ties in with our Science work around the human body. Bold colours are used to create contrast along with bold outlines to make things stand out. We will be completing these next and displaying our work in class.

Science – “We were building electrical circuits with Mrs Doran. We were then shown an example and started planning how to build an electrical game for P1s that contained questions, answers, titles, wires, a bulb, buzzer and motor. We had to describe what theme we wanted. My group decided on an animal quiz.” (Sarah)

P.E – “In futsal we warmed-up by playing a game of handball in teams of 6. We did this to speed up our passing, get into space, help our teammates and communicate. Then we got split into teams and given a number from 1-15. When Neil called a group of numbers you would plat against the other team to score first. In boccia, we started off by learning the rules and playing a game to warm-up. There were three different hoops and each was worth different points. We then played a proper game and were aiming for the white jack ball. Whoever got closest earned points for their team, either red or blue.” (Sarah)

Social Studies – Our work as Dr Robert Know continued this week as we studied the respiratory system of our bodies. The heart and lungs are responsible for this and we found out the journey that oxygen takes as we inhale before it is used by the body. As we exhale, we get rid of a waste product called carbon dioxide. We have been putting together Burke and Hare timelines during Social Studies this week. We researched their crimes and placed these chronologically on our design. Whilst researching, we found that some dates were unknown such as William Hare’s date of birth.

Spanish – This week we had a visit from Jessica, our language ambassador from Linlithgow Academy. She worked with small groups to consolidate our nunbers from 1-30. Next week she will be teaching us about colours in Spanish.

Coming Up

14.2.20 – February holiday
17.2.20 – February holiday
18.2.20 – February holiday
21.2.20 – Achieving Assembly
4.3.20 – Reflective Reading information evening (7-8pm)
4.3.20 – School Show (1)
5.3.20 – School Show (2)
5.3.20 – World Book Day
6.3.20 – BEAR reading event (am)
9.3.20 – Author visiting school (P4-6)
10.3.20 – 80s Dress Down Day for Fame
11.3.20 – Primary Dance Competition (selected pupils)
13.3.20 – P5 Class Assembly (Sport Relief)
25.3.20 – Parents Evening (1)
26.3.20 – Parents Evening (2)
3.4.20 – Easter Service at St Michael’s Church (am)

Enjoy the long weekend everyone!

Written by Mr Logan, Sarah and P5

Here’s what P5 have been up to this week…

Literacy and English

We have continued reading our shared texts Holes, exploring the theme of discrimination within the text. We were told of the life and crimes of Kissin’ Kate Barlow, an old western outlaw in the story. After analysing her transformation from well-to-do school teacher to notorious outlaw, we created newspaper articles about her. These had to include a headline with alliteration, sub-heading, picture with caption, columns for our text and a description of who, what, where, why, when and how?

In writing, we have also been creating Burke and Hare comic strips to summarise events between 1827 and 1829 when their crimes were committed. These were to include a number of commonly seen comic strip features including a variety of bubbles, bold and colourful titles, captions that link with illustrations and onomatopoeia. We look forward to finishing these and displaying them on our Literacy wall next week for everyone to see!

Numeracy and Mathematics

In Numeracy and Mathematics this week we have been learning about the difference between volume and capacity. Capacity is how much an object can hold, whereas volume is the amount of space something occupies. We have also been ordering volume, converting between units of measurement, estimating volume and measuring accurately. Next week we are going to be demonstrating our learning when making mocktails! Here we are below attempting to measure accurately with measuring cylinders and containers. Our challenge was to estimate what 100ml, 250ml, 500ml and 750ml of water would be before checking how close we were and calculating the difference.

Learning Across the Curriculum

On Monday we endured a rather wet and windy walk along to Xcite for P5’s swimming assessments. Well done to all of the children for their lack of moans and positive attitude throughout!

Our Science has taken two routes this term. With Mrs Doran, we have continued our studies of bridges and civil engineering. On Wednesday we designed and built our spaghetti bridges which were to include triangles for extra strength. Mr Logan then worked with us to test each group’s effort and see what weight they could hold. Harrison, Jack G and Calan’s bridge managed to endure a weight of 4.5kg without breaking, brilliant effort guys! Is that a Springfield record?!

We’ve also been studying Human Anatomy in Science, taking on the role of Dr Knox as part of our Burke and Hare studies. Firstly we looked at the building blocks of the body, our cells. We compared animal and plant cells and explored the function of different parts of the cell such as the mitochondria, nucleus and cytoplasm. Later in the week, we discovered more about our circulatory system and how the heart pumps blood around our bodies. We found that the blood travels from:

right atrium > right ventricle > artery > lungs (becomes oxygenated) > artery > left atrium > left ventricle > artery > around our body > to the feet (becomes deoxygenated) > veins > back to the heart.

Ask us about this process at home to share our learning with you.

In French, we played different games to consolidate our learning as part of Scotland Loves Languages week. Nairn and Lucy did a brilliant job, leading these activities as part of their Language Ambassador roles!

We have been continuing our futsal sessions with the West Lothian Youth Football Foundation. This week was a ‘game week’ and we took part in small-sided games. It was a great opportunity for us to demonstrate the skills we’ve been developing over the first three weeks, for example, close control, use of both feet, different surfaces of the foot and accurate passing.

Coming Up

14.2.20 – February holiday
17.2.20 – February holiday
18.2.20 – February holiday
21.2.20 – Achieving Assembly
4.3.20 – Reflective Reading information evening (7-8pm)
4.3.20 – School Show (1)
5.3.20 – School Show (2)
5.3.20 – World Book Day
6.3.20 – BEAR reading event (am)
9.3.20 – Author visiting school (P4-6)
10.3.20 – 80s Dress Down Day for Fame
11.3.20 – Primary Dance Competition (selected pupils)
13.3.20 – P5 Class Assembly (Sport Relief)
25.3.20 – Parents Evening (1)
26.3.20 – Parents Evening (2)
3.4.20 – Easter Service at St Michael’s Church (am)

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

P5 and Mr Logan