It was a successful weekend for SF and P7b and NP in P7a, as they both competed in the local derby match between a Linlithgow schools select and Bo’ness schools select. Linlithgow came out victorious and you can see the boys pictured below with the trophy. SF and NP are just two of our talented footballers we have at Springfield Primary School, who’ll also be representing us in the George Allan tournament this Sunday 20th May at Prestonfield. Kick off is at 9.00am if any of our pupils, parents, carers and families would like to come along and cheer the boys and girls on!
Well done you two! A great achievement and one you should both be extremely proud of!
We’re incredibly proud of all of our school footballers today after another successful league meeting at Xcite Linlithgow! All of the children’s hard work at training is paying dividends as they racked up some impressive results and played some exciting football in the process.
Borussia Springfield managed to remain undefeated in their 7 games, winning 6 and drawing 1 game without conceding a single goal. Well done all of you, fantastic individual and team performances!
Dynamo Springfield included some children making their first competitive appearances today and all of them played extremely well. Four wins, two draws and an unlucky, last minute defeat against their Springfield compatriots made for a hugely successful 90 minutes of play. Super effort from all of you!
Our Primary 6 and 7 school footballers are continuing to train hard ahead of their upcoming league meetings and cluster tournaments. We are currently still training indoors on Mondays from 3.15-4.15pm but will be returning outside on Monday 5th March, at which point both P6 and P7 will train together again. Any P6 and P7 boys and girls are more than welcome to attend, just let Mr. Logan know if you would like to join.
Here are some important dates for the footballing family calendars:
Monday 12th February – HOLIDAY
Monday 19th February – Football league meeting (2), letters to follow
Monday 26th February – P6 training (indoors)
Monday 5th March – P6 and P7 training (outdoors)
Monday 12th March – Football league meeting (3), letters to follow
Monday 19th March – P6 and P7 training (outdoors)
Monday 26th March – HOLIDAY
Monday 2nd April – HOLIDAY
Monday 9th April – Football league meeting (4), letters to follow
Monday 16th April – NO TRAINING
Monday 23rd April – P6 and P7 training (outdoors)
Monday 30th April – P6 and P7 training (outdoors)
Monday 7th May – HOLIDAY
Monday 14th May – P6 and P7 training (outdoors)
Monday 21st May – P6 and P7 training (outdoors)
Monday 28th May – P6 and P7 training (outdoors)
Monday 4th June – NO TRAINING (P7 Camp)
Monday 11th June – P6 and P7 training (outdoors)
Monday 18th June – P6 and P7 training (outdoors)
Monday 25th June – End of year awards ceremony in P7b’s classroom
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
Quick reminder that tomorrow’s football training session will be for P7 only with next week’s session for P6. See below for upcoming sessions and league meeting dates:
Monday 22nd January – P7
Monday 29th January – P6
Monday 5th February – P7
Monday 19th February – League meeting 2 @ Xcite (P7)
This week we started learning about angles and coordinates. We were reminded that an angle is when one line rotates onto another line and is measured in degrees rather than centimetres. The five main types of angle we consolidated our learning of were acute, right, obtuse and reflex angles as well as straights lines. We came up with definitions of how to identify each of these angles, for example, a straight line has to be exactly 180° otherwise it is not a straight line. After spending some time identifying angles in class we moved outside the classroom in small groups using our clipboard to find examples around the school building. We noticed that when you find an example of an acute angle, you have also found a reflex angle. Next week we will be looking for examples around the playground and outdoor areas before discussing uses of angles in the wider natural and built environment. For homework, we consolidated our learning of algebra from before the Christmas holidays by creating our own algebraic problems for a peer to solve. Some of these look incredibly tricky!
Literacy and English
In spelling, we are continuing to extend our learning of unfamiliar spelling patterns and rules, and applying this learning in our written work. We recapped on where we are with our groups novels by summarising the stories so far. In guided reading we have been developing a range of reading skills through our varied independent tasks. Two of our key focuses in writing this term will be note taking and report writing. We are becoming increasingly competent in taking concise notes before using these for other purposes. When engineers, including Hannah’s Dad, visit us next Thursday as part of our STEM work with Mrs. Tulloch, we will be taking notes as they speak and using these to write a follow up report about their visit. We will also be posing them with some pre-prepared higher order questions which we discussed last week with Mrs. Doran. Over the coming weeks we will be learning about creative Scots, particularly famous Scottish musicians from 1970 to the current day. During this time we will be split into groups and provided with the opportunity to plan, prepare and deliver a series of lessons on a musician, band, genre or era of music of our choice. We understand that presenting to an audience is an important life skill and we are looking forward to developing our skills in this area.
Health and Wellbeing
In P.E this week we began a block of football. As many of us have played football before, we spent a brief period of time recapping on the basics before practising our dribbling. It is important when dribbling that we take small, light touches of the football and keep it close to our feet at all times. We were encouraged to use both our feet and have a look around every 2/3 touches in order to move into free spaces. Moving on from this, we used varied surfaces of both our left and right foot (inside, outside, sole, laces) to manipulate the football. Next week will continue our focus on dribbling and close control of the football before applying these skills in small sided games. For homework this week we have been taking selfies doing the actions for our new school values of being kind, respectful, resilient, confident and included. We emailed these to Mr. Logan using Glow and now have them displayed in class on our Health and Wellbeing wall. Come in and have a look!
Coming Up…
Monday 15th January – Football league meeting, Xcite Linlithgow, 4.00 – 5.30pm
Thursday 18th Janaury – Interviewing engineers as part of STEM project, 9.00am
Monday 22nd January – Netball league meeting, school hall, 4.00 – 5.30pm
Thursday 25th January – Scots Family Quiz, 6.00 – 9.30pm
Tuesday 30th January, Wednesday 31st January, Thursday 1st February – Lion King school show tickets on sale outside P7b, 3.15 – 3.45pm
Tuesday 6th February – Parent Council meeting, library, 7.00 – 8.00pm
Thursday 8th February – Linlithgow Academy tour, parent help required, 9.30 – 11.00am
Monday 12th February, Tuesday 13th February – HOLIDAY
Have a fantastic weekend!
Our focus in numeracy over the past few weeks has been fractions, decimals and percentages. We have been working hard to establish the link between these and apply our learning in different, real-life contexts. This week we were asked to prepare a timetable for the S1 pupils at Linlithgow Academy based on the information provided by Mr. Logan. For example; 20% of our timetable had to consist of English, 0.1 had to be for the teaching of P.E whilst 0.05 of the timetable was to be assigned to Spanish. We were successful in doing so, quickly realising that showing our working and reading the question carefully were also important. In West Lothian’s contest on Sumdog, we managed to place in the top 100 schools, with some pupils scoring highly on the individual leaderboard.
Literacy
We are coming to the end of our group novels for Guided Reading and will be saying goodbye to Alex Rider, Harry Potter and The Eejits (The Twits by Roald Dahl converted to Scots). This year, we have been accessing a variety of texts and sources of information and continue to enjoy exploring reading in different ways. During comprehension we looked at a shared text, analysing a newspaper article before identifying and discussing key features and characteristics of the text. For example, we found it interesting that Spider Man’s character was in fact inspired by a fly crawling up a wall, as opposed to a spider. He also has a real address in Forrest Hills, New York, unlike other superheroes. Having carried out our reading this week, we composed 5 higher order questions that we could challenge the peers in our reading group with. These were posted to Yammer, and we had fun logging on to tackle other people’s questions. Finally, we will all be submitting entries to the Young Writer of the Year Competition and having completed our plans and first drafts, we are now moving on to word process our final drafts. Everyone is creating a text of their choice, we have some short stories, poems, newspaper articles and even one or two comic strips. You can look forward to seeing the end products, I’m sure they will be fantastic.
IDL
Our learning theme of World War II continues to interest us, and we have been demonstrating our wealth of knowledge through the creation of a personal project. Each pupil chose an aspect of World War II as the focus for their study and has used the findings from research to begin putting together their final project. From aircraft and naval fleets, to the role of women, the use of propaganda, forms of communication and children during the war, we certainly have a wealth of subtopics covered. These personal projects will form the basis for a class talk which we will deliver during the final term of P7. I’m sure this won’t phase any of our confident individuals and effective contributors here in P7b. Watching The Great Escape has provided a welcome break from our personal projects and we are intrigued as to whether the prisoners-of-war will pull off the finest escape in military history from Stalag Luft III…
Parents’ Evenings
Thank you to those of you who attended our parents’ evenings earlier this week. Both the children and I greatly appreciate the huge role you play in the learning partnership here at Springfield Primary School. On a similar note, thank you to our House Captains and P7 Leaders who volunteered their own time to assist on both evenings. The other teachers, staff and parents were singing their praises and complimenting the mature and sensible manner in which they conducted themselves. I’m incredibly proud of them all.
Next Week
– No homework next week due to ongoing personal projects, these can be submitted to me on Friday 31st March or the first day back after Easter Holidays.
– Academy staff will be here at Springfield P.S to discuss transition and ensure this is a smooth step for all pupils.
– School football training on Monday, 3.30-4.30pm outside. Friendly match against Linlithgow Bridge Primary School on Monday 27th March, letters to be distributed next week to those playing.
– Red Nose Day next Friday 24th March, organised by Pupil Council Committee. ‘Mad Hair’ Dress Down Day, bring £1 along with a bake sale. Please send in any baking bagged and priced, and remember these are to contain NO NUTS. The children may bring money to purchase these on the day.
We hope you enjoyed reading our blog and have a great weekend.
