ICT – Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

April 27, 2018April 27, 2018

27.4.18 5A Blog

We started our literacy circle this week and everybody was very pleased with their choice of book. There was lots of discussion about the cover, illustrations and our initial feelings about the story line and characters. Mrs Tulloch had a job trying to get us to stop talking. Everyone has a role for next week and we look forward to listening to how everyone in the group manages their literacy circle task.

We were using dictionaries to help when up leveling our writing. For comprehension, we focused on reading for information and this should help us prepare for our class talks.

In maths, we focused on equivalent fractions and simplifying fractions. This was quite tricky and we need to practise the method we have been using in class. Next week we will be finding fractions of an amount. Mrs Gordon was pleased with our work on area and we will continue with perimeter.

We started our new IDL geography trail about Scotland and used a map to show: what we know, what we would like to find out and how we are going to do it.

At PE, we practiced our drills at basketball and had some very fast games. Lots of double dribbles though!

Mrs Bain gave us instruments and we were practicing keeping different rhythms.

Mr Logan continued with our internet safety and we completed our posters.

We continued with Scratch and have been showing our work, cartoon and movies to rest of the class. They are fab.

February 8, 2018

P7b Weekly Blog

Numeracy and Mathematics

We have been continuing our work on data handling this week. In doing so, we have both asked and answered questions to extract key information from varied data and displayed this by drawing pie charts and creating them using Microsoft Word. Next, we will be looking at measure through learning about area and volume. Making estimations, calculating the perimeter, calculating area using cm/m² and volume using cm/m³, using scales accurately, converting measurements and demonstrating an understanding of imperial units and how they are still used in everyday life. We have set some maths word problem challenges for the upper school and shall wait to see if anyone manages to solve them for a reward!

Literacy and English

Sam was chosen as this week’s Star Writer in P7b after he produced a superb creative piece of writing about the African savanna. Everyone worked incredibly hard on their pieces of writing and we will be peer assessing these next week using our Second Level writing criteria. This will allow us to form our own next steps and targets in writing over the coming weeks. You can now see this on our Star Writer wall, it’s well worth a read. We have been brushing up on our uses of apostrophes for both contraction and possession, and trying to implement this in our own writing. On Yammer, we thought of higher order questions which we would like to pose to members of staff from the Academy and will hopefully have these answered when they visit us ahead of transition.

Health and Wellbeing

In P.E this week, we designed our own football games that incorporated the skills we have developed so far; passing, dribbling and shooting. The children came up with some fantastic ideas and provided a clear explanation and demonstration as to how their game was played. Our focus on internet safety was geared towards online content this week. We had to assess some of the content which you may encounter online, decide on it’s appropriateness and then discuss the effect this could have on people. As a result, we are now aware of how to best respond when we come across something online which upsets us or makes us feel uncomfortable. On Thursday, we had a tour of Linlithgow Academy as part of our transition to S1. It was great to have a look around, meet some of the staff and have some burning questions answered. We look forward to our 3 transition days in June now. Finally, Lion King rehearsals have carried on this week where we have been designing and creating scenery, making costumes and having our first full run through in the hall. The main cast managed this off-script, our lionesses were fierce and our ensemble were singing beautifully throughout. Well done to all involved, and thank you to Mrs. Gordon, Mrs. Matos and Miss Prince for their continued efforts in getting us prepared!

Have a relaxing and restful long weekend everyone, it’s well deserved.

P7b’s Superstars and Mr. Logan

November 17, 2017

P7b Weekly Blog

It’s been another busy week in P7b, so here’s a brief summary of the goings-on…

Numeracy

P7b have been working hard when applying their decimals knowledge when using money. This week we have been focusing on bills and calculating total costs through various word and multi-step problems. Our enterprise projects have allowed us to use these skills in a practical context when resourcing items required and providing Mr. Logan with a total cost for our order. In doing so, we were asked to make price comparisons and attempt to gather quality resources at a reasonable price. On Tuesday we were lucky enough to have Mr. Fryer (Lois’s Dad) in to visit both P7 classes. Mr. Fryer works as a Senior Mortgage Manager for TSB was was able to share his wealth of knowledge around budgeting. He worked closely with each enterprise group, discussing their projects and offering some support to the calculation of their costs and potential gross/net profits.

Literacy

We are continuing to enjoy our group novels in guided reading; from Adolphus Tips to Alex Rider, and Gangsta Granny to The Hunger Games. Now that some groups have finished their first novel, they have been given the choice as to what text they read next. In P7b we promote an enjoyment of reading through the opportunity for personalisation and choice. Mr. Logan has been impressed with the level of expression we are beginning to use to engage our audience when reading. On Wednesday, we looked at our first ‘shared reading’ text as a whole class. We were studying a poem called ‘Wind’ by Dionne Brand. The poem was written in the first person and brought human-like qualities to the wind through repeated uses of personification. The higher order discussion was great to hear and we were amazed by how many features of the text came to our attention the more we read. On Thursday, we began using our new Big Writing Adventures resource with Mrs. Doran and look forward to more of these lessons in the coming weeks!

Health and Wellbeing

This week was our anti-bullying and racism focus in school. With kindness being one of our school’s values, we must always ensure we treat each other with the utmost respect and in a way which we would like to be treated ourselves. Mrs. Matos delivered our first two Respect lessons where we discussed gender equality and what respect means to us. We compared our definitions with the dictionary definition and rewrote what this looks like in our classroom. This will be used throughout the year to refer back to and promote positive behaviour and relationships in the classroom. We demonstrated kindness by dressing down and donating money to Chlldren in Need on Friday. Thank you to Mrs. Gordon and the Pupil Council Committee for organising such a successful event, and of course to those who baked. The cakes and sweets were delicious! We will let you know in due course how much we have raised.

Coming Up This Term

Road Safety Week next week
Enterprise project orders to be placed next Monday
Pupil Voice Committees next Friday
Big Write event in class on Tuesday at 9.30 – 10.30am
Last session of futsal on 27.11.17
Skills for Learning, Life and Work focus group on 29.11.17 at 7pm
Skiing block begins on 30.11.17 at 8.30am – 1.15pm (4 weeks)
PTA Glitter Ball and Christmas Dress Down Day on 1.12.17
Nativity performances on 6.12.17 and 7.12.17
Christmas Fayre on 8.12.17 at 9.30am – 12 noon
Learning Showcase in classes on 13.12.17 at 1pm
Christmas Service at St. Michael’s on 19.12.17 at 6.30 – 7.30pm
Carols Round the Tree and Christmas jumpers on 22.12.17
Christmas holidays from 22.12.17 – 9.1.18

To all our parents, carers and families, have a fantastic weekend!

P7b and Mr. Logan

November 5, 2017

P7b Weekly Blog

Numeracy

Last week in Numeracy and Mathematics we came to a conclusion with our work using decimal numbers. Whilst establishing the link to both fractions and percentages, we have been adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing decimal numbers through the use of written methods. We understand that ahead of our transition to S1 it is of great importance to show our working and verbalise the strategies we are using when completing written calculations or developing our mental arithmetic. Even if we don’t find the correct answer, we will gain credit for the steps we have taken in getting there. As it was Halloween on Tuesday, our problem solving this week was titled ‘Murder at the Movies’. We had to apply our knowledge of decimals in order to cross off names from the suspects list before eventually finding the culprit. Next week we will be further developing our knowledge of decimal numbers as we move on to look at money. This will be good practise ahead of our Christmas Fayre enterprise work where we will need to use money to purchase resources, work to a budget and hopefully calculate eventual gross and net profits.

Literacy

In spelling we are continuing to challenge ourselves with tricky spelling rules and patterns. Mr. Logan has been thoroughly impressed with the scores in our spelling test each Friday and the ability to demonstrate our understanding of these words’ definitions in our ambitious, up-leveled sentences. On Thursday we used mind maps as a tool for planning our Poppy Factory visit recount writing. This allowed us to note down key points and phrases that would aid the flow and structure of our work. These pieces of writing will be continued next week where we also have our Big Write event to look forward to. In this time we will be writing some rainforest tanka poems. Our guided reading timetables have been altered as we move onto new group novels, and we ended this week by entering discussion groups on Yammer. This online space within Glow was used to answer a range comprehension type questions posed by Mr. Logan and discuss our novels in greater detail with our peers.

Health and Wellbeing

In P.E, we have been practising ahead of our Linlithgow cluster Sportshall Athletics festival next Wednesday. The events we have been working on are speed bounce, chest push, standing long jump, vertical jump, javelin and relay races. If we are successful at the cluster event, we will move forward to West Lothian finals and Mr. Logan believes we have every chance of doing so judging by the level of performance he has seen. The Sports Committee had their second meeting of the session on Friday and pupils worked hard to design a new logo that will be displayed on any Sports Committee work around school. We will be voting for our winning design at our next meeting in December. Finally, Sam had some fantastic news to share this week as he has been selected to ball boy in Andy Murray’s Live Event next Tuesday. Murray will be facing Roger Federer amongst other matches at the SSE Hydro and you can tune in on Eurosport from 7pm for a chance to see Sam in action!

Coming Up This Term

The Great Kapok Tree book study next week
Enterprise project for Christmas Fayre begins on Monday
Big Write event in class on Tuesday at 9.30 – 10.30am
4 x P7b pupils to attend St. Michael’s Day Care Centre on Tuesday at 1.15 – 3.15pm
P7 Sportshall Athletics festival at Linlithgow Leisure Centre on Wednesday at 1.10 – 2.50pm
Anti-bullying and racism focus starts in class week beginning 13.11.17
Liaise with Leadership on 15.11.17 at 5-6pm
Children in Need on 17.11.17
Last session of futsal on 27.11.17
Skills for Learning, Life and Work focus group on 29.11.17 at 7pm
Skiing block begins on 30.11.17 at 8.30am – 1.15pm (4 weeks)
PTA Glitter Ball and Christmas Dress Down Day on 1.12.17
Nativity performances on 6.12.17 and 7.12.17
Christmas Fayre on 8.12.17 at 9.30am – 12 noon
Learning Showcase in classes on 13.12.17 at 1pm
Christmas Service at St. Michael’s on 19.12.17 at 6.30 – 7.30pm
Carols Round the Tree and Christmas jumpers on 22.12.17
Christmas holidays from 22.12.17 – 9.1.18

Thank you for reading!

P7b and Mr. Logan

May 5, 2017May 5, 2017

P7b Blog

Numeracy and Mathematics

Although it’s been a short week, we have continued our work on Information Handling by looking at straight line graphs. We began by plotting data based on the average temperatures and rainfall in our area into Microsoft Excel before applying our ICT skills to create straight line charts using Microsoft Word. On Friday, we analysed and interpreted information from comparative line graphs where more than one set of data is being compared.

Literacy and English

No reading homework this week with it being a short one, much to the delight of the children. We will continue with our group novels next week. This week our focus in literacy was proofreading and up-levelling, two very important skills required for writing and creating texts. We were given a passage that required spelling and grammatical errors to be corrected before up-levelling the same passage to make it more interesting and exciting for the reader through the use of ambitious VCOP. Mr. Logan is continuing to look through our personal projects and feedback will be given on these next week.

Health and Wellbeing

Athletics is our new focus for P.E, with the overall aim being to improve our levels of fitness over the next 8 weeks. As a baseline assessment of our fitness levels, we took part in the Cooper Test (12 minute run) and measured the distance we were able to cover over the allotted time. At the end of this term, we will redo this test with the hope being that our overall distance increases. There was no golf this week, however, we continued with our rugby taster sessions and enjoyed getting out in the sunshine to further develop our ball handling and passing skills.

Next week:

Monday – EE2 forms for Time Capsule trip, George Allan football letters to be returned
Monday – After school football from 3.30 – 4.30pm
Tuesday – Golf sessions at Kingsfield from 1.00 – 2.00pm
Tuesday – Rugby taster session from 2.30 – 3.15pm
Wednesday – Some pupils visiting Linlithgow Academy at 11.30am

Enjoy the sunshine!

P7b & Mr. Logan

March 17, 2017March 17, 2017

P7b Blog

Numeracy and mathematics

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.

Primary 7b and Mr. Logan

May 17, 2016May 17, 2016

Digital Learning Week – May 2016

It’s National Digital Learning Week and Springfield Primary are taking part in this very successfully!

This work has been happening all year and we were really excited to engage with schools in Falkirk to share good practice. Following a visit from children and teachers at St. Bernadette’s and Victoria Primary School, our children also wanted to be digital leaders. After submitting application forms for the post of digital leader, two children from each class were appointed and this news was celebrated in assembly.

This week, our digital leaders (with the help of Mrs McMahon and Mrs McCartney) are delivering a digital leader lesson to their peers. This is really exciting and going very well so far. We look forward to more digital leader work in the future!