Tag: literacy

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P7b Blog

Numeracy and Mathematics

How much does a polar bear weigh? Enough to break the ice. Hello and welcome to this week’s P7b Blog. As you may have guessed, our focus this week has been weight. We have been using different scales to measure various objects and successfully converted between grams and kilograms, applying our previous knowledge that there are 1000g for every 1kg. Alongside this, we have been tackling weight word problems where we have to unpick exactly what each question is asking us to do. We also discussed the difference between imperial and metric systems of measure, and real-life examples of these being used. Following on from our focus on weight we have started our work on volume and capacity. We are now able to convert between litres, centilitres and millilitres, and use a formula (v = l x b x h) to find the volume of different containers and 3D shapes.

Literacy and English

All week we have been presenting our class talks to our peers. We have delivered a summarised version of our personal projects which focused on a specific aspect of World War II. Mr. Logan has been blown away by the standard of presentations and the hard work which has gone into the preparation and delivery of them. We have demonstrated that we are confident individuals who can present with the appropriate use of voice, tone, clarity and pace. Each and every class talk was detailed and interesting, with ICT used to support our work and audience interaction throughout. We understand that delivering presentations is an important skill for learning, life and work and we will be given a number of opportunities to do so after making our transition to Linlithgow Academy.

Health and Wellbeing

This week we had a workshop on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking. It was delivered by Lyndsay from the Just Enough charity. The children learnt a great deal about both issues and were shocked by some of the statistics that were shared. They can now more confidently identify the signs that somebody may be being trafficked or held as a slave. Thank you to Lyndsay and the Just Enough team for this excellent learning opportunity.

Our football teams had their final training session on Monday ahead of the annual George Allan football tournament at Linlithgow Rose F.C’s ground this weekend. We looked specifically at our shape, set-plays and both attacking and defending in 1v1 and 2v1 situations. The boys and girls are very excited ahead of this Sunday and would appreciate any support from parents, carers, friends and family members on the day. The first group matches kick-off at 9am and will run until approximately 12 noon. Please get along and cheer us on. Go Springfield!

Next week:

  • Sunday – George Allan football tournament  – 8.30am @ Linlithgow Rose F.C
  • Monday – No after school football this week, resumes Monday 5th June
  • Monday – Drug Education workshop @ 9-11am
  • Tuesday – Final Kingsfield golf session @ 1-2pm
  • Thursday – PTA Disco @ 7.30 – 9pm, tickets available in school
  • Thursday – Deadline for any medication for school camp
  • Friday – Camp dormitory and activity groups to be shared
  • Friday – All book festival EE2 forms to be returned
  • Monday 29th May – Friday 2nd June: Dukeshouse Wood all week

Enjoy your weekend, 6 weeks to go!

P7b & Mr. Logan

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P7b Blog

Numeracy and Mathematics

This week we completed our work on Information Handling. The children have been creating 3D pie charts and interpreting data from a variety of sources, explaining and describing this in great detail and promoting some high quality discussion. Alongside this, we have been refreshing our memories of how to find the range, mode, median and mean when presented with a list of numbers. Our rhyme to the tune of ‘Row Your Boat’ has been helpful in reminding us the definition of each of these terms.

“Mode, mode, mode is the most, average is the mean. Median, median, median, median the number in between.”

Literacy and English

Our focus in writing this term is creative texts. This week we were given the theme of ‘World War II’ and prepared imaginative pieces of writing based on our IDL learning theme. Within our writing, we focused on proofreading and up-levelling to ensure that our work makes sense and interests the reader. We also attempted to use a range of ambitious VCOP, incorporated detail through our use of description and explanation and used ICT to word process our stories. Mr. Logan and the other staff in the upper school have compiled a list of new novels to purchase and we look forward to getting our hands on these texts in Guided Reading before the end of term. Next week we have our class talks where we will present a summary of our personal projects to the rest of the class. Mr. Logan is looking forward to seeing our presentations, they’re going to be excellent.

Health and Wellbeing

In P.E we have been further developing our skills in athletics and improving our fitness levels. At the beginning of the week we participated in 200m running, using the stopwatches to time our peers and accurately recording our results. On Thursday we upped our distance and paced ourselves appropriately when completing the 800m event. We surprised ourselves with our ability to beat our personal best times and were given some time for Outdoor Play as a reward for our efforts. Our golf and rugby sessions continued with our specialist coaches and we look forward to next week’s sessions. Maybe P7b will be lucky enough to meet professional golfer Stephen Gallacher this time…

Sciences

Finally, we celebrated further STEM engineering success this week as every pupil in P7b received a pass, merit or distinction grade for their inventions. Ross Findlater was shortlisted for a trophy at his year group and we will cross our fingers in the hope that he is successful.

Next week:

  • Monday – Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Workshop
  • Monday – After school football 3.30 – 4.30pm
  • Tuesday – Golf 2-3pm, rugby taster session 2.30 – 3.15pm
  • Thursday – P7 Booster Groups
  • Friday – Mrs. Malcolm’s last day at Springfield P.S
  • EE2 forms for Time Capsule, Code of Conduct for school camp and First Aid agreements to be returned
  • George Allan football letters to be returned

Have a great weekend and thanks for your continued support of all things P7b.

P7b & Mr. Logan

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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

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P7b Blog

Numeracy and Mathematics

This week P7b have been started their work on Information Handling. We have been gathering, interpreting and displaying data in a variety of ways. Firstly, we created and carried out surveys based on a question of our choice before using Microsoft Word and Excel to present our results in the form of vertical bar charts. We then analysed each other’s bar charts and discussed the trends from our results. Additionally, we have been consolidating our previous learning of tally charts and frequency tables as a method of gathering data. Next week, we will continue our work on Information Handling when using pie charts and both straight and curved line graphs.

Literacy and English

Having finished reading our previous group novels, we have now moved on to study our final text for Guided Reading this year. The Red group will be reading Artemis Fowl, the Blue group will be reading Tiger and the Green and Yellow groups will be studying texts written in Scot’s. Our main focus this week for reading and comprehension was tackling cloze procedure passages where we were asked to fill in the gaps in passages both with and without the help of a word bank. Where there was no word bank provided, we had to carefully select the most appropriate word to ensure the sentence makes sense. For writing, we have been ensuring our work is detailed and accurate through our ability to up-level and proof read. When looking back at our writing, we identified examples of where we could use more ambitious examples of VCOP and implemented strategies to correct our spelling and punctuation. Our class talks will be based on our personal project theme and we must be prepared to deliver these the week beginning Monday 15th May. Mr. Logan is looking forward to hearing us present.

Health and Wellbeing

After our final session of basketball for P.E, which involved small-sided games and a tournament, we are ready to move onto our final block of P.E for P7. This will be outdoors to further develop our skills in athletics. Alongside P.E in school, we have also been lucky enough to participate in both golf and rugby sessions this week. A group of pupils from P7b travelled to Kingsfield Golf Range on Tuesday afternoon, courtesy of the Stephen Gallacher Foundation, to begin a 4 week programme designed to get young people playing golf. Mr. Logan accompanied us to the session where we used irons and were introduced to the ‘GASP’ routine (Grip, Aim, Stance, Posture). Those who stayed at school took part in the first of our rugby taster sessions delivered by volunteers from Linlithgow Rugby Club. Our pupils are incredibly lucky to be given these sporting opportunities and were a credit to Springfield Primary School throughout.

Sciences

Finally, Mrs. Tulloch and P7b have been working tirelessly over recent weeks to prepare moving buggies as part of our STEM project. The winners were announced today and we say a huge well done to Niamh and Cameron who were awarded First Prize. This was seen as a welcome birthday present for Niamh who turned 12 today! Third Prize also went to two members of P7b, Eve and Ross. Well done to all of our pupils for their hard work and perseverance throughout the project and thank you to Mrs. Tulloch. It wouldn’t have been possible without her!

Next week:

  • Monday – HOLIDAY
  • Tuesday – Golf @ Kingsfield 1-2pm, rugby taster session 2.45 – 3.15pm
  • Thursday – HOLIDAY
  • Friday – Russell’s assembly, dress down day for the Galaday (£1 per pupil)
  • No leavers hoodies to be worn until June
  • Personal Project feedback

Have a restful long weekend.

P7b & Mr. Logan

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P7b Blog

Numeracy and mathematics

We demonstrated our learning and applied our knowledge of decimals in a topic assessment this week. All of us have been working incredibly hard to develop our understanding of decimals which has been a tricky topic. Thankfully, our positive attitude towards our learning and growth mindsets have enabled us to get to grips with various new concepts and we impressed Mr. Logan with our scores. After Easter we will be moving on to information and data handling where we shall be collecting, displaying using ICT, interpreting and analysing data in various forms including pie charts, bar graphs and line graphs.

Literacy

Our escape plans have been completed and Julia was chosen as our winner. Her plan was intricately thought out and carefully prepared, so therefore, she received the Easter egg prize. Well done Julia and the rest of the class, what detailed and instructive pieces of writing you produced. We have also submitted our final entries to the West Lothian Young Writer of the Year competition and we will cross our fingers that one of this year’s winners will be from P7b.

IDL

West Lothian Council’s Museum Service visited us this week to display and discuss some local WWII artefacts. We found this to be incredibly interesting and informative, and enjoyed being given the opportunity to handle and look closely at these items. Joe was chosen as our Air Raid Warden and had the pleasure of wearing a metal helmet throughout the hour long session. We hope your neck isn’t too sore! Some personal projects have been completed and handed in, and Mr. Logan is now looking forward to marking these over the Easter holidays. Having had a brief look at them already, he is impressed with the level of research and detail that has been put into these. You should be proud of these P7b, such an incredibly talented group of pupils.

Friday

P7 showed what responsible citizens they are as they accompanied their P1 Buddies to St. Michael’s Church for our Easter Service today. We enjoyed hearing from Sheryl and Stuart at church and celebrating the end of the school term with some songs and confidently delivered readings. Well done from Mr. Logan and P7b to the pupils from P4, P5 and P6 who were brave enough to speak in front of such a large audience. Thank you also to our parents and carers who joined us for the Easter Service, it was great to  see you.

First week back

  • Camp medical forms to be sent home
  • STEM buggies to be judged by Mrs. Burgess and Mr. Woodhouse on Thursday 20th April
  • Golf EE2 letters home to those participating
  • Rugby taster sessions

Have a lovely Easter everyone, thanks for your continued support with all things P7b!

P7b and Mr. Logan

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Learning through play

What a lot of fun we’ve had outdoors this week. Edward’s dad has made a new water resource for us and we’ve been learning about the flow of water as we play. We’ve also been finding out how we can recycle water and we’ve been using mathematical language such as full and empty. We’ve shown good problem-solving skills outdoors when using our outdoor scales and when making a great selection of meals in our muddy kitchen. Can you see Matthew is writing his recipe  for his muddy soup.

 

 

 

 

This week many of our nursery children also visited P1. They had an opportunity to listen to a story read by the P1 teachers and then had a chance to play in a P1 classroom. Many of our children had made Easter hats which they wore during their visit.Thank you to the teachers who really welcomed all our children and to the boys and girls in P1 who were so kind and helpful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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P7b Blog

Numeracy and mathematics

We continued with our work on decimals this week in numeracy, dividing them by 10, 100 and 1,000 and applying our prior knowledge of place value to assist us with this. Having established that when dividing, our decimal point moves to the left and when multiplying to the right, we moved on to sequence and order decimal fractions with up to 5 places after the decimal point. We were also able to multiply and divide decimals using a calculator before rounding to the nearest whole number which aided us with some work on estimation and approximation. Next week, we will be looking at percentages and real-life contexts where these may be used.

Literacy

Our literacy work this week started with the study of a shared text on The Tudor period. This period of British history is a particular interest of some pupils and we took the opportunity to discuss and annotate a passage written by Lady Marsden. In this, she reflected on Mary Queen of Scots’ execution and the array of emotions that coincided with this. We were able to effectively find examples of where she was sympathetic towards Mary, and in contrast, where she was openly critical of Queen Elizabeth I. Additionally, we identified, discussed and annotated figurative language and instances of emotive language within Lady Marsden’s recount of events. Our writing lesson this week was inspired by The Great Escape and we have been creating instructional texts detailing a plan for an escape from the prisoner-of-war camp, Stalag Luft III. Our ideas were incredibly creative and the level of detail certainly left nothing to chance. I think it’s safe to say, P7b would have managed to elude the German guards!

IDL

As of last week, we have been continuing to put together our personal projects and are making excellent progress with these. Mr. Logan cannot wait to read these; a huge amount of hard work is being put in to meet both the criteria and deadline. Both P7 classes were very lucky to have two visitors in class this week to discuss different aspects of WWII. Firstly, Mrs. Gordon’s Aunt visited us to speak about primary and secondary sources of information from WWII, highlighting the difference between the two and sharing some local stories. We also welcomed in Mr. Boiling (Andrew’s Dad) who is a college lecturer in Glasgow. He delivered a presentation on The War at Sea during WWII. P7b enjoyed hearing about the naval warfare between the two sides, and how Germany’s most powerful warship, the Bismarck, was eventually sunk in an act of vengeance ordered by Winston Churchill.

Friday

We did our best to give Mr. Logan the fright of his life as he stepped out the door this morning with our crazy and wacky hairstyles in aid of Red Nose Day and Comic Relief. As a class we brought in just over £28 and donated in addition to this through our purchases at the bake sale organised by the Pupil Council. A huge thank you to them for organising this, along with Mrs. Gordon. We celebrated another successful week in P7b, winning the Peg Challenge for the second week running and also the Class of the Week trophy. This was as a result of them moving round the school sensibly and quietly, and for sharing such a depth of knowledge relating to WWII. P7’s quality of higher order questioning was particularly impressive, and caught the attention of both our visitors to class. They demonstrated their inferential and evaluative thinking when presented with a wealth of information. Well done P7b, I am incredibly proud of you, demonstrating again what an asset and credit you are to our school. With the weather being so nice, we finished up our day with Golden Time outside. Mr. Logan’s football team missed out on victory in a well contested 5-5 draw. To be continued next week…

Next Week

  • Camp EE2 forms to be sent home on Monday and returned by Friday 31st March at the latest
  • Friendly football fixture versus Linlithgow Bridge P.S on Monday at 4:15pm
  • Bunny Bingo on Tuesday evening
  • Easter Parade and songs on Thursday
  • WWII artifacts in P7 on Thursday afternoon 1-2pm
  • Easter Assembly on Friday morning at St. Michael’s, P7 to accompany P1 buddies

Thanks again for taking the time to read our class blog, we hope you all have a lovely weekend. One week to go!

P7b and Mr. Logan

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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

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mark making in nursery

It is really important for our children to have opportunities to make marks in nursery. Making marks with different resources helps to develop emergent writing. Look at just some of the things we’ve been doing.

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Nursery- learning about dinosaurs

Dinosaurs

Over the last few weeks we have been learning about dinosaurs. The children wanted to create Dinosaur Kingdom in our outdoor area. Dinosaurs were added to this area, they had pretend eggs and bones. Catriona then created her own sign for this land. The next day we had a dinosaur hunt and everyone had to complete a chart as soon as they saw a dinosaur. We have made clay dinosaurs and fossils and have even discovered bones in our sand tray. In nursery we now have a museum with a dinosaur display. We have posters and talking cards which share our learning. We have also been listening to lots of stories about dinosaurs and have created our own non-fiction dinosaur book.

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