numeracy – Page 2 – Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

April 28, 2017

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

March 31, 2017

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

March 31, 2017

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.

March 24, 2017

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

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

September 28, 2016October 3, 2016

Nursery Learning

Harvest

We recently collected our potatoes and carrots from our garden. We were delighted with the harvest we had produced. We used our potatoes to make mashed potatoes, soup and potato salad. We have also been using balance scales to help to compare the weights of the potatoes and have been using the mathematical language, heavier than, lighter than and the same as.

February 10, 2016

Nursery News

Over the last few weeks we have been really busy in Bonnytoun Nursery.

We have been very interested in “Birds.”

We found out penguins were birds too but that they couldn’t fly. We also discovered they came from the Antartic. We added penguins to our water tray but in order to make it a very cold place, we froze the water. We also painted pictures of penguins. Next time you are in nursery, have a look at our display, i’m sure you’ll be impressed.

We have also been looking at non-fiction books and have used the pictures in these books to create our own drawings and collages of birds. Isabel created her own non-fiction book.

Last week we made bird cake and then observed the birds in our garden eating this food. We took part in the RSPB birdwatch and spotted many birds, including a blue-tit and robin. We recorded the birds in our garden on a chart.

January 26, 2016January 27, 2016

Numeracy Open Afternoon

On Tuesday 26th January, over 140 parents, friends and family members attended an open afternoon at Springfield Primary School. Miss Wallace (and several pupils) shared a numeracy presentation followed by classroom visits. Partners who supported this event included West Lothian’s Numeracy Development Officers and Linlithgow Academy.

The pupils were super at sharing their learning and explaining Big Maths strategies too! We are so proud of them.

Mrs Tulloch was able to share the work she has been doing with pupils for the Scottish Mathematical Challenge.

Parent session Jan 16 – click this link for the presentation

Link to Big Maths online: http://www.bigmaths.co.uk/

Link to Andrell website for Beat That tests and further information

BMBT Learn Its Tests

Presentation from West Lothian Numeracy Development Officer – Click here: 2016_01_26 Springfield PS Parent Session

Useful numeracy and mathematics apps for the i-pad – click here: Maths Apps

January 18, 2016

What’s going on in P2?

Primary 2 have been very busy since returning after the holidays!

We have been continuing our Big Maths work; counting and sequencing numbers to 100, trying hard to remember our Learn It’s, dividing and sharing equally and consolidating our learning of our 2, 5 and 10 times on Sumdog.

It’s all go with our Thinking Reader work to develop our six different reading strategies. Our class novel this term will be Grandpa’s Great Escape by David Walliams. We have enjoyed reading about Jack and Grandpa’s adventures so far, but aren’t quite sure what’s going to happen next. Ask the children for their predictions…

Our new topic is China and we will be learning lots more about it in the lead up to the Chinese New Year on the 8th February. This year will be the year of the monkey and we have been hearing some legends and tales about this animal of the Chinese zodiac. Did you know, the monkey was believed to have been born from a stone egg and carries a staff which he uses to fight? If anyone has anything they would like to bring in for our China display, please feel free to do so!

Mr. Logan & P2

November 20, 2015November 20, 2015

West Lothian Sumdog Champion!

We are delighted to announce that James H in P5 has been crowned the West Lothian Sumdog champion! He answered a whopping 1000 questions and got 975 correct. Also in the top ten leader board coming 8th is Jack. We are so proud of everyone who took part in this West Lothian wide competition and delighted to share this wonderful news with you!

The boys were extremely confident sharing their news in assembly too #confidentindividuals #successfullearners