Author: Miss Diamond

Learning Overview

This week in P5 we have had many learning highlights. A definite favourite for all was developing coding skills using Scratch to program Marty the robot to dance. In literacy we have been learning about proper nouns and how to write a procedural text accurately. In maths and numeracy we have been applying our knowledge of the four processes to complete Halloween themed calculations and have been using the outdoors to learn about Symmetry.

Pupil Voice

Marty

“Marty has been really fun to use.  We got to do a lot of fun things with him when we and him!” – Matthew

“It was really fun making the music video and the backdrop!” – Oma

Writing

“It was good writing instructions and now we know the right layout!” – Madison

“We were able to use our knowledge about Marty to write instructions for Mrs Scott to use Marty!” – Angelina

PE

“I liked doing PE, it was really fun and making me more active.” – Wojtek

“We played lots of fun games in PE!” – Leo

Maths

“It was fun being outside when learning about symmetry. We had to look for natural materials to use!” – Ahmad

“It was really tricky to solve the Halloween maths problems!” – Harry

Parent Involvement

Why not visit Scratch,  https://scratch.mit.edu/ and get your child to teach you some coding skills!

 

It has been a busy week in P5!

One of the highlights of our week was getting to use Marty the Robot. We had to use Scratch to program him and make him move. We hope to make a music video and make him dance by the end of our Marty project.

“He was really fun to play with!” – Filip

“I enjoyed making him dance; he ended up in the splits at the end!” – Maeve

“On Scratch we had lots of different commands that we could use to make Marty dance. My favourite was the splits and the circle move!” – Angelina

In maths we have been learning about symmetry. We were outside using hoops and natural materials to create symmetrical patterns and have been looking at lines of symmetry in shapes. We developed our learning further through an art lesson where we had to complete an animal drawing ensuring it was symmetrical.

“ I liked drawing the other half of the cat, it was really hard but that’s fine!” – Alishba

“I liked doing the white tiger and it has so much detail on it! I liked how it looked when I was finished!” – Wojtek

“I liked it when I had to do the hair on the face because I had to add texture!” – Harry

In PE, we were focussing on our fitness. We used playing cards and dice. If you rolled a 6, your partner got to choose what exercise you had to do 6 of. When we used the cards, each suit meant a different exercise! A joker meant 30 press ups.

“I liked it because nearly every time you got a different exercise to do!” – Marcus

“It was a competition so whoever got the most cards won! My team won!” – Maeve

“It was fun to play with because of the competition! My team had the least players and we didn’t get the joker!” – Ahmad

We have tried to incorporate more free play into our daily routine. We are taking it very seriously and have demonstrated that we can be trusted to complete our learning activities and have some free play at the same time.

“It is fun and we are getting more time to actually play with our friends!” – Ahmad

“I think it is a really good decision because it gets us away from our devices!” – Angelina

“I really like free play and I like that I can play with my friends and play board games!” – Oma

“Having time to play when we are learning helps us learn and focus more and have a growth mind-set!” – Annayah

 

Have a great weekend, P5 and Miss D!

We have been busy in P5 this week.

We have had lots of fun at the harvest festival where we were learning in collaboration with other primary schools including Bankton, Dedridge and Williamston about harvesting and what kind of foods are harvested in different countries.

“I enjoyed learning the song about a farmer during harvest time!” – Madison.

“I was a little bit nervous standing up in front of the other schools to present!” – Alan.

“Julia K and I got picked to go up with some other boys and girls from different schools and we had to make different words from H-A-R-V-E-S-T. – James.

“I enjoyed learning the song that we had to sing for the other schools, ‘The Harvest Song’. – Oma.

We continued with our basketball skills in PE this week but missed Mr McCurdy and we hope he feels better soon.

We enjoyed our trip to the Library this week and choosing a book to bring back to school.

“I chose ‘The Secret Diary of Kitty Cask’” – Wojtek

“I chose ‘Action Dogs Ocean of Pearls’” – Harry

As part of celebrating maths week, we worked in teams to solve a murder mystery challenge where we had to solve different clues using different mathematical processes.

“This was really tricky because there were lots of names on the suspect list!” – James

“I liked the murder mystery because we had to work out the different clues!” – Julia C.

We have also been learning about rounding and adjusting to help solve calculations mentally.

“I found this very hard to begin with but after practise I got used to the process.” – Angelina

“I thought it was fun but there was some bits that I got confused with.” – Ahmad

We have also been writing about the African Grassland. We wrote a narrative about an animal that you could find in the African Grassland and had to make sure we had an orientation, a complication and a resolution. We also tried to use adjectives and adverbs to add more detail and description in our writing.

“I wrote about a Zebra called Zack!” – Maeve.

“I wrote about an elephant called Cassie!” – Alishba.

“I wrote about a Gazelle called JJ!” – Olivia.

We hope you have a great weekend, Miss Diamond and P5!

 

We have had a busy week in P5.

In PE, we have been continuing to work on our basketball skills to help us when we go to a basketball tournament. We learned some more skills including defending and trying to get better at dribbling the ball and move faster when we have it.

“It was very fun learning how to do basketball more.” – Madison

“We have been trying our best on our basket skills for the tournament.” – Ahmad

In maths, we have been focussing on the value of each digit in big numbers. We have been doing a variety of different activities to help us learn.

“I liked doing the place value game outside where we had to make numbers using markers.” – Alishba

“I liked doing the written task where I had to break the numbers down!” – Filip

“I like getting to ick what activity I wanted to do at any time.” – Alan

We have also been learning bout 3D shapes and looking at their properties.

“I enjoyed building 3D shapes using art straws and playdoh.” – Julia C

As part of our smart start activities we had to send an email to share our favourite colours with someone else in our class.

“I sent my email to Aaron, it was good fun!” – Leo

“I liked having a conversation on my email with Harry and James because I have done t before but not actually had a conversation with everyone on it.” – Wojtek

We had another free writing Friday session where we wrote about dogs, animals, formula 1, haircuts and lots more!

We continued with James and the Giant Peach this week and learned some new vocabulary. Some of these words were: serenely, aghast, pandemonium, frantic and colossal.

In PM writing we have been learning all about ‘Narrative’ texts. We learned that the key features of this type of text are a title, the orientation, the complication and the resolution. It has to be written in the past tense and we tried to include adverbs in our writing to make it more interesting.

“I liked doing PM writing because we wrote a story together as a class which had an orientation, a complication and a resolution all about a Formula 1 race.”

We hope you have a great weekend, P5 and Miss Diamond.

 

This week, P5 has been really fun!

We have been reading James and the Giant Peach and are at a really exciting stage in the story where James has met the giant bugs! We made posters to advertise the giant peach and developed our tint and shade skills to create a night sky and giant peach picture.

“I really liked doing the art and first we done the night sky and then the peach!” – Julia C

In maths, we have been learning about rounding numbers and estimating answers. We completed some written tasks as well as active tasks and our favourite activity was using the Kahoot quiz.

“Kahoot was really fun because you got to see your name, how well you were doing and how many points you had on the big screen!” – Wojtek

“Kahoot was fun trying to answer the questions! Some of them were tricky!” – Zoe

In PE, we have been developing our basketball skills. This week we were practising shooting balls into the hoop.

“I liked the part where you have to aim and shoot!” – Alan

In writing, we have been wrting a poem about James’ first encounter into the peach. We had to use a metaphor to help describe how he would have been feeling. We found this very difficult.

“I liked ding writing because it was fun and enjoyable!” – Lennon

“I liked doing the writing because we didn’t have to make the poem rhyme and I liked writing the ‘I wonder…, I worry and I hear…’ sentences.” – Harry

We are still enjoying taking part in free writing Friday. This week we had some stories, some comic strips, some recipes and some annotated diagrams.

Enjoy the long weekend, Primary 5 and Miss Diamond.

See you on Wednesday!

This week, P5 has been very busy!

In PE we played dodgeball and started learning skills required in basketball.

“It was very fun!” – Madison

“I like doing basketball and dribbling the ball!” – Alishba

We had another Free Writing Friday slot today where we get to decided what we want to write about.

“I like doing Free Writing Friday!” – Oma

“I liked making a comic strip!” – Annayah

We have continued to work on our class novel, James and the Giant Peach! This week we had to make information leaflets to advertise the Giant Peach and encourage tourists to come along and visit the extraordinary attraction.

“I really enjoyed making the leaflet and I liked using ideas from the book to write in my persuasive leaflet to persuade tourists to come and visit the mammoth peach!” – Angelina

In maths, we have been rounding numbers to the nearest 10 and 100.

“We looked at the numbers and focussed on the number in the units column to decide which ten to round it to!” – Harry

“I liked rounding numbers and when we completed the written task we played a fun game with a partner. You had to have a secret number and tell your partner what the number was rounded to the nearest ten and then your partner had 3 attempts to guess your secret number!” – Wojtek

“We also completed a scavenger hunt outside and had to find examples of different maths related shoes, angles and symmetry and take a photo on a device. We are going to make posters to display our findings.” – Matthew

In art, we have developed our learning of tint and shared further by creating a pattern using one colour but added white or black to make different tints and shades.

“It was fun because there was a pattern and we had to put different tints and shades in each section!” – Julia K

“I had a lot of fun doing this and I enjoyed discovering different shades of blue!” – Maeve

During smart start we had one activity where we had to make a personal profile using Microsoft word.

“I found this really fun and added a picture of my favourite games to mine!” – Ahmad

“I enjoyed doing construction during smart start!” – Marcus

We had another look at metaphors this week as this proved to be a little trickier than similes last week.

“I enjoyed listening to lots of songs that had metaphors in them and trying to identify what metaphor was in the song!” – Angelina

“I liked doing the worksheet about metaphors where we had to draw a picture of the metaphor and explain what they mean.” – Ana

Some of our favourite metaphors that we learned this week are:

“I am titanium!” – Leo

“It’s raining cats and dogs!” – Ahmad

“He has a heart of stone!” – Filip

“Her heart was broken!” – Madison

“His mind was on fire!” – Maeve

We hope you have a great weekend, P5 and Miss Diamond.

This week we had a very very fun week in P5.

In writing this week we wrote character descriptions about another Awful Aunt for James from our class novel. We had to use similes, metaphors and adjectives to create a clear picture of our character.

“I liked doing writing because making the character mean and weird was really funny!” – Wojtek

“I liked writing because it was fun trying to use similes and metaphors!” – Ahmed

“I liked writing about the horrible aunties!” – Madison

We have tried a new way of working smart starts, there will always be 4 activities and we can ick which one we want to go to. Every day we must choose a different station so that by the end of the week we have had a chance at doing them all.

“I really enjoyed doing smart starts, especially using the stile boards and construction!” – Angelina

“I liked using the construction in my smart start!” – Oma

In art, we have been learning about tinting and shading. We had 6 original colours and we experimented with white and black paint and mixing them together to create lighter and darker shades of colours.

“I really liked art because it was fun!” – Julia

“It was very fun doing it and I had a good time!” – Maeve.

In music this week, we had Mrs Nichol as our teacher.  We played fun games to get to know each other and sang songs.

“I liked doing music when we had to do a hand clap game.” – Alishba

“I liked playing hot potato!” – Madison

“I enjoyed ‘Free Writing Friday’ this week. I wrote about a spider!” – Marcus.

We hope you have a great weekend, P5 and Miss Diamond.

This week we have had a short week but we had lots of fun!

We have been made to feel welcome in the upper area and Miss Diamond has made sure we know where everything is in our classroom so we know where to get resources when we need them.

Our new PE days are a Monday and a Wednesday.

We have introduced something new to P5, it is called ‘Free Writing Friday’! Today was our first time trying this new and exciting task.

“It was very interesting and fun! I enjoyed decorating my Free Writing Friday journal!” – Angelina

“I chose to write a story about my holiday and it was pretty fun!” – Elenta

“It was very fun and I really enjoyed it!” – Madison

“I wrote a comic all about Spiderman!” – Harry

We have also been making our classroom our own by creating a class charter and setting our new learning goals.

“I enjoyed making a galaxy themed picture to represent me for my class charter!” – Zoe

“I liked designing my galaxy character…I drew an astronaut!” – Maeve

“I really liked making the class charter because it was fun getting to research different ideas for the themes!” – Ana

“I liked PE with Mr McCurdy”! – Marcus

“I liked doing PE playing tennis!” – Alishba

“Ryan and I liked doing the spelling test!” – Matthew

“I liked using chalk pens to write my name on my tray!” – Julia C

We are looking forward to next week, a full week in Primary 5 and can’t wait to see what we are going to learn about.

Have a great weekend, Miss Diamond and P5!

 

We have had a great wellbeing week in P5D.

We have enjoyed getting to take part in and try out some new sporting activities this week as well as learning about the human body.

Some of our favourite activities were; Parkour, Taekwando and football.

“I liked football because I learned new tricks!” – Emily

“I liked Parkour because we got to swing on the bars!” – Maliha

“I enjoyed Parkour because we got to balance on the bars!” – Ola

We were also learning about the importance of looking after ourselves and recognise that it is important to take some ‘me’ time.  We enjoyed our relax kids session where we were giving and receiving back massages and focussing on our breathing to help make us feel relaxed and calm.

A highlight for most of us was our sponsored Tough Mudder! We had an obstacle course to complete which had lots of different challenges on the way. The rain poured and we got VERY wet and muddy but this added to the fun!

“I enjoyed Tough Mudder because I like getting muddy!” – Sophie D

“I enjoyed Tough Mudder because it was fun running in the rain!” – Ethan

We were learning all about the human body and it’s systems. We learned about the respiratory systems and the circulatory system. We enjoyed doing a science experiment to help us understand how our lungs work.

“Learning about the lungs was fun because we got to make our very own pretend lung in an experiment!” – Hasan

“I enjoyed making the lung because when you made it actually worked like a real lung!” – Levente

This is something that could be done at home so why not give it a try.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1zvN0HlG-c

In amongst a very bus wellbeing week, we also had our class trip to Dynamic Earth. This was also a brilliant experience and we learned lots of new things.

“I really liked the part where there was an earthquake, lava and the ground started to shake!” – Andrew

“I liked the dome movie learning space!” – Ethan

“I liked when we went into the time machine!” – Emily

“I liked when we watched the 3D video and were on a flight in the rainforest!” – Maliha

“I liked when we went on a plane and bumped into a rhino and I liked the ice room!” – Sophie R

 

Have a great weekend.

Welcome to our P5D weekly blog.

We have had a busy week. In writing, we have been using what we have learned about the features of a description text to write a description of our school. We had to use present tense, pronouns, specific vocabulary and adverbial phrases.

“Writing was fun because we got to talk about our school and how the playground looks!” – Michelle

“It was fun because we got to write about the garden and the structure of the actual school!” – Ola

 

We have been working really hard to learn about and research Global Goals and have spent a lot of time working on this. We worked in groups to research a specific goal, make posters using our research and then put the information into a short movie to spread the word. We used I-movie to create the short video clips and had a movie premiere showing for our parents.

“It was really exciting to show it in front of our parents!” – Emily

“Using I-movie was really fun and I really liked it!” – Morgan

“I really liked doing I-movie because you got to share information that I had learned and it was fun getting to talk in the movie!” – Levente

“I really liked it because we could listen to everyone’s ideas and we got to be creative in our own videos!” – Hasan.

 

In maths, we have been learning all about algebra and solving equations using the four processes.

“It was fun getting to use of problem solving skills when we were solving equations!” – Calvin

“I think it was fun because sometimes it was challenging and it was fun to work the hard questions out!” – Levente

“In algebra, I now know what to do and it used to confuse me before now!” – Hasan

 

In PE, we have been preparing for sports day and participating in races. We used the track on the grass pitch and raced 600m.

“It was fun running!” – Ethan

“I liked racing but at the end it was hard to keep going because I was out of breath!” – Calvin

“It was very hard trying to keep up with Kasia because she was so fast but I managed to pass her near the end and I came 1^st place.

 

Congratulations to Rhia for receiving our praise postcard! Rhia has been trying hard in all areas of learning but particularly giving 100% in the daily mile. Well done Rhia!

We hope you have a nice weekend and enjoy the Monday holiday :)!