Author: Mrs Dick

We have now completed our work on studying flowers, we will continue to watch our long term investigation about the effect of fertilisers (plant food) over the coming weeks.  We have created a wall display to showcase our learning,

Our next focus is going to be linked with healthy minds and bodies.  This will kick start with Health Week next week.  Please remember to wear your sports gear all week and be prepared every day to be outside regardless of the weather! As part of exploring healthy bodies we will be using our Food Technology trolley and creating some delicious meals which will allow us to discuss food hygiene as well as the Eat Well Plate.

In our RE work we will be covering God’s Loving Plan lessons which focus on our developing bodies and relationships.  At the parental conversations this week there was an opportunity to go and view the work we will cover, also the P7 children have received a leaflet today with relevant information (P6 will receive theirs next week).

In Maths we have consolidated our learning about division.  Everyone now seems to be more confident within their own level to tackle these types of calculations.

Homework for the next week will focus on personal reading.  Everyone has been asked to choose a book and to prepare an oral book report to share with the class.

In preparation for next week’s healthy writing, we are going to be asked the question, if you could invite anyone in the world to dinner who would it be and why?  What would you cook for them?

I can’t wait to see who is coming to tea!?

Enjoy the sunshine.

The children were given the following brief this week and asked to respond via handwritten letter,

A new toy shop is due to open in your local area, called

“Magnificent Toys”

As part of the marketing campaign to encourage people to come to the shop when it opens next week the manager, Thomas Jones, has sent catalogues to every local Primary School; enough for each child.

The catalogue is split into two sections, in the first half all the pages are pink and are filled with dolls and dressing up clothes.  The other half the pages are blue and filled with toy cars and construction.  There is also a picture of the inside of the shop on the front.  

In this shop, on the right hand side, all the shelves and labels are pink and there is a big sign saying “Toys For Girls”.  On the left hand side all the shelves and labels are blue and there is a big sign that says “Toys For Boys”. 

The children applied their learning from last week’s gender stereotype lessons to create a letter to express their opinion and persuade the manager to rethink his shop’s layout.  Well done to everyone, there was a lot of higher order thinking skills being demonstrated.

In Numeracy we have been focusing on word problems and applying our learning and skills in different contexts.  we have been trying to link these into skills for life.  This will continue into next week.  Some of us were also exploring how to express a remainder, from a division calculation, as a fraction.  This will extend next week into converting the fraction to a decimal.  2D shape has also played a large role in our Maths learning this week, if you would like extra practise try this interactive game.

http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/me3us/flash/lessonLauncher.html?lesson=lessons/14/m3_14_00_x.swf

Our seeds are growing well and we have now started our investigation into seedlings that have been fertilised with liquid plant food versus those have not.  Stay tuned for further updates over the next few weeks.

We were all for THE HIGH JUMP in PE this week.  It was so exciting to watch as everyone took part in a class competition.  Colin was our amazing stand out (jump out!) athlete, jumping 1m 40cm!  Well done Colin!

Have a lovely long weekend.

This week we have explored different ways to challenge our learning.

1)We took our topic work, about plants, outside and played a game called Seeds and Chaffinches. It helped us to appreciate that not all seeds make it to the stage of germination and that many are eaten by the birds.  Please ask us about the rules to the game because it was great fun and energetic.

2)We had a debate about gender imbalance in careers and also discussed the impact of Toy Manufacturers packaging and labelling of toys and shops.  Watch the following two clips and discuss it at home

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/24211824

 

3) In RE we have been learning about the life of St Paul and through this we created interactive posters (with flaps and opening sections), here are some examples

4) On our Maths Glass Learning Wall we have been consolidating our knowledge of how to convert from mililitres to litres.

 

This week in primary 6/7 we have continued learning all about plants, we planted flowers (a green for growth plant pot and a tickled pink plant pot). We are going to use these to investigate the effect fertiliser (liquid plant food) has on the tickled pink versus the green for growth that we’re  only putting water in.

We have hypothesised that the tickled pink plant will grow bigger than the green for growth plant.  We also looked at seeds, we cut open a broad bean seed (it had to be soaked first) to see the embryo inside and the stored food bank that a seed has to make it grow.  Thinking time,

“Does a seed need light to germinate? Why?”

We have ‘planted’ a broad been seed in a glass using damp paper towels as the soil so that we can track the seed germinating, we were excited today to see the TAP ROOT appear and growing!

All of this got us discussing the Global Goal of the week “No Poverty”.  We talked about using charitable donations to help people grow their own food so that they can develop a sustainable way of providing food for themselves and their families.

In maths we have been completing our work on learning about money.  Primary 7 have done credit cards/debit cards. primary 6 were consolidating their understanding of how to apply the four maths processes using money values.  Some of us worked on a problem solving question,

“How many £1 coins in a stack would reach your own height?”

We have also continued using our Numbertalks mental strategies to share different methods of adding, subtracting and multiplying.

In RE we have learned about the Disciples meeting with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, we have taken the quote “Did our hearts not burn within us” to inspire us in our daily life to follow Jesus.

In PE we learned javelin techniques and we ran the track.  It has been lovely to be completing the school mile in the sunshine this week.

I hope you have a great weekend from  primary 7/6

by Danielle  (and Mrs Currie)

 

This week P6 have been learning about the dangers of smoking and tobacco from Michelle who works for West Lothian Council’s Drug and Alcohol Service.

Isabelle – “Michelle taught us about the dangers of smoking”

Jessica – “The doll Smoky Sue helped us to see the damaging effects of smoking”

In class we have been continuing our learning about flowering plants.  We have now learned about the individual parts of a flower’s anatomy, anther, filament, stigma and style.  This has helped to deepen our understanding of how insects are pollinators.

Jessica – “we dissected a flower to see all the different parts”

Freya – “For our writing we had to create our own imagined flower and then design and write the seed packet for the seeds”

The children were given the challenge to try and use a simile within their description of what their flower looks or smells like when it is in full bloom.  There were some super examples,  Next week we are moving onto looking at the growth of a seed and charting the length of time it takes to grow and what conditions it needs to grow.

In PE we have been learning the athletic field skills for shot put, and long jump as well as using sprint and pacing skills for the 60m and 800m running.

In Maths we have further developed our money skills.  P7 have been looking at debit and credit cards and started work on APR interest rates.  This has meant we have been practising our percentage finding skills, it is interesting to see how much money a bank can make from lending money “it is a business at the end of the day” is what Mrs Currie said and Broady and Mark quickly pointed out “it is also a business at the beginning of the day too!” (ha ha).  P6 have been using the four processes to work out totals, differences, how much multiple items and individual items cost.  When using the written method we had to revise our understanding of making sure the decimal points line up to keep our place values correct before completing the calculation.  Some of us used REAL MONEY to help us work out totals and costs, it is always good to use real life material as it helps us ensure that we can transfer these valuable life skills into practise outside of school.

 

Well done everyone,

Mrs Currie

This week some of our P6 children have been at a residential camp on Tuesday and Wednesday.  A great time was had by all, it would appear that canoeing was a real highlight with these being only a few of the comments that have been shared,

Oskar – “I fell into the water twice while I was canoeing and sailing, I loved it.”

Aurora – “The best bit was canoeing and I didn’t even get wet!”

Billie – “Miss McCormack said I was a strong at paddling”

Tristan – “It was really great!”

In class we got into the Outdoor Learning  spirit by doing work on plants.  We have learned about photosynthesis and the main structure of a flowering plant.  This involved us going on a hunt around our school grounds to find different types of leaves and then examining them for the veins and evidence of the glucose produced during photosynthesis.  Here is a short video that we watched to help us learn about this process.

 

We have now started some work on learning about the structure of a flowering.  We have labelled a diagram of the male and female parts and will follow this up next week by learning about the function and process of each part, pollination, the development of a seed and seed dispersal.

In Numeracy we have focused again on re engaging with our times tables and many of us have identified that the 9x table facts are not springing to our minds in a CLICK.  Those of us who feel we know our tables well are trying to apply them in more complex calculations to solve problems.  Next week our focus will be MONEY!

Have a lovely weekend.

We can’t believe how fast our time, here at camp, has went.  Today has been seen another set of action packed activities with many children achieving personal bests and conquering their fears!

Here are some highlights,

 

As you can see we have been having a ball.  Tonight we are having another ball in the form of a DISCO!  Look what happens when we don’t discuss our outfits before leaving home!

 

Home tomorrow!

Day three…very wet…very cold…very muddy…very fun, exciting, challenging, amazing and awesome!!!!!

Here are some of our highlights.

Tonight we had another great dinner and finished it off with some lovely white chocolate birthday cake thanks to Eve Macdougall. Happy birthday Eve!

Make sure you check back in tomorrow for the latest updates!

Today it has been a lot cooler weather however we have had an action packed day to keep us warm, here are some highlights.

The day started with some group games,

Then some hanging about,

Problem solving was no challenge for our mental agility and communication skills,

 

Tomorrow we are looking forward to a day of plain sailing and clowning about!  Keep an eye here for the photographic evidence.

 

 

We have all arrived safe and sound at Dalguise!  It was so lovely and warm when we arrived.  We had the opportunity to shoot some hoops and explore some of the grounds.

Our rooms have the best view in the camp as we are at the TOP of a hill, we will be very fit by the end of this trip!  After a very fulfilling dinner of curry or sausages (as much salad and fruit as you could eat!) we all headed to a camp fire for an evening of fun, singing and ghost stories.

We are now heading to our bed as we have a 7.20am start tomorrow morning.

Sorry no photos tonight as we are having a few technical problems but check out the blog tomorrow for the action!