Author: Mrs Dick

This week our classroom has received a make over!  Our colour scheme is purple and grey and it has created a lovely learning environment for us.

As part of our ongoing topic of WW2 we have been looking at propaganda posters and the slogans that were used.  We discussed how these posters were designed to be persuasive and to project certain images to the reader.  We then focused on four of the most iconic slogans and created our own posters by either being inspired by posters from the time or by creating our own.  Here are a few examples,

In our Numeracy learning this week we have focused on transferring and manipulating our knowledge of numbers and the number processes to tackle a mixture of mental maths questions, word problems and problem solving tasks.  Here is an example of a problem solving question, if you can work out the solution draw it out and take a photograph of it and Dojo it (extra dojo points available!).

For our Health and Wellbeing learning this week PC Cochran visited our classroom and gave us a talk on “Choices”.  We were able to listen to and participate in discussions about making good choices and consequences for those who do not make good choices.  He also shared with us an insight into life as a Police Officer and showed us his protective clothing and equipment.  What a great experience it was for all.

In PE we have been learning new games and team games and developing our ability to follow rules and create/adapt rules to suit our own needs.  Below is a clip of the rules for Mushroom Ball which is proving to be a popular warm-up game.

Next week we will begin to deliver our class topics about WWII.  It will be really interesting to see the different aspects of the war which people have chosen to research.  A reminder about some of the Green For Growth comments that were given after last terms talks, these will help you focus on ensuring that you deliver and present your information well,

• Make eye contact with the audience (looking round from the screen or looking up from your notes)
• Using your own words and not just reading a script or directly from power point slides
• Asking higher order questions about the presentations that you listen to.

Enjoy your weekend.

This week we have completed our block of work on data handling.  Our final focus was to look at pie charts and to use our prior learning about fractions and percentages to help us with our learning.  All though this will not be our focus during our maths lessons in the next few weeks we have definitely learned some great skills for life in how to record data and create a graph, we are looking forward to seeing all the maths homework due in next week to see this learning in action.

In literacy we looked at Performance Poetry and how we can read poetry with intonation, expression and at different speeds to create effect.  We were inspired by the poem The Sound Collector to use onomatopoeia within our work.  Here is the poet Roger McCough reading his poem

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/clips/zc6qxnb

Using the context of The Blitz as part of our WW2 project we have started to create our own poetry.  We have all made a start and will continue this into next week.  A special mention to Aurora, she has already created a fabulous first draft and we will share this next week on the blog.

Mrs Docherty worked with the class on Wednesday of this week and we all learned about Democracy.  We used the starting point of our topic WW2 and understood what the difference between democracy and dictatorship is.  From here we discussed and worked on learning about democracy in relevant terms today and how it impacts our life.  We have all recognised how much of a voice we have in our school and then compared this to other countries today where there is not democracy in action.  This has helped us deepen our understanding of the importance of the UN Convention For The Rights Of The Child.

We are nearing the end of our swimming block.  Today in the pool there was some outstanding work and perseverance skills on display.  Well done to Moiz who is making super progress with his confidence in the water.  Freya continues to use her super swimming skills to be a role model for others through demonstrations and  Jack’s back crawl has made significant improvement.  Everyone has been now been given the opportunity to explore the fun side of swimming through using floats, flippers and water polo balls.  Great fun!

Next week we will be working for some of the week in The Hub as our classroom is being painted.  We will share photographs of our refreshed learning environment next week.

Have a lovely weekend.

We were all book worms this week.  Check out some of our amazing costumes.

On Thursday we celebrated World Book Day with a few challenges.  Firstly we used our Maths skills we have been learning in Information Handling.  We worked in pairs and had two extracts from well known books, our job was to count how many words were in a sentence for the extract and then draw a comparative bar graph to show our findings.  This was a great way of applying our recently learnt skills and deepening our learning and understanding of how graphs can be used to find out information.  We also completed a Literacy challenge…to write a ten words story!  Sounds easy but it required a lot of thinking of how to convey the main message of a story in ten words.  Some of us even managed to get a couple of adjectives into our stories.  Keep your eye on the blog next week as we are going to post some examples of the Literacy work that we have been focusing on so far this term, there are some amazing examples.

We have also continued our learning about WWII and using this to help us develop our learning skills across the curriculum.  For our writing we used the context of creating a memoir from an evacuee child’s view point on the day they had to leave home (some of us flipped the activity and wrote from the parents perspective!).  To achieve this we used a success criteria which focused on using descriptive vocabulary as well as emotive language to describe this event.  We also applied our learning from our VCOP starter activities to ensure we used good tools for writing to showcase our work.  Again some examples will be posted in the course of the week.

In PE, Russian Longball has proven to be a great success, we have adapted the rules to the game to suit our needs and gym hall environment and it is great fun!  Mrs Currie even got into the game by being the bowler and took a few head hits from a stray ball or two (I would hope they were accidental!)

Another fantastic week!

Have a lovely weekend.

 

It is September 1940 and WWII has been going on for a year now, some people have been calling it the phony war as no one here in Britain have felt the full impact of the war…yet.  Please click below to hear an air raid siren…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schoolradio/subjects/history/ww2clips/sounds/air_raid_siren

TAKE COVER!  In our classroom you see the German bombers overhead and our classroom door is now an entrance to an Anderson Shelter!

Our Literacy work this week has been based around our WWII theme this week,

Reading – we read a memoir from a lady called Eileen Frost who had been a child during WWII and she described her memories of building an Anderson shelter and life in London during the war.

Writing – We watched a short clip of a man called Joseph Robertson who had been a soldier during the war, he also was describing one particular memory of when he was in a battle.  The children then discussed and shared emotive language and ideas about this and wrote a memoir from Joseph’s point of view.  These were well written and used some amazing emotive language.  They are now part of our WWII display in class.  We also used fact sheets about Anderson Shelters to help us re-create an instruction guide on how to build an Anderson Shelter,  we used the Scottish Criterion checklist to help us use good writer’s craft throughout our piece.

Listening and Talking – We are now listening to a text called “Catching Falling Starts” by Karen McCombie.

Mrs Currie is reading this aloud to us.  It is about a girl called Glory and her little brother called Rich, they are children who were living in London during the outbreak of WWII.  At first their parents did not send them away to the countryside as they wanted to stay together as a family, but after a narrow escape from a Blitz attack (only their Anderson shelter saved them) they are now being evacuated.

This leads us onto our topic focus for next week – Evacuees.  The children will continue to develop their use of emotive writing skills as they put themselves into the shoes of a child being evacuated and write about their journey as they leave home.

In Maths we have started our work on using and interpreting data.  Our focus for this week was to find out how much we already know about this topic in Maths and we started analysing bar graphs.  Everyone was given the opportunity to use data that we gathered in class about our Favourite Flavour of Crisps, using a tally mark chart, and created our own bar graphs.  To help us out we used the following website to show us how to create a bar graph,

http://www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/mentalmaths/grapher.html

Try using this to help you create more graphs at home.  Send a reply back if you manage this.  Next week we will begin to use some data and graphs from WWII to interpret and analyse to find out more statistics linked to this topic.

Have a great weekend.

Mrs Currie

P7 this week had a trip to St Margaret’s High School as part of their transition programme.  It was a great success.  The children followed a timetable which involved a Social Studies lesson, Science lesson and PE lesson.  Everyone seemed to really enjoy the experience and they were a credit to the school in their manners and behaviour.

In class we have began our new topic of World War 2.  We have looked at the leaders of the countries involved and the causes for the outbreak of the war.  The children have all completed a registration card and understand why it was so important to have identification during the War time period.  Next week we are going to be learning about the Blitz and evacuations.

For our Maths work we have been continuing our work on angles.  P6 went on an angle hunt around the classroom and took photographs of different types of angles.  These will be put in our class talking book.  Next week we are moving onto looking at data handling which we will link to different aspects of WWII.

In class we have been discussing The First Ministers Reading Challenge.  This is an opportunity for the children to record the books they are reading for pleasure.  Everyone was issued with a passport for this challenge last term during Monday Circle time.  Children are welcome to bring their passport into class and they will be given an opportunity to share their reading with a friend.

On Thursday we were all treated to an amazing assembly by Fr Kenneth about his recent trip to Jerusalem.  His photographs that he shared were excellent and his stories of his trip were very interesting.  This fitted in well with our Catholic Education Week Theme of our Faith Community.  In class we discussed how a church is not the building but the people who gather together.  We found a lovely picture to show this and we have put this into our journal.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Currie

We have turned the big 40 this week!  Our Mass on Wednesday was so special and every member of our class were an absolute credit to the school.  On Thursday we had a Fun Day which was also a huge success especially the afternoon when we split into our houses and had a chance to go to four different activities.  It really has been a special week with a lot of life long memories forged.

The fun doesn’t stop there, next week is our concert.  We have now had our dress rehearsal and it was a huge success.  All the classes have worked hard and Mrs Purdie has put some sneak peek photos on Dojo to give you a small taste as to what is in store!  It is such a hugely beneficial experience to put on a show, we are able to produce so many links to life long skills through this type of event.  In particular we have all been involved in arranging the choreography for the performances and been able to give our opinion on what we should wear.  Performing for an audience helps us to develop our confidence and allows us to challenge ourselves through song and dance to become an effective contributor to our school community.

As well as the school anniversary this week in class we have also been using the link to the theme of our Fun Day, which was Super Heros, to stimulate our learning.  We have used our creative skills and developed our own super hero logo and super power.  We have written about how we could use the super power and then turned this into a comic strip (Marvel eat your heart out!).  Some great results!  Here is photograph of our super hero tops, we have displayed them on a washing line in class, I hope we always remember to put them in a colours wash cycle as they are very bright!

To further develop our critical thinking skills about super heros we watched the video to the song “Titanium” by David Guetta.  We then had a class discussion about what was happening in the video (we paused it after 1minute, discussed what we thought was going on and then watched the remainder of it and discussed it again and realised that a lot of us had changed our minds as to what we thought was happening).  Have a watch and if any parents want to stop it after a minute they can reply what their initial thinking is and then again after having watched it all.

http://www.literacyshed.com/the-music-video-shed.html

Have a lovely weekend and I can’t wait for the performances next week, remember to rest your voices!

These are some of the highlights the children have commented on this week,

Kornelia + Rachel – We are practising hard for our school show.  It is starting to really come together now.  Our class are focusing on two decades.  The P7s are working on the decade 1970 and the the P6s are focusing on the decade 1980.   There has already been a Dojo message sent out regarding costumes required and a paper copy for those not on Dojo.  Just as a reminder P7 require; for Rocky, shorts and t-shirt and a house coat, for ABBA, black t-shirt and black trousers/leggings and a thin/chiffon scarf.  P6 require; for Ghostbusters a black t-shirt and black trousers/leggings, for Fame, a brightly coloured top, shorts or leggings and leg warmers if possible.  Other parts of the costumes are already in school…

…if you have your own 1970 inspired headband please feel free to bring it in,

…if you have your own boxing gloves please feel free to bring them in.

Billie + Freya – On Wednesday we celebrated 25th January, Robert Burns Day, by learning about Robert Burns and some of his famous works.  We also had a recital of “The Lost Dinner Ticket” (written by Margaret Hamilton) from Mrs Currie and then we had a discussion about this piece and analysed the use of traditional Scots vocabulary.

Danielle – In PE Mr McCurdy was focusing on headstands, balances, vault and beam in gymnastics.  We also made use of the dry afternoons and spent sometime playing favourite playground games.

Tristan + Aurora – In Maths we have completed our round up of algebra.  We have now started work on time using Sumdog and the assessment feature.  This allows Mrs Currie to set us questions which we answer through the Sumdog app. and then it let’s us analyse what we understood well and what we need to work on.  This has been great at helping us to set goals for ourselves in our work.

Billie – We have also been practising hard for our Birthday Mass.  We have learned some new hymns and the singing standard is amazing.

Jessica – On Friday at assembly P4/5 we showcasing their learning about “Other World Religions”.  We really enjoyed the work they shared with us.

Oskar – P7 this week have made some memory snapshots of their time at St Ninian’s and these are being put into our time capsule.  Next week as a class we are going to fill in a class memory chart.

Have a lovely weekend.

 

 

Another busy and productive week in P7/6.

We celebrated World Religion Day on Wednesday and through this we researched facts about four different religions.  We worked in small groups and used facts sheets to read for information.  We then produced power points with the information we had gathered.  Every group had a chance to deliver their presentation to the class.  There were some fabulous presentations and everyone in the class showed how well they can use and manipulated power point presentations.

We have had a wide range of experiences in PE this week.  We used our time on Tuesday to focus on our gamesmanship skills.  We participated in traditional playground games (Toilet Tig and Dodge Ball are always favourites) and demonstrated a good level of fairness when applying the rules and we could also develop the rules to suit our environment and skill levels.  On Thursday we had a tennis lesson delivered to us by Mrs Burchill (a parent who is trained as a PE teacher).  This was a great lesson and Mrs Burchill’s love and enthusiasm for the sport was very infectious.

   

On Friday we also had our swimming lesson.  The children continue to impress myself and Mr McCurdy with their ability in the water and already we can see some improvements in stroke technique.  Next week we will move back onto our Gymnastics work and as promised in last week’s blog here are the photos of our brilliant balances.

 

In Maths we have been looking at how to simplify algebraic expressions.  This week’s homework task proved to be a real challenge and asked us to draw on our learning from adding and subtracting negative numbers.  Don’t panic if you found it tricky, Algebra will continue to be our focus next week too.

As part of our show rehearsals this week we have been learning two songs from the era The 70’s.  These are Eye of The Tiger by Survivor, this featured in the film Rocky, and Waterloo performed by ABBA.  Everyone has been given a copy of the lyrics and have been asked to practising these songs at home too.  Please feel free to join in with us at home!

To link with this era we have been learning about main events from the 70’s.  We loved learning about the most successful failed mission to Space by learning about the Apollo 13 mission.  Also in 1971 Walt Disney World opened in Florida.  There’s lots more to learn about this era in the coming weeks.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Currie

It has been a packed week.

PE – Freya said “this has been a highlight of the week”.  Mr McCurdy worked with our class on cartwheels on Tuesday and we were head over heels pleased with the progress we made.  On Thursday when it was our class teacher PE time we worked on different balances. Photos will be added next week (the i-pad has decided to go on weekend mode early – sorry!)

Maths – Sophia said “we learned about algebra this week”.  Some of the children have continued their work on function machines and others have started to work with equations where a letter represents a missing number.  We have also been working on our skills at telling the time using 12 hour and 24 hour clocks.  Here is a website for some extra practise with this skill.

http://www.skoool.com.eg/english/skoool_bundle/content/primary/maths/24_hour_time/index.html

Literacy – We have focused on our grammar skills this week and linked this to our reading work as we have started using Task Maps again.  In our writing this week we had to finish a story which had already been started.  Jessica said “we had to think of an unpredictable way to end the story!”  The story was called Tom’s Terror and in the starter it explains that Tom sees a shadow in an old deserted school building and decides to investigate!  We discussed the obvious answers such as Zombies or ghost etc but decided to create a much more unique take on the story. There were some great ideas…Jack – It was his surprise birthday party, Oskar and Kornelia – It was a former pupil looking for something he had hidden many years before and Reece – it was the former janitor who wanted to reopen the school.  Great work P7/6

IDL – We learned about Malawi this week and Mrs Currie even tweeted (her first ever tweet!).  This was a link with the International Week theme in the whole school.  check out our tweet to see a photo of our class display we made!

Can’t wait until you see our new INCREDIBLE maths wall next week, something worth logging on for!

Mrs Currie