Author: Mrs Dick

It has been such a quick first term and we have achieved so much.

Thank you to everyone for preparing and delivering their presentations on a chosen country this week.  Everyone has received feedback on their presentations.  Next term there will be another opportunity to build upon these skills and act on the feedback you were given.

In Maths we have rounded up our work on BODMAS and division by six.  The P7 children really enjoyed the BODMAS song.  Click the link below to hear it.

Our glass maths wall showcases our learning well.  Well done to those who completed the challenge question!

When we return to school after the break we will be have a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) focus for the first week.  I can’t wait, these are my most favourite subjects!

Have a great holiday everyone

Mrs Currie

 

This week as part of our topic we have been learning about weather systems, and in particular hurricane Matthew.  We have worked hard with Miss Ross and learned about how weather systems such as tornadoes and hurricanes form.  We produced our own tornado in a bottle which was great fun (and very wet!).

We have also had the opportunity to discuss and create our own survival kits and an evacuation plan, which we know people in Florida are having to do right now.

In Maths we have combined our knowledge of working out the area of a right angle triangle and a rectangle and applied this to find the area of a composite shape.  Some of us worked with Mrs Miller and produced metre squares.  Using these we made large shapes/patterns.  To complete this exercise we had to use team work and measuring skills as well as understand about area.  It was great to see the size of a metre square as it helps us visualise real life area.

In writing we began redrafting our letters to President Obama and we hope to post these away before the October holiday.  We have practised the skill of proof reading and editing to help us with the redrafting process.

We are always looking to make links in our learning and activities and even at Golden Time Sophia couldn’t help herself as she tried to recreate the Statue of Liberty!  

Have a lovely weekend

Mrs Currie

This week P7/6 had a taster course of golf.  As you can see from these photos it was everyone’s cup of tee.  

We wood have loved it to be series of lessons as everyone was really enjoying learning these new skills.  The children learned how to putt and chip the ball.  Jessica said, “we had to try and chip the ball into the basketball hoop”.  Even I had a go but I was well below par with my shot.  Harburn Golf Club gave out leaflets about further opportunities available to the children during the October Holiday to try and encourage and drive forward this traditional sport.

The P7 children this week attended a local Athletics Festival.  Jack said “we did javelin, running as well as other things.  We did a relay race and our team won!”  Well done P7!

The postman had a busy day at St Ninian’s as he delivered American pen pal letters for everyone in P7/6.  Aaron said “we got a letter from an American kid”, Aurora said “we have learned a lot about the USA and we wrote back to a pen friend”.  The children were given the task of writing a letter back.  The children are noticing the improvement in their letter writing skills due to the series of lessons on this, Oskar received a Dojo acknowledgement message home as a result of his amazing effort this week!  Well done, P7/6 letter writing is an important skill for life!

We have continued to use our Maths Glass Wall in class to support our learning.

This week it focused on helping us with finding the perimeter and area of a rectangle.  If you would like further explanation of these concepts try this video presentation,

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/geometry/hs-geo-foundations/hs-geo-area/v/perimeter-and-area-basics

Next week we will be continuing with finding the area of composite shapes and triangles.  P7 will also look at the order of operations using the BODMAS rule (you can reply back if you know what this stands for…you will get an extra dojo point!) and P6 will be learning more strategies for written and mental multiplication.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Currie

 

The children were asked to pick the main areas that we should blog about this week.  Here is what they have chosen.

Maths – we have been looking at rounding numbers to 10, 100, 1000 and decimal places.  We used a variety of resources to help us with this and some produced short PowerPoint presentations with voice recordings, of themselves explaining how to round, embedded in their presentation (very technical!) or video recordings showing rounding.  We also launched our Maths Learning Glass Wall , this allows us to record our learning over the course of the week which will then be photographed and stored in our talking book as evidence of our learning and progress.  Everyone loved having a turn to WRITE on the WALL.  Here is our photograph this week to share,

Topic – we have chosen the focus for our country study for the next four weeks…USA.  The children took a vote and the USA came out on top.  As part of our learning wall the children have their Pupil Voice which allows them to help shape what we are learning, this week the question they were asked was “What do you want to learn about the USA?”  There are some super responses and it looks like it is going to be a great topic!

Literacy – As part of our novel study we have been learning about Medieval Times and this has led us to learn about King Arthur, focusing on the story of the Sword In The Stone and how the young boy Arthur became King!  We wrote our newspaper reports about this and we are really pleased with our efforts.  Here are a few of the Headlines or Orientation sentences,

“The Sword Has Spoken!” (Moiz)

“The true King has arrived, pulling the sword from the stone.” (Mark)

“A new King has been throned after pulling out the sword Excalibur at St Paul’s Cathedral” (Darryn)

“The New King” (Aaron)

“Arthur Is Adopted” (Kornelia)

 “Yes, there is a new King, he has pulled the sword from the stone.” (Ross)

Next week the children are on holiday on Monday and Tuesday therefore homework will only consist of reading.  Our writing next week will be a letter to President Obama, telling information we have learned about the White house and asking him some questions about what he will miss about being President.  To prepare for this lesson try to find out one fact about the White House and post a reply.

Next week on Wednesday it is International Day of Peace.  We will be marking this in class with a minute silence at 12 noon.  This silence is marked around the world at 12 noon creating a wave of silence due to the different time zones.

I hope everyone enjoys their long weekend.

Mrs Currie

It has been a busy week.  P7/6 welcome Miss Ross to our class.  She is a final year student teacher and will be in our class for the next few weeks delivering many aspects of the curriculum.

We continued with our focus of rugby and hockey during our PE lessons on Tuesday, the children are all really enjoying these sessions as well as getting the chance to work with children from the P7 class.  Our PE lessons on a Thursday with Mrs Currie have changed their focus to football.  We have looked to develop skills and then try to use these in a competitive game.  Check out one of the three skills we learned this week and practise it again at home before next week’s lesson so you can dribble the ball confidently.  Click on the link below and choose the video of Ball Mastery – Inside and outside of the same foot.  Good luck, remember to let me know if you try this at home by posting a reply to tell me how you got on.

http://www.scottishfa.co.uk/scottishfootball.cfm?page=2590

We had a music session on Friday from Voice Rocks.  The children were given a short taster session of this project which runs at Howden Park Centre.  I was amazed at some of the high notes the children could reach and I loved the final song “Love Runs Out”…some of the dancing was pretty good too (Jack!).  Flyers are available in school for those interested.

We completed our piece of writing this week about an elderly man’s memories and how he looked through a squint and saw back into his past memories.  We used a video stimulus to help us, click the link below and choose The Piano to see the story of the gentleman we wrote about,

http://www.literacyshed.com/the-inspiration-shed.html

Here are some snippets from the children’s writing,

“Carefully the old man pressed his eye to the small window and suddenly his life came to a halt.  Everything he knew and loved came to a stop.  Memories from everywhere came flying towards him.” (Freya)

“When he looked through he could see his wife dying.  It was just like a nightmare, he felt a cold breath on the side of his cheek.  He loved his wife…and he missed her so much.” (Broady)

“He could see a war.  He watched his friend get shot and he could not save him.  He was terrified…he felt helpless” (Rachel)

“The old man then felt happy as he reminded himself about the time he was given a box.  Inside the box was a hobby horse, it use to be his grandad’s…he felt ecstatic and speechless and quite emotional.” (Billie)

“He woke up next to his piano, he was playing his favourite song with his grandson and he realised that all the sad moments in his life ended in a happy ending.” (Mikolt)

I am sure you will agree they have used some very mature and emotional language.  Both Mrs Docherty and myself had a lump in our throats at times reading the amazing pieces of work.  Thank you everyone for your great efforts and keep up the super work.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Currie

Here are some of the highlights from our week.

Art – we investigated water colour mixing to create effective medieval landscape pictures.  We were very pleased with our results.

Maths – P7 were working with negative numbers and were making links to real life skills by reading a thermometer scale with negative values.  The Oil Rig dice game was a big hit!  You could even make your own simple version at home and teach your parents the rules…who can reach the platform first!

 P6 continued to work with large numbers and again linked this to real life skills by learning how to fill out a bank cheque, I wish I had been receiving some of the cheques which had values into hundreds of  pounds!

The whole class have learned how to play the game Shut The Box, which focuses on recalling basic number bonds as well as playing smart (turn over the large numbers early on!).  Again this is a game you can make at home by either making your own number cards 1 – 9 or using these values from a pack of cards and two dice.  If anyone makes the game and teaches their parents let me know how you got on by posting a blog.

Literacy – we have continued using our class novel to base our literacy work on and completed our first tasks map.  We started our first piece of writing on Thursday about memories, and we are looking through an elderly mans eyes into his life and past experiences and we are going to be completing an imagined response to this man’s memories when he looks through a squint.  Make sure you log on next week to read snippets of the children’s work.

PE – This was a huge success this week with nearly all children remembering to bring appropriate equipment for their outdoor learning.  Both the rugby and hockey groups were very pleased with their chosen sport.

Just as a reminder, reading books were given out this week.  I do ask that these are brought into school every day as we complete follow up work based on the novels which can span over a few days.

To finish off we would like to mention Fr Paul.  He came into our school this week and we surprised him with an assembly and a P7 afternoon tea.  He was genuinely delighted and touched and I’m sure his eyes looked a little watery at one point!  Thank you Fr Paul.

Have a great weekend

Mrs Currie

PLACE VALUE HOMEWORK

Try out this interactive resource.

Either blog back a reply or write an evaluation statement in your jotter.

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/place-value/place-value-charts

Good luck.

Mrs Currie

PLACE VALUE

Play this game and let me know how you got on by posting a blog reply or writing a self evaluation statement in your jotter.

http://www.math-play.com/Place-Value-Millionaire/place-value-millionaire-game.html

Good luck.

Mrs Currie

Welcome back everyone.  It has been such a quick week but we have achieved a lot.  Here is our new class.

Our Primary Sixes look very smart in their green and yellow school uniform and our senior Primary Sevens look very grown up in their black and yellow uniform.

Our focus in class for the next three weeks will be based on a novel called The Squint by Lesley Howarth.  We have read the first four chapters so far and found out that this story takes place in the modern era as well as the medieval period of history.  The main character Ben looks though a squint (spyhole) whilst visiting a historical house and finds himself part of one of his ancient ancestors lives story!  As a link from this novel we have been learning about medieval coats of arms. In pairs the children were given the opportunity to use a website to create their own.  Here is the link we used,

http://www.makeyourcoatofarms.com/app.asp

Our class will have PE on a Tuesday and Thursday in school.  On Tuesday’s Mr McCurdy has requested that the children bring in outdoor PE kit suitable for all weathers (within reason!).  The children were given a choice between rugby or hockey as their chosen PE lesson on a Tuesday.  On Thursday PE will be in the school gym hall.

For maths we have focused on place value, numbers up to millions.  We have practised reading them, writing them in digits and words.  For extra practise you can try this game.

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/place-value/place-value-charts

 

Have a lovely weekend and I am really looking forward to next week and getting on with all the great activities and events that are planned.

Well done everyone,

Mrs Currie