Mrs Dick

P5 news

This week we have continued to work on our Science topic “Wonderful Water”. We followed up our work on floating and sinking and learned about buoyancy. Mrs Chirinos shared her knowledge of scuba diving with us which was really interesting. We also shared our Science learning to date with the whole school at our Friday assembly. The feedback that we have received has been very positive and the other classes were particularly impressed with the disappearing colour wheel! Well done P5 your delivery was excellent. I was really proud of you.

We also had a visit from the Scottish SPCA on Thursday. This was excellent! The focus was on wild animals, learning about their distinguishing features, habitats and how we can help if an animal is in trouble. We shared a lot of stories from our own personal experiences. We had a chance to be animal detectives by playing a game where we had to identify the animal from footprints, colour and habitat.

In our Health and Wellbeing learning this week we discussed anti-bullying and created posters showcasing our knowledge of different forms of bullying and how to seek help.

Another fantastic week P5, well done.

Primary 5/6 News

In maths we learned another multiplication strategy, how to times by 10,100 and 1000. In Science, we worked in teams to make table signs by researching facts about our chosen planet, in the solar system. In literacy we learned how to recognise and use proper nouns and comparative adjectives. The boys from P5/6 are very pleased because they won the football game, 4-3 against Dedridge, on Tuesday. Yesterday we had a very busy day as our class went to our class mass in the Lanthorn Parish. Also the SSPCA came for a visit and we learned about pet patrol.

By Freya and Broady.

Keeping Up With Current Global Issues In P7

During Anti-Bullying week we have been using our drama skills to write a script about bullying and act this out. Children have also been learning about different types of bullying and making decisions about what to do in a bullying scenario. In P7 we are very lucky that we get on with each other very well and bullying is not a problem although we are very aware of what to do if it did become an issue for anyone.

On Tuesday we visited St. Margaret’s Academy where we got to do lots of social studies related activities about children in WW2 Germany. We learned about the Hitler Youth and the Persecution of the Jews and we are excited to go up again next week to learn some more!

In our topic, Sport Science, we have been learning about the main organs in the human body. We worked in groups and drew round someone and then painted on the main organs in the correct places. It was really fun!

In maths we have been focusing on money and learning about bills, receipts, comparing items to select the best value for money and debit cards. Parents beware – your children are all desperate for a bank card!!

Finally, this week in P7 we have started to watch CBBC Newsround every morning. The children were very upset by what happened in Paris so instead of having a one day discussion and moving on from there we have decided to keep up to date with the news every day by watching a 3-5 minute clip of today’s headlines. This has been really effective in getting the children to talk about the world and current global issues and each day we have taken a few moments to think about others in our world and really appreciate what we have.

Have a great weekend!

P7 and Miss Ford

Plain Sailing for P5

This week we have been learning about the famous Scientist Archimedes. We learned the story of his “Eureka” moment and used this as our focus for our writing. We all became reporters for the morning and wrote our own article about Archimedes discovery. We had a “Mission Impossible” to include quotes in our articles, we all achieved this and learned about using speech marks effectively. Great work P5!

Carrying on our theme of water in Science we have started to look at floating and sinking. Why do huge (and very heavy!) metal ships float? This was the question we asked ourselves as it challenged our idea that heavy things sink. Using blu-tak we made a ball shape and dropped it into water, and of course it sank. Using the exact same blu-tak we had to investigate how we could change the shape to make it float.

Reece said “I think it has something to do with the amount of surface on the water that it takes up that makes it float”.

Most groups had some success! Try it out at home but don’t use play-doh as this goes yucky in water, Mrs Currie knows after a very slimy incident with orange play-doh! We hope it will be plain sailing (this was meant) next week when we continue the investigation into why ships float.

In Maths we have continued learning about fractions. Our focus was finding a fraction of an amount. Using our times table knowledge and our division skills we worked hard on this. Please use the help sheet given out at Parents Meetings to help you quicken your recall of your tables.

Have a great weekend.

Primary 5/6 News

In P 5/6 this week, we all enjoyed dressing down to raise money for ‘Children in Need’ today. In maths we have all learned how to use rounding to multiply two digits by 1 digit numbers. Kaden taught the class how to round and multiply because he felt very confident. This helped some of us in the class as we watched the video of Kaden. In reading we learned about to, too and two through a rap and making up our own raps. In our Science topic, we have learned about the scale of the solar system and next week we are going to make our own solar system in the playground. Our table teams now have planet names and we are in the middle of designing posters for our tables.

By Billie & Kornelia

P7 Weekly News

This week in maths we have been learning about the different formulae used for calculating speed, distance and time. We learned about the magic triangle which we can use to work out what formula should be used each time by covering up the aspect which you are trying to work out to reveal the process of this: speed = distance/time, time = distance/speed or distance = speed x time.

Within our topic (Sport Science) we have been learning about the parts and functions of the lungs and how we can keep our lungs pink and healthy throughout our lives. To help us really understand how our lungs work we did an investigation where we used a plastic bottle, a plastic bag, a balloon and an elastic band to create a model of the lungs and this allowed us to see that when we breathe oxygen in, the diaphragm flattens/moves down and when we breathe carbon dioxide out, the diaphragm moves up.

Next Tuesday we will be visiting St. Margaret’s Academy for the first of our 3 weeks of transition mornings. The theme of this is ‘Children in Conflict’ which should link really well with some work we have already done on refugees.

Have a great weekend!

Primary 5/6 News

Last week, in p5\6, we rehearsed for our assembly. We learned the historical meaning behind firework night. We shared our learning with p4-7, telling them the story about guy fox. We also learned the firework code and created posters to put up around the school. In art, last week, we made fireworks out of different types of pasta, we designed our firework and then added glitter to make our firework’s colourful. In music we started to learn how to play the Ukulele. As part of our science topic we investigated how the explosion in a firework happens. We made rockets out of plastic bottles and used bicarbonate soda and vinegar. Our experiment did not go to plan; we think this happened because all the air went out the bottle we needed to tighten them. We are going to try again next week.

By Danielle & Isabella

P5 Wonderful Water

Water, water all around…

This week we have continued looking at water and followed up our water cycle learning by focusing on the states of water. We discussed ice (solid), water in it’s natural state (liquid) and water vapour and steam (gas). We conducted an investigation into what would happen to water if placed in different environments in the school, the freezer, on the heater and left under our smartboard. We discussed what would happen and any changes we would observe. We learned that the term hypothesis means to predict what would happen using some of our prior knowledge about the subject. We all agreed that the bottle in the freezer will turn into ice, here are some other suggestions as to what will also happen,

“I think the water level will go down because the water will get thicker when it turns to ice”.

“I think the water in the freezer will rise because that is what usually happens”

We recorded our findings and observation in our class “Talking Book”.

The picture shows that the frozen water has risen up the bottle. We discussed how the structure of the water molecules causes this to happen. If you want to up level this knowledge further watch the following youtube science clip which explains this and more.