Author: Miss McCormack

Another fun week in Primary 6!

We started our week by visiting the library where we all took out a book to read in class.  We were given a special class library card allowing us to keep the books for a little bit longer.  We also recorded our song for the school Christmas CD.  It was very professional and all pupils were excellent! We are now recording artists!

We’ve been building on our renewable and non renewable energy knowledge this week. We completed a group task involving lots of problem solving to work out the advantages and disadvantages of different energy sources.  We then focused on wind energy and created paintings of wind farms and poems all about the wind.

Here are some comments from the pupils this week:

Edwin – This week we have been writing a wind poem for our topic which is energy sources.

Erwin – This week we have been recording our Christmas song [Rockin’ around the Christmas tree].

Erin Roy – On Tuesday we went to the library, the lady read us a story, she told us a bit about the library then we got to choose a  book!

Emily- This week some of the girls went to a gymnastics competition and some got a medal!

Emma-This week we painted some wind pictures and they look Amazing! We also went to the library and we chose a book to bring back to school, it was really fun! Our writing this week was about a wind poem!! THEY LOOK AMAZING! So this week was really fun and creative!

Congratulations to all the pupils who took part in the gymnastics festival, I’ve heard you were all fantastic!!

Next week the pupils will be given some research homework about renewable energy – have a think about what you already know.

Enjoy your weekend!

This week our learning has focused on the Rights of the Child, especially the rights of refugee children.  The pupils have worked very hard this week ending with our class assembly today.  Thank you to everyone who came along to our assembly, it was lovely to see so many of you. The pupils were all fantastic – well done every one!

Here are some pupil comments from this week:

Leon-we have all worked hard for this assembly and finally we have put together all our learning and showed the school

Declan-this week we had CRAZY PJ DAY a day were we all came in in our PJ’s.

Nicola-we have been learning about a refugee called Malak and how she was in a boat with her mum and different people going to Greece from Syria.

Erin-this week in French we were working on our French video for the competition. If we get through we go to Edinburgh to visit the French institute.

Erwin-this week in numeracy we have been working on decimals and fractions.

Ben-We have been learning about the rights of the child and we put all of our learning together to make a class assembly on the rights of the child.

Emma-Today we had our p6 assembly and it was amazing, it went very well and we were in our pjs. It was really very funny!!!

Ciara-this week in class we made little box cards.  Inside it has a picture of the stable where Jesus was born or the three kings. We can use them as Christmas cards.

Kieran-In literacy we’ve been busy doing reading, punctuation sheets and our books: Stig of the Dump, Millions and Goodnight Mr. Tom.

We completed our daily mile in our PJ’s today, have a look at some of our photos.

Finally our popcorn challenge total is now 474!! The pupils have reached the first stage of their prize; let’s see if we can reach 800 over the next 4 weeks.

This week we started lots of new things.

We have started paired reading with primary 1M, we met our partners and listen to them read.  We will do this every Wednesday morning.  We also started thinking about our new topic.  This term we will be focusing on fossil fuels and renewable energy.  The class have provided lots of excellent ideas for their learning this term; it will be a great topic!  We have been working on decimals this week, using our existing knowledge of the four number processes to complete calculations and games.

Here are some class comments from this week:

Leon – I hope we learn lots of new facts about our new science topic.

Amera – In class we learned about SCIAF and MISSIO. It was good to look at what other countries look like and comparing then to our country. We created posters for our RE wall.

Rugare – We wrote a spooky story in class.

Kieran – We have been working on decimals in textbooks, netbooks and worksheets.

Declan – We also have a new thing called popcorn challenge. All of the tables try to get at least 400 pom-poms to get a movie in the afternoon and 800 pom-poms for a full day of fun.

Mia- This week we have been writing scary stories and we made firework pictures with salt, glue and paint.

It has been another week full of hard work for Primary 6.  The class total for out popcorn challenge is currently 259!! Fantastic team work so far, keep it up!  All pupils have their jotters home with them this weekend.  Please try to take some time to look through them together and discuss their learning so far in primary 6.

This week was STEM week and we’ve been very busy working hard on lots of activities.

We started with a class pipe cleaner challenge.  Working in small groups we were given instructions to build the tallest free-standing structure.  We were working against the clock and things got really tricky when we were only allowed to use one hand for 2 minutes, and then had to work in silence for 2 minutes! But we all managed and worked very well as part of a team! Mia So, Nicola and Shiv managed to build the tallest structure.  We discussed their techniques, including a wide and stable based that was even strengthened by twisting pipe cleaners together.

We were also focusing on the Great Barrier Reef this week.  We went on an interactive journey with David Attenborough.  We were able to watch videos of the Great Barrier Reef online, allowing us to see all the life under the sea.  It was also very interesting to see what the future holds for the Great Barrier Reef and as a class we discussed coral bleaching and the causes of water pollution and sea temperature increase.  We then used the videos for inspiration to create our very own Barrier Reef boxes.  For this activity we worked in pairs and used various craft supplies to create the Great Barrier Reef in a shoebox.  The final results are great! Take a look at some of our boxes!

This term our PE focus will be fitness.  Mr McCurdy introduced us to some Crossfit exercises.  They were quite difficult but everyone was working hard.  We had a few sore muscles the next day but this means we were working very hard! Miss McCormack led a fitness class during PE on Thursday, with everyone really focusing on getting the most out of each exercise.

Our class mass this week went very well.  Well done to all P6 pupils for representing our school in the community, everyone was very impressed!

Primary 6 have also started a new class reward system – ask your child all about it, we are all very excited!

This week in PE we have developed our tennis skills even further. We learned the rules to play matches and all took turns of being the Umpire, Line Judge and players. This has led to competitive games and has been very enjoyable.

We’ve been doing carousels in Numeracy to enhance our capabilities of adding and subtracting decimals.  We have been finding prices online and adding money to help us improve.

This week in our Teacher Carousel afternoon we worked with all the P6’s and Miss Ford.  We were focused on money. We found out about the differences between Debit and Credit cards and worked on strategies to calculate prices in a sale.  We even made our own Debit cards!

Our topic is AUSTRALIA!!! Which is so far really REALY FUUUUUN! This week we learned about the Aboriginals and their art and storytelling.  We listened to some traditional stories about ‘Dreamtime’ like the rainbow serpent “ hiss hiss.” We then wrote our own stories in a similar style, focusing on a story board of drawings.  We all started working on some Aboriginal artwork.  We chose an Australian animal and copied their style of ‘Dot Art’ by using cotton buds and paints.  The Paintings look great! Also don’t forget the CUDLY KOALAS AND BOXING KANGAROOS! For out Australian animal research we have been working in small groups to focus on one animal.  Each expert group will feedback to the rest of the class to share our learning.

By Ali and Reece.

All pupils have had another fantastic week of learning.  I was very impressed with the Aboriginal stories and art work.  The pupils have shown great improvement in their numeracy, especially with place value when including decimal places.  I am very impressed with the improvement in our speedtables challenge, this really shows how much practising at home really helps! Just a reminder for all children to returen their yellow Pupil Profile folders if not already done so.

Have a great weekend,

Miss McCormack

It has been a short but very busy week for Primary 6.

We have been working hard on our Australia topic, looking at some very different places within Australia.  For writing this week we imagined we were on holiday in Australia and writing home about all the great things we were doing.  To help us write great descriptions we used photographs of places in Australia to inform our writing.

We watched two “Visit Australia” adverts and discussed the similarities and differences between them.  We talked about how they made us want to go there by using particular language or images.  We also started to research different Australian animals to create some fact files that we can then share to the rest of the class.

Wednesday was international Peace Day.  We learned how Peace Day first started.  It was the idea of one man who has worked very hard to have the day recognised all over the world.  His work was very inspiring and showed us how much difference one person can really make!  Using our school values for inspiration we came up with “World Values”.  If everyone agreed to World Values similar to St Ninian’s we all agree that the world would be a much more peaceful place.  We also worked on our mindfulness techniques this week, including some breathing exercises and time for meditation after PE.  After our daily mile we also created a human Peace sign with Primary 5. It was quite tricky, but great fun!

Father Kenneth came to visit this week.  It was lovely to see him around the school and for us to show him all our hard work.  We look forward to him coming in again.

We were all very excited to start our new committees this week.  The pupils all came back to class very excited to go to their next committee meeting.  I look forward to finding out what everyone is planning!

Just a reminder to return the yellow pupil profile folders if you have not already done so.