Category: Primary 7

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

Welcome back to everyone.  For a short week it has been a busy one.

We got straight into a new Maths topic this week which focused on function machines.  This will then lead us into algebra and algebraic thinking in the coming two weeks.  Have a go at using the function machine links below to practise.

http://www.crickweb.co.uk/ks2numeracy-calculation.html

http://www2.smarttutor.com/player/swf/Algebra_Functions_L3_V1_T4a.swf

For our IDL work this week we have been re-engaging with the school Vision statement,

Our vision is to be a vibrant community of faith and learning where together we grow in the image and likeness of Christ.

We discussed how we can strive for this vision in our classroom and next week we will refresh our class charter and our vision will be reflected through it.  We also discussed our future vision that we have for ourselves and everyone created a poster which showcases what each person would like their future pathway to look like.  There were some amazing ideas, Kornelia and Rachel are both interested in becoming ‘youtubers’, Colin would like to become a Marine and Reece is interested in becoming a computer technician.

For PE this term the main focus will be gymnastics, through these lessons we will improve our agility as well as our cooperation skills.  We will also continue to develop our ability to give improvement feedback to one another.  Please make sure you have appropriate indoor footwear for this.  We have also started the long awaited swimming block.  The first lesson today went very well.  I was so impressed with the water confidence of everyone and the behaviour was of the highest standard, well done!

Homework will start again next week, so have a restful weekend and I look forward to our learning this coming term!

Mrs Currie

There have been many highlights this week,

Drama – we all really enjoyed the pantomime show “Beauty and The Beast” which visited the school on Wednesday morning.  The acting was great…oh no it wasn’t…oh yes it was!!

Maths – we continued to look at symmetry this week focusing on using diagonal symmetry.  We were able to create patterns using a mirror and dotted paper.  In numeracy we discussed and worked through examples of equivalent fractions.  We formed equivalent fractions by using our multiplication knowledge and the rule of whatever you do to the top you do to the bottom of the fraction.  If you would like further practise try this following link.

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/mathgames/fractions/memory_equivalent1.htm

Literacy – we listened to and read the poem “Twas The Night Before Christmas”.  We worked in our pairs/trios and completed both literal and inferential question in a quiz style.  This was great fun and it was brilliant to see the collaborative thinking going on especially for the question “what does luster mean?”  Here is a link to Literacy Shed where you can listen to this Classic piece of literature.

http://www.literacyshed.com/nightbeforechristmas.html

RE – we worked collaboratively to engage with the bible passage Luke 2 – 1:14.  We then created posters to demonstrate our understanding of the Nativity story.

Have a lovely weekend and holiday,

Mrs Currie