St Ninian's Primary School

Titanic Showcase

We have had a VERY busy week in P4!

The highlight of our week was our Titanic showcase and banquet. We invited parents in and enjoyed sharing our learning with them! We were busy making all the foods for our banquet and all managed to gain knowledge and develop skills that will enable us to help make dinner at home!

In writing we made menus to advertise the selection of tasty foods available on our banquet!

We enjoyed learning our song and had great fun quizzing our parents!

We hope you have a nice weekend,

P4 and Miss Diamond

Primary 5’s Awesome Week

This week we celebrated our class Mass. We worked with Mrs Purdie to prepare. We are very proud of ourselves as we all fully participated in all parts of the Mass.

Taylor: ” I was proud of myself when I read my reading”

We were so good that we were allowed to visit the swing park- we had great fun!!

Vanessa:” At the park on the tyre swing, Taylor was pushing us really fast and we felt a bit dizzy!”

Kalin: “The park was really fun and I think we deserved it!”

Chi-Chi: ” I enjoyed pretending that we were going into space!”

Chloe:”At the swing park it is a really good place to use your imagination!”

Preston ” I was the park supervisor and I had fun watching what everyone was doing!”

This week we participated in a maths carousel, where we were learning about angles. We played angle games, we discussed with Mrs Reeves our understanding of angles, we also spoke about triangles- did you know there is a right-angled triangle?

Brandon” I learned that there are different degrees in each angle!”

Lucas “I learned that there are different names for different angles”

Thomas “Did you know that there are no left angles, only right?”

Max “I know that different angles with different names are different shapes”

On Monday we participated in some spanish halloween activities and we wrote some haunted house settings- they are so spooky!

Finally in drama we were in groups, learning about peer pressure, we created some scenes and shared them with the rest of the class! Whilst everyone was at drama Beth and Vanessa had to write a letter to local companies to see if they could donate raffle prizes to us for the Festive Fun Day!

Have a great weekend from P5- Stay safe at bonfire night!

P1M Weekly News

We all came back from our October break refreshed and eager to learn more! It was a fantastic start back and all children have continued to show their love for learning this week.

This week we met Mr Slater who is going to be working with us for 5 weeks. We have really enjoyed showing Mr Slater our classroom and learning and we look forward to working with him over the next few weeks.

We are continuing our addition work in numeracy and a mysterious machine had appeared in our class this week – an addition machine! This machine helps us with our addition work. We enjoyed using it so much in our numeracy lessons that there was a big queue to play with it at golden time! Kayla, Esmee and Rutendo were using the machine at golden time and knew that 100 add 1 would make one hundred and one… great job girls! We are really enjoying learning big numbers and we love the big numbers song on youtube – have you listened to this at home? Kerr was even able to write the number 100 on the board this week too! WOW!

We learned the ‘e’ and ‘o’ sounds this week. These sounds (along with all other vowel sounds) live in a special vowel house. Ask your child to tell you about the vowel house story? It is quite a long story but can you remember 3 parts of the story? Next week our sounds are going to be ‘f’ and ‘b’ – can you think of any words that begin with the sounds ‘f’ or ‘b’. All new sounds will be added to the sounds jotter on Monday for homework.

We started a new initiative this week called ‘Play: Plan, Do, Review’. We love playing in P1 and it is not ‘Just Play’. One of our favourite ways to learn is through play. We have been focusing on literacy through play for 6 sessions. We have 6 stations to explore during these stations:

Puppet theatre – children use their talking and listening skills through play. They are also required to share and take turns. When some make up and showcase their own story using the puppets others are required to listen to the story.
Story corner – children choose a soft toy and a story book. They are then asked to read their story to a soft boy. Miss Meechan enjoys joining in with the play at this station and reading a story to us too. We also enjoy finding words and sounds that we know in the books.
The office – this station encourages children to use their phonics knowledge and write out notes for each other, taking phonecalls and in general writing for enjoyment. Whilst at this station this week, Jarred drew his own representation of the vowel house – Miss Meechan was very impressed with this!
iPads – we are constantly developing our technology skills and we have been playing literacy games on the ipads. Our favourite one is the ABC app. Have you played this at home?
Story telling – a favourite so far has been the blue table. At the blue table there are lots of character toys for us to play with. Some characters which we can recognise – fireman sam, iggle piggle – and others which we make up characters for. This week, Adam created a story “iggle piggle was driving the giraffe through the jungle and a bad guy chased him but fell off the giraffe”. Adam also drew a picture of this in his play diary.
Letter formation – at the yellow table this week there has been a range of materials to use to practise our letter formation – paint bags, chunky pens, sand tray, cubes, play-doh. We love using the paint bags to write our names and letter shapes.

Below are some picture of our ‘Play: Plan, Do, Review’ highlights:

This week was STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) week. We took part in a range of different activities to begin to develop our knowledge of STEM. We all participated in 3 activities. Firstly, we were looked water and absorption. In pairs we were exploring what would happen when we put a sponge into water. We used lots of different scientific language during this group: “soaking, floating, sinking, changing” – it was very wet but very fun play! Secondly, we watched the three little pigs story. We were then given pipecleaners, lollipop sticks, lego bricks and animal figures and we acted out this story – what house was the strongest? What house was the weakest? And finally, we completed a session which looked at forces. We were racing toy cars down a ramp and we predicted how far the car would travel by looking at the number line. We found out that if the ramp for the car was higher or steeper the car would got faster and further. We have loved STEM week this year!

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Meechan

STEM week

As the title suggest the theme of the week was STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. The children took part in some classroom and outdoor STEM challenges to help them learn more about the STEM subjects.

Challenge 1: As a SMARTSTART activity one morning the activities were linked to Technology and Engineering – using the ipad apps, using straws to build things and using sticklebricks. Some children worked individually or in pairs.

Challenge 2: The children were delighted to come into the classroom to see LOTS of marshmallows and cocktail sticks on their tables. In teams of 2 or 3 they had to build something using the materials they had been given. This challenge was all about teamwork and creativity. It was great to see what they came up with!! They also used maths and had to predict how many sticks or marshmallows they would need, counting the actual amounts, links to 2D and 3d shape and patterns. Amazing what you can do with some sticks and marshmallows!!!

Abigail made a diamond and a square shape, Nathan made Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters, Dexter made some fantastic towers, Klaudia made a house, Sahara made a triangle, Ephraim made a star and lots more….

Challenge 3: The children worked in 3 teams to take their learning outdoors and go on an Autumn walk to see what materials they could find which we could use in our play. This was a great opportunity to talk about seasons, look at day/night, light/dark, colours, nature, etc. Everyone loved being outside in the wind and filled 3 bags full of leaves, berries and twigs, we even found a hairy caterpillar and some slimy slugs!!

Challenge 4: Using the materials from the walk each child had to make something, again this needed creativity and problem solving. James made a sensory bottle and filled it with leaves and water – we will keep an eye on the bottle to see if anything happens to the colour of the water, Bernice made an autumn collage using leaves and twigs, Mark made a tree picture using twigs and leaves, Paul L did some leaf rubbings. We have started a new ‘Play’ display in our classroom to show off some of our learning through play and have added some of our Autumn pictures to this.

P7/6 Engineers

It has been a fantastic STEM week! We looked at James Dyson and some of his inventions and improvements that he has made to everyday pieces of equipment such as the vacuum cleaner and wheelbarrow.

With Miss Ross the children have been building bridges out of straws. The children have learned about team work, logical thinking and problem solving through this activity. Everyone’s bridges managed (some only just!)to hold 1.5kg. Well done. On Thursday we had a visit from a Civil Engineer called Alison. She helped us understand about good bridge design which we then were able to use to help us build our straw bridges.

TALKING is going to be a major focus this term in Literacy. Next week will see the introduction of talking homework. The purpose of this is to encourage the children to construct coherent and informative arguments and statements orally so that in turn they will be able to write in well constructed sentences. There is no need for the children to record anything in their jotter about this homework, but they will be asked to contribute to group and class discussions throughout the week.

Homework club will start up again on Tuesday in class at lunchtime. Anyone who needs support or extra time to complete their homework should make use of this opportunity.

In Maths this term we will be focusing on fractions, decimals and percentages. Already the children have been looking at the link between fractions and decimals by converting tenths from one form to another. Everyone has enjoyed good success with this so far. Here is a game for you to continue to practise and extend your skills with this concept.

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/mathgames/decimals/DecimalModels10.htm

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/Flash.aspx?b=maths/decimals

Well done class,

Mrs Currie

STEM week for Primary 2!

In numeracy this week we have begun to learn about subtraction.
We have been checking that we know how to subtract 1 single digit from 1 single digit. Whilst learning about subtraction we have been learning about the language associated with subtraction (minus, difference, less than, subtract and take away). We will look out for this language when completing subtraction word problems.

We really enjoyed playing the Minus Mission game to practise our subtraction. The link is below to practise this at home.
http://www.arcademics.com/games/mission/mission.html

To finish our Transport topic we learnt the history and future of the Forth road and rail bridges and the engineers who designed them.

We understand that men or women who build or design bridges are called civil engineers.
In groups we built bridges using different materials.
Lollipop sticks, playdoh, gummy sweets and marshmallows.

In science we have been learning all about solids and liquids and how they change state.
We have completed different science experiments for STEM week.

To test how quickly ice can melt we put our ice balloons in different places around the room.

In our groups we chose to put our ice balloons under a table, beside the radiator, in hot water, at the window and we kept 1 piece of ice in the balloon.

We all made predictions and even wrote our own Science reports.

The ice in the hot water melted the quickest.

Miss Boyes froze water and paint over night, the next day in class we melted it and we used the paint to create different patterns.

To record our Science experiments we have completed Science reports in writing. We had to include 1 connective in our report.

We either used the connectives because or and.

We wrote super science reports that explained our experiment and our predictions. We made sure to use capital letters, full stops and fingers spaces too.

To finish off STEM week we learnt more about solids and liquids through food technology by making ice cream.

This linked well to our new maths topic (Measure) because we had to help Miss Boyes measure out the Ingredients.

We used scales to measure in grams and we used a measuring jug to measure in milliliters.

You can find the recipe and ingredients for homemade ice-cream online so you can try this science experiment at home.

In RE we have been reflecting on God’s family and how we and our Parish are members of God’s family.

We also reflected on the importance of our own family and how they love and care for us.
We drew some beautiful pictures of our family members.

I think we have lots of little future scientists and engineers in Primary 2! Have a lovely weekend, Miss Boyes and Primary 2!

Primary 6 Weekly News

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!

Primary 4 weekly update!

We have had a good first week back after our October break! The highlight for many was the Halloween Disco! Fun times had by all!

We have been learning about subtraction with borrowing this week! It was really hard to begin with but we have made great progress with this!

In writing, we have been writing about the ‘Titanic Disaster’. We had a huge focus on using VCOP to make our writing as interesting as possible!

We were learning all about the class system and different passengers on the Titanic as part of our topic. You will be blown away when you see our cabins we made during technology!

We will be continuing our STEM week into next week when we will be preparing for our Titanic Showcase. We will be preparing food for our Grand Banquet which we are very excited about already!

Have a nice weekend,

P4 and Miss Diamond.

P1M Weekly News

What a fantastic first term we have all had in P1M. We have all settled in to school life so well and everyone has such fantastic attitudes towards learning. Well done P1M!

Our numeracy focuses for this week have been counting and recognising numbers and addition. We are working really hard in these areas and our mental addition is improving every day. One of our activities this week was quite tricky but so much fun. Miss Meechan showed us some counters and then covered them up with a piece of paper. She then showed us some counters which she added underneath the paper and we had to say how many counters were under the paper now. This is something that you could try at home too. Here are a few games that we have played this week for you to try at home too:

http://www.iboard.co.uk/iwb/Adding-Two-Dice-716

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/learning-to-count/ladybird-spots

Can you spot Trex doing his addition work?! Trex even earned some dojo points this week too!

We have been working so hard on our writing these past few weeks. We are all trying so hard with our spelling and we are listening carefully for all of the sounds that we know to help us spell correctly. This week we even used some of our tricky words in our writing – great work everyone! For our writing lesson this week we were asked to recall and write about our trip to the park. Miss Meechan gave us some photographs of us playing at the park. We showed our partner our photographs and used our talking and listening skills to discuss these with our peers. Here are some examples of our writing this week:

Jarred: “At the park I was on the slide.”

Esmee: “At the park I was swinging.”

Kaitlyn: “At the park I was climbing.”

Sophie: “At the park I was playing in the tunnel.”

This week we really enjoyed our structured play session. There were lots of different tasks for us to participate in. Next term we are going to introduce 3 ‘play: plan, do, review’ sessions each week. These sessions will offer literacy and numeracy activities and allow us to learn through play. We are really looking forward to this. Look out for our ‘Just Play?’ display in our classroom.

We really enjoyed the opportunity to reflect on our learning in our Ninians Natter this week. We completed a few different activities. With Miss Meechan we started to complete our GIRFEC wheel – we had to think about how safe and healthy we feel. We also were asked to choose a piece of work which were most proud of. This was a tricky choice – have a look for the post-it note in your child’s jotter. We also drew a picture about something we have learned this term too. You can find these pictures in ‘our special work’ poly pocket in our yellow profiles.

Well done to Romera who was one of our stars at our achievements assembly this morning. Miss Meechan was asked to choose someone who had settled into their new class and is working well. Great job, Romera. What a wonderful achievement.

Finally, this week we said a sad farewell to Miss Burns (only for a little while!) as she goes off on maternity leave. Miss Burns has been working with us since the beginning of the term and we are so thankful for all of her support and helping us settle into P1. Today, we decided to throw Miss Burns a surprise baby shower. We wish Miss Burns all the best in the next part of her adventure and we cannot wait to meet your little princess!

I hope everyone enjoys a well deserved holiday,

Miss Meechan and P1M

Final week fun in Primary one!

It may have been the last week of term 1 but P1R still managed to squeeze in lots of learning and fun! It was lovely having one of the St Margaret’s pupils in our class this week for their work experience placement – a big thank you to Billy for all his help!

On Monday the children noticed a new play area in their classroom – their very own office! This has been popular this week and lots of mark making and writing has been happening here. Every week there will be 2 new challenges at this area for everyone to try out or children can be creative and make up their own writing tasks. Dawid and Klaudia have enjoyed ‘answering the phone and taking messages’, ‘Abigail has ‘enjoyed leaving messages for others on the coloured post-it notes’. In phonics we had our final week of assessments and spent time practising writing all the sounds, blending all the sounds and reading and spelling our tricky words. After the holidays we will move onto set 2 sounds and some new tricky words. The children’s efforts with their tricky words have been rewarded with lots of dojo points! Congratulations to James and Brooke who were our star writers this week and got a dojo picture message sent home!

Lloyd was really proud of himself at writing the Fry’s words

Our favourite activity for phonics – using the squeezy paint bags and cotton buds to practise the letter shapes

In maths we have been learning about addition – we learned some new mathematical language – how many altogether, add, plus, totals. We did lots of practical activities in our maths carousels to help us practise the skill of adding 2 groups of objects or numbers together. Everyone did really well with their tasks and many children completed some extension activities to challenge themselves.

Our IDL and HWB lessons this week have often overlapped as we have been learning about our local area and the jobs people do. We learned that there are lots of different types of jobs and that many people have a part to play in keeping us all safe. In PE we had our final lesson of the block which was great fun, we can’t wait to find out what skills we’ll be developing next term with Mr McCurdy. We had Ninian’s Natter on Thursday and enjoyed looking at each other’s online learning journals and reflecting on our goals for term 1.

Lucy achieved her goal and has set a new one

To end the week we had a visit from ‘Miss McGuire’ who will be joining our class after the holidays to work alongside Mrs Roy, she is really excited to join our class! Calder and Glasserton had a lovely movie morning and Whithorn and Galloway made a lovely new display for our P1 area. And finally, congratulations to James who was our class achiever of the month at our whole school achievements assembly.

Have a great holiday everyone!