There has been a lot happening this week in primary 6/7.

We started Art with Mrs Conway and we all created a silhouette for remembrance day. We have also been continuing with drama box and everyone has been having lots of fun creating our class characters.

In numeracy we have been focusing on multiplication this week and have been trying different methods to see what one we like best. Continue working on this at home to increase your confidence! Challenge your parents – how many methods do they know?

We all became film critics this week. After watching The Grinch we wrote a review, including our personal opinion as well as facts about the film.

We have completed the Gift of Wisdom for the Pope Francis Faith Award – please check that this is all completed at home, ready for the next gift next week.

Pupil Voice:

Primary 6 pupils – Skills we have used this week.

Creativity – We used our creative skills in Art with Mrs Conway.

Responsibility – We had to be very responsible when walking to the cinema this week. We also represented our school very well.

Primary 7 pupils – Out first transition visit

“The best part was lighting the Bunsen burner.” Jan, Joshua, Joseph

“I liked how you could change how hot the flame on the Bunsen burner was” Aidan

“In science we monitored the temperature of boiling water for 10 minutes to find out what was the best insulator; bubble wrap, felt or cotton wool” Mark, Sean, Evie

“Science was really, really cool. We liked lighting the flame. We are looking forward to going back for swimming” Ailie, Shannon, Louise.

Learning Overview

This week in P5 we have had many learning highlights.  In maths we have been learning about symmetry and we made links across the curriculum and continued to develop our understanding of symmetry through art.

We enjoyed free writing Friday as it gives us the opportunity to use our imagination.

We had an exciting trip to Jupiter Artland where we got to meet the different sculptures and made our very own journey sticks to bring home.

As part of our writing lesson, learning about writing procedural texts, we made slime. It was a great learning experience for us and made us appreciate the importance of measurements of ingredients when making slime.

Pupil Voice

“I liked doing art because we made a silhouette to celebrate Remembrance Day” – James

“I liked doing the symmetry art because we didn’t just make pictures we also got to use dots and rulers to make a really cool shape!”- Wojtek

“I enjoyed making the journey stick at Jupiter Artland” – Alishba

“I enjoyed the trip to Jupiter Artland and I guessed that the stone on the first sculpture was Obsidian and loved when we got to go into the Amethyst cave!” – Ahmad

“I liked free writing Friday because I wrote about a racing game called “Forza Horizon 4!” – Kayden

Parent Involvement

Big Talk – Ask your child about the key features of a procedural text.

Search for symmetry in your local environment/ play a symmetry game/ design a symmetrical picture together (tip- using graph paper will make this easier….we have tried!).

Literacy

We have been learning about the ‘b’ and ‘f’ sounds this week. The children completed a range of different activities to develop their knowledge of these sounds. Some of the activities have been:

• Finding the difference between the ‘b’ and ‘p’ sounds. We had lots of different ‘b’ and ‘p’ sounds and we had to colour in the ‘b’ sounds red and ‘p’ pink.
• Played ‘b’ bingo – this allows us to think about different objects which begin with ‘b’.
• Listening to lots of different words and identifying what sound these words begin with.
• Extending our sentences in writing by including the word ‘and’ – we were writing a story about who lived in a haunted house.
• Using our knowledge of skills for writing and trying to use these independently – capital letters (only at the beginning of a sentence); full stops (this means our sentence is finished) and finger spaces (in between words).
• Reading words with the ‘f’ and ‘b’ sounds in them. Can you slide sounds together to read the words fit, bat, fan, and bin?
• We used the Velcro spelling mats and magnetic letter boards to spell words using these new sounds.

Numeracy and Maths

In numeracy and maths we have been ordering numbers and beginning to think about the language of measure. Some of our numeracy and maths activities have been:

• Learning that when we order numbers, some numbers can be missing and how we can still put these in order from largest to smallest or smallest to largest (this language is helping us think about different ways to measure e.g. by amount or by size). We played these games to help us understand this concept. https://www.topmarks.co.uk/ordering-and-sequencing/coconut-ordering

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/ordering-and-sequencing/chinese-dragon-ordering

• Cut out some numbers and stuck them in the correct order. How could you order the numbers – 4, 0, 9, 10, 5 – from smallest to largest and then largest to smallest. Challenge yourself and try it with these numbers – 19, 14, 20, 11, and 15.
• We explored what ‘2 more’ meant in numeracy. We used a number line to make 2 more jumps from a number to find out what this meant. What is 2 more than 5 or 2 more than 17?
• Collected sticks from the garden and measured these against pegs (a non-standard unit of measure). We had to ensure our stick was taller than 5 pegs but shorter than 9. Ask your child what we then used these sticks for.

Hallowe’en

We enjoyed engaging in different activities to celebrate Hallowe’en. One of our favourite things this week has been our themed reading area. The books in our library this week are:

• Room on the Broom
• Aliens love Underpants
• Magical Muddle
• The Princess and the Sleep Stealer (this has been a favourite!)
• Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam

We explored how to turn a solid into a liquid by melting chocolate to make witches hat biscuits (this was an idea after reading ‘Magical Muddle’ story).

We also developed our fine motor skills by making a spider’s web by threading string.

Finally, our tuff tray had turned into a Witches and Wizards Lab. We were able to create different potions – did you see our picture on twitter?!

This week P2/1 have been exploring their new topic of People In Society.  We have looked at where we live in our local community but also explored how we are part of our country’s community as well as the world community.  We have started to recognise important jobs that people do in our community and we have been given the opportunity to learn about some of the skills that these jobs require.  This is reflected in our P2 playroom where there are many opportunities for us to explore these skills and investigate how we can develop these.  P1 have been taking in part in some of these activities too as well as engaging with some of the Fairyland activities in the P1 playroom too.

In Literacy this week we have all been very spooky and P2 wrote a description about a haunted house and the P1s wrote about who lived in the spooky house.  Some great imagination from everyone!

In numeracy we have started learning and exploring addition.  P1 have been using pictures to add this week (with numbers to 10) and P2 have looked at using cubes and ten frames (with numbers to 20).  P2 have focused on sister/switcher calculations, they have learned that 2 + 3 makes the same altogether as 3 + 2.  We have also discussed a lot about ODD and EVEN numbers and used our outdoor learning this week to make our playground look chalktastic with odd numbers!

In Number Talks we have been becoming much more focused on EFFICIENT strategies, the children know that they are looking to find a quick and easy strategy to count.  We have used skills such as counting in 2s, grouping in 5s and 10s and counting on from a number we know.

Have a lovely weekend

Mrs Currie

Learning in Literacy
Jan, Joshua, Ola, Oliwier, Hudu and Emma
In writing this week we were working on procedure. We all wrote a procedure about How to Programme Marty the Robot. Some people included how to add different commands.
We focused on using imperative verbs to help with our writing.
Kensuke’s Kingdom group continued to read and had to look up all the places Michael visited and mark them on our maps.
Skellig group discussed some questions and worked on improving our written answers.

Learning in Numeracy
Evie, Aidan, Adrin, Zuzanna, Aaron
During Numeracy this week we worked on standard addition and subtraction. Primary 7 have also all completed their SNSA tests. We also had time to play some maths board and card games this week.

Learning Across the Curriculum 
Shannon, Kacper, Louise, Levente, Sean, Ethan
We celebrated 2 masses this week. At today’s mass for All Saints day we learned about what “canon” meant. On Tuesday’s Mass the primary 6 pupils were enrolled for the Pope Francis Faith Award.
Primary 6 also started Bike Ability, becoming more comfortable on their bikes.  In rugby we focused on kicking the ball after scoring a try. We got to use Marty again this week and made up shows. We made backgrounds and props and filmed these.

Skills for Learning, Life and Work
Kasia, Robbie, Ailie, Mark
This week we used technology skills, communication, teamwork and imagination.
We used all of these skills in our group project working on Marty. We were able to programme him to do things and we all discussed our ideas and listened to each other. Some people were asked to nominate a classmate who showed excellent teamwork and they received a wristband.

Please see below photos for Maths and Numeracy questions that can be tried at home. There is a 1st and 2nd level calendar.

Learning Overview

This week in P5 we have had many learning highlights. A definite favourite for all was developing coding skills using Scratch to program Marty the robot to dance. In literacy we have been learning about proper nouns and how to write a procedural text accurately. In maths and numeracy we have been applying our knowledge of the four processes to complete Halloween themed calculations and have been using the outdoors to learn about Symmetry.

Pupil Voice

Marty

“Marty has been really fun to use.  We got to do a lot of fun things with him when we and him!” – Matthew

“It was really fun making the music video and the backdrop!” – Oma

Writing

“It was good writing instructions and now we know the right layout!” – Madison

“We were able to use our knowledge about Marty to write instructions for Mrs Scott to use Marty!” – Angelina

PE

“I liked doing PE, it was really fun and making me more active.” – Wojtek

“We played lots of fun games in PE!” – Leo

Maths

“It was fun being outside when learning about symmetry. We had to look for natural materials to use!” – Ahmad

“It was really tricky to solve the Halloween maths problems!” – Harry

Parent Involvement

Why not visit Scratch,  https://scratch.mit.edu/ and get your child to teach you some coding skills!

In P2/1 this week we have been discussing our Growth Mindset and how we are always striving to be positive learners even when we are finding some aspects of our learning difficult.  We have been listening to two songs to help us realise the importance of perseverance and resilience, click the links to have a listen