This week P6 have been learning about the dangers of smoking and tobacco from Michelle who works for West Lothian Council’s Drug and Alcohol Service.

Isabelle – “Michelle taught us about the dangers of smoking”

Jessica – “The doll Smoky Sue helped us to see the damaging effects of smoking”

In class we have been continuing our learning about flowering plants.  We have now learned about the individual parts of a flower’s anatomy, anther, filament, stigma and style.  This has helped to deepen our understanding of how insects are pollinators.

Jessica – “we dissected a flower to see all the different parts”

Freya – “For our writing we had to create our own imagined flower and then design and write the seed packet for the seeds”

The children were given the challenge to try and use a simile within their description of what their flower looks or smells like when it is in full bloom.  There were some super examples,  Next week we are moving onto looking at the growth of a seed and charting the length of time it takes to grow and what conditions it needs to grow.

In PE we have been learning the athletic field skills for shot put, and long jump as well as using sprint and pacing skills for the 60m and 800m running.

In Maths we have further developed our money skills.  P7 have been looking at debit and credit cards and started work on APR interest rates.  This has meant we have been practising our percentage finding skills, it is interesting to see how much money a bank can make from lending money “it is a business at the end of the day” is what Mrs Currie said and Broady and Mark quickly pointed out “it is also a business at the beginning of the day too!” (ha ha).  P6 have been using the four processes to work out totals, differences, how much multiple items and individual items cost.  When using the written method we had to revise our understanding of making sure the decimal points line up to keep our place values correct before completing the calculation.  Some of us used REAL MONEY to help us work out totals and costs, it is always good to use real life material as it helps us ensure that we can transfer these valuable life skills into practise outside of school.

Well done everyone,

Mrs Currie

What an interesting and informative week in Primary 6! We have been lucky enough to have Michelle from West Lothian Drugs and Alcohol services in to present 2 sessions with us. The pupils have learned lots of facts and new information about the dangers of smoking and now know all about what’s in a cigarette.

I was very impressed with their learning this week and the writing they produced to show of their new knowledge was excellent!

Also this week we have started our Athletics block in PE. We are hoping that PE will take place outdoors this term so please make sure everyone is prepared with the appropriate PE kit.

Here are some comments and photos from this week.

Erin Roy- We had Michelle in talking to us about smoking on Tuesday and Friday.

Aliza- This week we learned about tobacco and for writing we made a leaflet about anti-smoking,

Neave – This week in P.E we were doing the long jump and 60m and 200m run around our new lined field and it was awesome. J

Kieran- This week in maths we did a carousel and there was 4 stations.

Emma- This week I really liked it when Michelle came and talked to us about tobacco and the dangers of smoking.

Isabel- This week Michelle from WLDAS came to tell us what’s in a cigarette and why it’s not good to smoke and today we lit a cigarette and a doll “Smokey Sue” smoked the cigarette.

Emily- This week Michelle came in to talk to us about the dangers of smoking and I learned a lot.

Mia so- This week in P.E we were doing 60m sprint, I think I came 1^st.

Rayn- I learned that one cigarette has 4000 chemicals in it.

James- I learned that the tar in cigarettes sticks to your lungs.

Ben- Michelle from WLDAS taught us everything we need to know about smoking.

Declan- This week we have been learning about tobacco and I have learned that there’s four to five thousand chemicals in one cigarette.

Rugare- I enjoyed doing P.E, it was fun.

If you have any comments about the tobacco education input your child has received this week then please let me know. Either comment below or send a Dojo message.  I will feedback this information to WLDAS with my own feedback of the project.

Have a great weekend!

This has been an exciting week in Primary 4!

We have, as part of our topic, been researching endangered animals from different climates. We used world atlases to help us identify different climates on a world map. We have learned about tropical, warm, polar and temperate climates.

In writing, we wrote formal letters to The WWF (World Wildlife Fund) to ask for any possible information leaflets, posters or video clips that they could send us to help learn more about the work that they do and how we can help. We will keep you posted as to whether we get a reply.

In maths, we have been learning about time. We have been looking at how many days are in each month and used a catchy little song to help us learn. We then moved on to learning how to read analogue clocks looking at 5 minute intervals. Trying to decide which hand was the minute hand and which hand was the hour hand proved to be tricky but also working out if we were using minutes past or minutes to challenged us a little so we will continue working on this. Haseeb enjoyed using netbooks to play time games. Charlie enjoyed using loop cards to help him learn.

We have been continuing to prepare for our First Holy Communion and have been learning about The Last Supper. We can recognise the link between the Last supper and the celebration of The Eucharist and know how we can participate in this special part of the mass. We are looking forward to having a visit from Fr Kenneth on Tuesday as part of our Confirmation preparations.

We had art this week with Mrs Young where we drew self-portraits using pencil. We had to include every fine detail to make sure it looked exactly like us!

We are looking forward to a long weekend and hope you are too!

Have a good one, P4 and Miss Diamond :)!

Our outdoor learning week in pictures. I would love for you to comment with your favourite activity from this week.

This week some of our P6 children have been at a residential camp on Tuesday and Wednesday.  A great time was had by all, it would appear that canoeing was a real highlight with these being only a few of the comments that have been shared,

Oskar – “I fell into the water twice while I was canoeing and sailing, I loved it.”

Aurora – “The best bit was canoeing and I didn’t even get wet!”

Billie – “Miss McCormack said I was a strong at paddling”

Tristan – “It was really great!”

In class we got into the Outdoor Learning  spirit by doing work on plants.  We have learned about photosynthesis and the main structure of a flowering plant.  This involved us going on a hunt around our school grounds to find different types of leaves and then examining them for the veins and evidence of the glucose produced during photosynthesis.  Here is a short video that we watched to help us learn about this process.

We have now started some work on learning about the structure of a flowering.  We have labelled a diagram of the male and female parts and will follow this up next week by learning about the function and process of each part, pollination, the development of a seed and seed dispersal.

In Numeracy we have focused again on re engaging with our times tables and many of us have identified that the 9x table facts are not springing to our minds in a CLICK.  Those of us who feel we know our tables well are trying to apply them in more complex calculations to solve problems.  Next week our focus will be MONEY!

Have a lovely weekend.