Science – St Ninian's Primary School

P7 Weekly News

A wonderful week to be in P7 this week!

We have been completing our SNSAs this week – Scottish National Standardised Assessments. This meant our week was a bit topsy turvy in terms of timetabling, but we showed resilience and maturity in the face of these changes!

This meant a quick change of layout and silence – for the first time ever in P7! Heehee! Well done to the boys and girls who tried really hard and supported each other too 🙂

One of our most popular tasks this week was our science/food technology/literacy project – bread making!

The joy of your experiment working the way you want it to! Today we learned about yeast and its role as a micro organism!

Shout out to @Warburtons for the fantastic online resources! @StNinianPS #stninianskidscan pic.twitter.com/zV15w3iE7o

— Mrs Conway🙋🏻‍♀️ (@Mrs_Conway10) October 31, 2019

We started with a science experiment using yeast, sugar and warm water mixed together.. we were excited to see it inflated the balloons! The key facts we learned were that yeast is dormant (sleeping) when dry – it reacts when mixed with water and releases carbon dioxide – this causes the balloon to inflate, and is what causes bread to rise.

More from our chemical reaction experiment this morning! #stninianskidscan @StNinianPS pic.twitter.com/lRq4B0Ghd2

— Mrs Conway🙋🏻‍♀️ (@Mrs_Conway10) October 31, 2019

In writing we have moved onto learning about a new genre – PROCEDURE. We discussed the features of language and the structure of a procedure before beginning our bread making session as the topic of our writing next Wednesday will be the procedure to make bread rolls!

We then moved onto our bread making! As we are P7 now, Mrs Conway was there to provide support only – in trios we worked through the recipe – measuring ingredients, following the method then setting our rolls aside to rise. Only one out of 9 groups had to remake their dough – a great success! We chose to add flavourings or finishes such as herbs or seeds or cheese.

Then this afternoon we made bread rolls – putting our science in action! In trios we weighed and measured the ingredients, followed the method and ended up with a bread roll each! @StNinianPS #stninianskidscan pic.twitter.com/trw7NxBMcG

— Mrs Conway🙋🏻‍♀️ (@Mrs_Conway10) October 31, 2019

Not too bad for our first time! @StNinianPS #stninianskidscan

Thanks @Warburtons for the recipe! We will share it on the blog tomorrow! #HWB #foodforthought #foodtechnology #stem #scienceinaction pic.twitter.com/hQNRrcwb4L

— Mrs Conway🙋🏻‍♀️ (@Mrs_Conway10) October 31, 2019

We were really impressed with the end result!

If you would like to try it at home – the P7 pupils should be able to provide a family cooking session using the skills they have learned!

As we discussed our week some of our class wanted to share their highlights;

Joshua – I enjoyed making the rolls (this was then echoed across the class!)

Zainab – I liked the science (Ryan T – when the yeast reacts it releases carbon dioxide)

Jay – The rugby was good but I liked doing the drama in RE this week

Aleks – I think the best bit was Spanish with Mrs Reeves

Krystian – Spanish with Mrs Caskie was good too!

Have a wonderful weekend 🙂

AWESOME P3

Good afternoon from Primary 3!

We have had another really busy week and here are some of our highlights!

Primary 3 were learning about the Feast of the Ascension and behaved beautifully during our Mass at the Lanthorn on Thursday. They really enjoyed listening to the Primary 4s who shared their special Communion hymn with us.

Jack – ‘It was perfection!’ Emma – ‘It was good because they all tried their best.’

During the month of May we have also continued our learning about Our Lady and the importance of saying the Rosary prayer regularly. We now know that she appeared to St Bernadette in Lourdes, France and the three children in Fatima, Portugal – Mrs Scott has promised to bring in special photos from Fatima because her oldest son Matthew was there for the 100^th anniversary celebrations recently! The children have also been able to use their individual Rosary beads, received as a special gift this week – practising moving along one bead at a time to say the different prayers.

LITERACY

Writing – ‘We loved writing about Humpty Dumpty because we got to use our imagination and we could all write different stories about what happened to him. It was up to us to decide what he was doing before he went on the wall, why he was on the wall, how he managed to fall off the wall and what happened next!’ – Emily & Niamh.

The children had some fantastic ideas about why Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall – they really entertained me on Thursday!

He was trying to fly; He was pulling his socks up and fell over; He was trying to catch a butterfly: He was watching a parade and was leaning forward to see more closely; He was reaching for an apple from a tree. Brilliant aren’t they?

Reading – ‘It was fun getting to read two books on the netbook then find the answers to the questions all by myself. One of them was about Chameleons and the other one was about a type of hippo!’ – Orla; ‘It was good to do this on my own because I wouldn’t normally read those kinds of books.’ – Emma; ‘They were non-fiction books.’

GLOBAL GOALS – Having a Quality Education

Thank you for all the foodbank pictures as our class collage is now complete.

Cameron – ‘We were learning about schools in Africa this week and some schools don’t even have any fences around them.’ Teegan – ‘I liked seeing how happy the children were when they got a better school.’ Kate – ‘They didn’t have any classrooms and had to do their work outside.’ Michael – ‘The country in Africa we looked at was Ethiopia.’ Orla – ‘When they got new toilets they were outside.’

SCIENCE

Sophie YM – ‘I learned that the Earth spins round and round. When the sun shines on one side of the Earth, it means that it is daytime there and where it doesn’t shine that means it is night-time.’

Maliha – ‘It takes 24 hours for the Earth to spin around and that is why we have 24 hours in a day.’

ART

Emma – ‘It was really interesting making my McCoo Highland Cow. I hadn’t used oil pastels before.’ Richard – ‘We learned that we had to use different colours for the stripes and draw them from the top to the bottom.’

EVERYONE – ‘We learned that the man who made these pictures is an artist and his name was Steve McCoo.’

MATHS

‘I’ve learned in Measure that you can use different things to measure with.’ – Emma; ‘You use scales to measure weight and we were reading kg.’ – Daniel; Emily – ‘We were reading different scales about kg.’ Richard – ‘When the arrow is in the middle of two numbers it means ½.’

Enjoy what is left of the sunshine!

From Mrs Scott and Primary 3.

P2/3 Weekly Update

In Primary 2/3 this week we have been really busy in lots of areas. Thank you for all the pictures that the children have sent in of their cress plants. Their growing skills are very impressive!

We’ve continued our learning about Food and Farming and had some super discussion in pairs in Science about the parts of a plant and what plants need to grow.

Read on for some of our highlights.

Harry – I liked changing tables because I’m a Whizz Kid now and it will be my last table in P2/3 before I move to P3.

Hasan – I liked painting a butterfly. Mine looked good and I learned symmetry.

Oma – I liked doing learning about the month of Mary in RE. We used paint to decorate the word ‘Mary’.

Maeve – I liked sorting living things into different categories.

Levente – I liked playing the symmetry game on the smartboard. I played it at home too.

(In Maths we have been exploring symmetry. Try this activity at home to help reinforce learning https://www.topmarks.co.uk/symmetry/symmetry-matching)

Alishba – I liked writing to Farmer Jess to thank her for coming to visit us.

Brooke – I liked being outside for PE and playing jacks and boules.

Rachel – I liked learning about empathy and learning challenges in class dojo.

Kuba and Andrew – I liked PE because we were jumping over the hurdles. I was good at the hurdles.

James – I liked running fast in the Daily Mile.

Annayah – I liked praying the ten rosaries.

Aaron – I liked designing pictures of Mary.

Matthew – my cress is growing really fast at home.

Michelle – I liked maths because I learned loads about symmetry.

Carly – I liked the literacy carousel because I made my words in playdough.

Maya – I liked when we were painting symmetrical butterflies and I liked learning lots of new things to say in Spanish. I liked High Five Spanish.

In Spanish this term, the children have planned their learning to develop their skills in asking questions and answers. Do ask your child what’s hey learned in Spanish this week. There are lots of great activities on the BBC languages website to help wth these skills.

Sneak preview! Next week in writing we’re writing to Mrs Purdie to tell her about all the things we like best at St Ninian’s. Have a chat with your child about this and they can share their ideas in Big Writing on Thursday.

Have a lovely weekend.

From Primary 2/3, Mrs Howley and Mrs Keegan

Outdoor learning

This week we tried to take a lot of our learning outdoors and everyone had great fun.

In literacy we did some spelling work outside using the large chalks then played outdoor Frys word bingo. It got a bit messy but we all agreed that it was a fun way to practise our Frys words. Well done to Paul M for being our bingo winner!

In maths we were learning about positional language and directions. We played lots of fun games to help us, eg. Stand beside the door, sit on top of the table (don’t tell Mrs Purdie we were on top of the tables), sit under the table, stand beside the gate, etc. We also used hoops outside and had to follow more instructions, eg. Jump in the hoop, stand behind the hoop. Then Sahara had a great idea to help us remember left and right, she taught us all how to dab then we had to sing,” dab to the left, dab to the right”. We also used this song:

For our science learning we focused on seasons and went on a spring scavenger hunt. We had to use our senses to see,touch, hear and smell things. We all set to work and recorded our findings on our clipboards.

We then shared this learning with the PM nursery when we all joined together to go for a walk to the Dedridge pond and woods. It was a lovely afternoon and we were super excited to see lots of squirrels, ducks and 2 swans, we think the mummy swan was sitting on her nest guarding some eggs, we will go back in a few weeks to check how she is getting on. We also spotted some bat boxes and different types of flowers and trees.

To finish the week off we decided to stop off at the park for some fun and games. It was lovely to see everyone playing nicely together, seeing lots of smiles and hearing lots of laughter!

Primary 2/3 Weekly News

It has been another busy week in Primary 2/3! Mrs Keegan and Mrs Howley are really proud of the children and all of their hard work.

The children would like to let you know about some of their highlights:

Maya liked learning the colours in Spanish and using them to play a game.

Levente, Annayah and Zuzanna liked learning about gravity when we investigate how a helter skelter works in our Funfair topic.

James has enjoyed joining letters in handwriting.

Oma loved learning about 3D shapes in maths.

Andrew and Rachel loved exploring money in our Funfair topic and deciding which coins to use for different rides.

Carly liked writing an imaginative story about a visit to the Funfair. We thought about sights, sounds and smells and everyone produced fantastic writing!

Maeve liked when our surprise visitor, ‘Terence’ popped in to our class on Thursday to help us with our writing.

Aaron liked learning about Advent and painting an advent wreath.

Matthew loved talking about maths to our visitors during our numeracy review on Wednesday.

Alishba has loved rehearsing for the Nativity play and thinks that our Primary 2s are doing a great job!

Calvin has enjoyed skip counting in 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s during our maths lessons.

Chloe really enjoyed yoga because she thinks that it helps her learn better.

Have a lovely weekend.

From Mrs Howley, Mrs Keegan and Primary 2/3

P1M Weekly News

What an exciting week for us all in P1M.

This week in numeracy we have been working on our number bonds to 5. We are now super stars with this and can tell you very quickly number bonds to 5 e.g. 5+0=5; 4+1=5; 3+2=5. We completed a range of different activities this week to help us with this. We jumped out the missing jumps on our number line to get to Pedro the Parrot who was hiding on the number 5, we had to count out how many jumps it would take us. We also matched up ladybirds wings to create 5 spots on each ladybird. Stefan successfully completed his matching numbers worksheet to create 5. Kayla and Jarred were partners in a game because both of their numbers on their back made 5 when added together. Casper was using our ‘number talks’ strategies to talk about how he found the missing number in the addition sentence. Here is one of the games we have been playing this week to help us understand this concept a bit better:

http://www.iboard.co.uk/iwb/Alien-Pairs-to-5-2316

This is another game that we have been using for an ‘exit pass’ task this week. An exit pass means you have to correctly answer a question (pass the test) before you are allowed to exit this classroom.

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button (in this game select ‘number bonds’ then select ‘up to 10: addition within 10’)

We have learned the ‘d’ and ‘g’ sounds this week. The ‘g’ sound is quite a tricky one to write correctly but we have been trying our best. Kaimee and Adam were practising writing this letter in the sand tray. Kerr has been practising writing the letter ‘g’ on a whiteboard. We are continuing to work on blending sounds together to make words. We really enjoying playing ‘race car blending’. In this game, we race the car across a word and blend all the sounds together, if we correctly read the word we get to try blending with a new word. One of our written tasks this week was to listen really carefully to the middle sound in a word. We were learning about how if you change the middle sound in a word, this can change the meaning of a word. Sophie was a successful learner in this task and was very proud with her work.

We love reading in P1M and this week we were given the opportunity to return our books to the library and take out a new book. We know how to return books and take out books from the library. We even managed to squeeze in a quick play in the park on our way back to school.

We have also included a picture here of us showing off our listening skills during our talk from the SSPCA.

Have you heard about our cinema trip this week? I’m sure you have! We all loved the opportunity to go to the cinema with our peers this week and everyone enjoyed the movie – The Good Dinosaur (even the teachers enjoyed their trip!) In our writing lesson this week we decided to put our thoughts and feelings into words and write our favourite part of the film. Here are some examples of our writing this week:

Adam: “I liked when Arlo and Spot tried to kill.”

Kerr: “I liked when Arlo and Spot shared.”

Kyle: “I went to the cinema.”

Casper: “I liked Arlo playing together.”

Ernie the Elf sent us another letter this week to tell us all about a naughty elf who made a mess in Santa’s workshop again! Ernie asked for our help to sort out the toys. The naughty elf had mixed together the toys made from wood, plastic, fabric and metal – we needed to sort them out again. We used 4 different hoops to help us. The blue hoop is for toys made from metal; green for plastic toys; red for toys made from fabric and yellow for wood. We realised that most of the toys we play with are made from plastic. After we tidied up the mess for Ernie we chose one type of toy to play with. Ask your child if they played with the wood toys, the plastic toys, the metal or fabric toys? What was your favourite toy? Trex even joined in the fun! Can you remember what Trex is made of?

This week is ‘cool to be kind’ week. Throughout this week we have been thinking about being kind to our peers. Every day Miss Meechan chooses someone to get a letter home for working hard. However, this week our letter home was for people that had been kind in class. Well done to those who have shown acts of kindness this week: Casper, Kayla, Kerr and Jakub. Who is going to get the letter home tomorrow? We also had our achievements assembly today. During this, Miss Smyth presented an award to someone from each class who has been kind all year. Well done to Jakub from our class to win the award.

During ‘cool to be kind’ week we have been learning about refugees and talking about our rights. We have spoke about what rights we have and how we found feel if our rights were taken away from this. We decided that we would feel sad if we didn’t have our rights. Tomorrow, Mr Slater is going to teach us about refugees and the journeys they make.

WOW! What a busy week. Enjoy your well earned weekend everyone!

Primary 2/3 News

Thank you to everyone who came along to Parents’ Night. It was lovely to have so many positive conversations about the children’s learning.

It has been another really productive week in Primary 2/3.

The class has set an ambitious dojo challenge! Ask your child what is going to happen when we reach 2000 points. Everyone is very excited and working together to reach our target.

We have been working hard to tell the time to o’clock and half past (Primary 2) and quarter to and quarter past (Primary 3). There are some great activities to consolidate these skills at Doorway Online .

In Spanish we have been trying hard to count up to 20 – there are some tricky numbers! We really liked playing the Magician game to help us learn the numbers. If you’d like to try it at home click here .

This week we tried our hand at playing Hoopla as part of our Funfair topic then we produced some fabulous instructions in our Big Writing lesson, explaining how to play Hoopla.

We also investigated how dodgems work. We found out about forces then did an investigation in groups and wrote up science reports. Everyone loved making the dodgems crash into each other!

In Numeracy we’ve been developing our addition skills to 20 (Primary 2) and to 100 (Primary 3). We’ve all used Sumdog to consolidate our learning, with lots of expert help from our Sumdog experts in Primary 6.

In Health and Well-being we thought about our November theme of ‘Achieving’ and told each other how we achieve both inside and outside school and our friends reported back to the class. What a talented class we have!

Have a great weekend!

Mrs Howley, Mrs Keegan and Primary 2/3

Primary 2/3 Weekly News

It has been another amazing week in Primary 2/3 and we would like to share some of our highlights.

Matthew – A highlight was learning about the layers inside the earth and what happens when a volcano erupts. I liked looking at diagrams of the mantle of the earth.

Maeve – I liked when we made a volcano then watched it erupt.

Hasan – I liked working on the Tig Tag website and watching the film clip which showed us what’s inside the earth.

Alishba – I liked adding to 20 and working in my maths workbook.

Maya – I liked art when we made pictures of spacemen with Mrs Thomson.

Annayah – I liked using our Spanish weather phrases to make weather wheels.

Carly – I liked writing about our science experiment.

Harry and Dominic – I liked playing dodgeball in PE with Mr McCurdy.

Pawel – I liked going to the library and borrowing books for our class.

We were all very proud of Alishba when she got a certificate in our achievement assembly this morning for working so hard in Primary 2/3. All the children from Glasserton and Calder had a fantastic time at the movie morning on Friday!

The end is near….

This week has been very busy in and out of school. Well done to all the children for being such fantastic performers at our 3 Nativity shows! Photos will be uploaded by Mrs Purdie.

In class we enjoyed playing a game called Hit the Button, we had to try and find the doubles as quickly as we could.

In reading we worked independently to unscramble the words and make sentences. The challenge was then to read our sentences!

We continued to learn more about science this week using our Talking Book and focused on electricity. We used a super website to learn about electrical safety in our homes then we had to find the hazards hiding in the picture.

Friday was dress as your future job day and we had some great outfits, keep an eye on the school facebook page to see them all, here is a sneak preview of some our ours…

The mysterious goings on in P1R

I can’t believe the week is over, it has been so busy!!

In science this week we were learning all about forces and did some work in our talking books. We had to do an investigation about toys that moved.

We had a visit on Wednesday from Travelling Tuba which was great fun, we got to learn about different instruments and listen to some performances. Kyle was even picked to try out one of the instruments!

In phonics we enjoyed working with our friends in P1D during our carousel activities where we learning all about the ‘ee’ sound. Ask your child to tell you the Vowel House story.

As last week was Anti-bullying week we spent some time on Wednesday afternoon reading a story about Allen the Alien who had moved to planet Earth. We did some role-play with stick puppets, played with the feelings dice and used the Allen adventure app on the ipad to read the rest of the story. We learned a lot about different types of bullying.

Then the unthinkable happened….on Thursday morning we found a large, green egg in our classroom and there was danger tape everywhere. We were all very confused and sent for Mrs Purdie to help us investigate. The children decided to set up a camera overnight to try and work out who the egg belonged to, here is what we found out!!!