Please find attached the P5 Term 2 Learning Descriptor and Home Learning Grid for October to December 2018.
All posts by Miss McMillan
P5 Meet the Teacher presentation 2018-2019
P5 Learning Descriptor and Home Learning Grid Term 1, 2018-2019
P5a’s First Fabulous Fortnight!
Hi, we are back! And we have had a fabulous fortnight in P5!
We are enjoying being back together in our classroom. We now have a V.I.P. table as a special reward plus we can earn class points every day.
We have been working on our class charter and cloakroom rules to make sure we are safe and happy in school. We have been looking at different UNCRC articles and relating our classroom rules to these. Our class charter has a minion theme this year. We have also been discussing in groups how we are Safe, Healthy, Active, Nurtured, Achieving, Respected, Responsible and Included (SHANARRI) at home, in school and in other places.
This year we will be working on improving reading experiences at school. We have enjoyed our first few DEAR sessions – Drop Everything And Read. We have been talking about our favourite books and made a display about this.
Our topic this term will be Incredible India and we will be learning about the country and culture. Luckily the children from our partner school in Mumbia (The Universal School) will be able to help us with this!
This term we will be having drama lessons with Mrs Thomson. Our lessons will be based on our class novel “Nina and the Travelling Spice Shed” and will involve us journeying around India! Mrs Poynter, the music specialist teacher, is looking for some new recruits for playing brass instruments. We will get the opportunity to try out for this if we wish.
We enjoyed our Fencing Taster Session with John (the coach). We got to wear the helmets and use the swords too. We have the opportunity to take part in a Fencing after-school club – so some us may wish to apply for this. This term we will have indoor P.E. on a Monday and outdoor P.E. on a Wednesday – we need to bring in appropriate kits for this as soon as possible.
Outdoor Learning will be a big focus for us this year and we are lucky to have Miss Allcoat twice a week for this. In one lesson she will be helping us develop our teamwork skills and in the other lesson we will have the opportunity to learn more maths outside. We need outdoor clothing for this – a waterproof jacket with a hood and appropriate footwear to change into (wellies, boots, trainers or similar). We need to bring this to school as soon as possible and keep it in school for outdoor learning activities.
In Art, we have practised drawing our portraits and these will be displayed in the entrance hall. Our colour is yellow – look out for them! The portraits of Mary Queen of Scots, that we painted at the end of P4, are now on display in our classroom.
That’s all for now!
Smalls for All – Pants Day
We have been learning more about the work of the charity Smalls for All and how it helps people in some African countries by providing new underwear and funding the education of some children. The Smalls for All group had the opportunity to interview Maria MacNamara MBE, the charity’s founder, recently and they were inspired to hear how her actions have made a difference to the lives of so many others. Classes have also been discussing whether clean pants are a “need” or a “want”, as well as finding out more about the lives of some of the children helped by the charity. This learning has been related to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and The Global Goals for Sustainable Development.
The Smalls for All group would like to thank everyone for making the “Pants Fun Day” such a success. We collected hundreds of pairs of pants – they filled 8 big bags! We have given them all to the charity and they will send them to children in Africa. They hope to give each child 3 pairs of pants for Christmas.
Thank you for all your competition entries in the “Design a Pair of Pants” competition. There were so many wonderful designs and it was really hard to judge the competition. Pam from the charity helped us to pick the winners and runners-up: P1-3 Runner-Up – Ethan Lawson P3/2, P1-3 Winner – Calum Platt P3a, P4-7 Runner-Up – Emily Poskitt P5b, P4-7 Winner – Holly Bisset P6a. Well done to all!
Thank you to all the people that entered the “Guess the Monkey’s Birthday” competition. We asked Maria and Pam from Smalls for All to pick a date. The date they picked was the 10th of August as this was the day that the charity started. Unfortunately no-one picked this actual date but the nearest date to this that was picked was the 8th of August and it was picked by Alannah Charlesworth P3b. Congratulations! We raised £66.75 from the monkey competition and donations. This money will go to the charity to help fund education for children in other countries.
We would like to say a big thank you to all who supported our “Pants Fun Day”. You were PANTASTIC!
Toilet Twinning Success!
Thank you to everyone that supported our Toilet Twinning challenge. There were lots of bright colours worn on the day and lots of change was placed on our “Rainbow Toilet”! Our Target was to raise £60 so that we could twin with one toilet in another country and we are pleased to announce we raised a total of £206.94!!! This will be enough to twin with at least 3 toilets! Many thanks for helping us support this charity that helps to provide toilets, clean water and health education to people in other countries. This has supported us in working towards some of the Global Goals: Water and Sanitation, Good Health and Well-being and Quality Education.
Come and find out about what we have been doing in P4a!
We are pleased to say that our show rehearsals are going well! We have learned all the songs and dances and we have practised each scene at least once. Next week our rehearsals will move to the big hall and we will start putting it altogether. We have begun making scenery – thanks to our parent helpers – and we have sent out a letter about tickets (get your order in fast!)
Our new health topic is medicines and drugs. We have started by thinking about different types of drugs, why people use them/take them and some of the dangers of drugs. In science, we have continued learning about electricity and this week we made electrical circuits including a bulb and a switch. We also learned how to draw these using symbols. In P.E. we continued practising our Kurling skills and we are now ready for a game. In art, we have been studying portraits of Mary Queen of Scots and we have begun working on our own portraits. We have started by drawing Mary’s face and part of her body and we will soon be painting her.
In maths, our fractions topic involved us learning about equivalent fractions and ordering fractions. For example, we know that a half is the same as 2 quarters and a fifth is bigger than a tenth. We enjoyed our “I love Maths” morning which had a focus on fractions, time and calculations. Thanks to the parents/carers that came along. In language, we presented our group “Big 5” talks about Scotland’s Big 5 animals: the otter, the red deer, the golden eagle, the harbour seal and the red squirrel. We also wrote Robin Hood stories inspired by our show.
Last week we enjoyed the taster Judo session as part of Health Fortnight. We also took part in a orienteering challenge to find different food types – some of us found the map-reading a little tricky and we had to run from one end of the playground to the other!
P4a’s Fun Few Weeks!
Sorry we haven’t posted for a while – we have been very busy!
We had an amazing trip to Sky Academy where we learned about making films and trailers in a real TV Studio. We were the first class in the world to try out their new workshop about creative writing! First of all we talked about favourite films and watched clips on the big screen and ipads. In groups, we came up with characters, settings and stories for an magical action film and then we made trailers for the film. It was fantastic to see them on the big screen and we all got a copy on a USB to take home and share.
We are busy working on our P4 Show: Robin and the Sherwood Hoodies. We held auditions and we all now have a part to play – acting, singing, dancing and technical team. We are busy practising our lines at home and rehearsing at school. We have started designing scenery pictures and we have learned 3 dances already. Any parents/carers that could help us with the show, please get in touch.
Our Scotland topic has seen us research Scotland’s Big 5 animals. We have found information, made notes and we are now using our notes to make group posters. We have a new display up about Mary Queen of Scots and our research trip to Edinburgh.
We have just finished our block of Mandarin lessons with Miss Wang. We learned how to count to 100 and we learned how to write words using characters. It was a lot of fun and very interesting. We loved the songs!
In Maths, we have been calculating durations of time in hours, half hours and quarter hours. We have used timetables as well. We have also been learning about fractions of shapes and numbers: halves, quarters, fifths and tenths. On Outdoor Classroom Day, we enjoyed practising this outdoors in the playground.
We are loving Health Fortnight so far! We have had lessons with special coaches/teachers such as dancing, hockey, football and hula-hooping. We also have started learning to play Kurling in P.E.. This is a version of Curling but is played indoors in a hall instead of on ice.
We look forward to more healthy, sporty fun next week.
P4’s Exciting Week!
What an exciting week we have had in P4! We went on our trip to Holyrood Park and the Palace of Holyroodhouse. At the park, we did a workshop with the Rangers all about the local area around the park and Arthur’s Seat related to kings and queens of the past. We heard stories, designed a banquet and drew pictures of the palace using charcoal. It was very interesting and great fun but very, very cold! We also visited the palace where we took part in a costume workshop to learn about clothes in the time of Mary Queen of Scots. Four of us even got to dress up! We then went on a tour of the palace with our guide and learned more about what it would have been like to live there in the past. The highlight was going into Mary Queen of Scots’ private rooms including her bedroom.
We also met a new teacher this week, Miss Wang who is from Beijing in China. She will be teaching us Mandarin for a few weeks. This week we learned how to say hello, numbers 1 to 10 and thank you.
Our P4 show is going to be Robin and the Sherwood Hoodies, a comical pantomime based on the legend of Robin Hood. We will be auditioning for parts soon. More details to follow soon.
In maths, we have been learning how to tell the time in 5 minute intervals using analogue and digital clocks. We have also been learning how to divide bigger numbers by 10 and 100. We have been revising data-handling using bar graphs and tally marks. Another focus has been answering maths questions and solving little problems. In language, we have been researching Mary Queen of Scots using different texts and using the information to create timelines and quizzes. We are busy writing reports on our school trip.
We have started to present our homework on a famous/important Scottish person from the past. It will take us a while to hear all these wonderful presentations – a few weeks at least – but we will all get a turn eventually!
P4a say Happy Easter!
This week we worked in teams to design, plan and make Easter Gardens. We revised the story of Easter from the Christian Bible and included things like the tomb, the crosses and characters in our Easter Garden models. We enjoyed showing them off at assembly.
We made Easter cards following instructions.
In Language we have been researching Easter Around the World and finding information from different sources. In Maths we have continued our time topic and moved on to telling the time in 5 minute intervals.
Well done to Patrick as his design for a Roald Dahl book cover was chosen to make a door poster. It is now on Mrs Dare’s office door.
We are delighted that our class won the Fairtrade snack certificates for having the most Fairtrade snacks on the Friday.
We are sad to say goodbye to our other P4 teacher Mr Mackie. We wish everyone a Happy Easter! Enjoy the holidays!
