A Flying Start

Posted : Tues 23rd Jan

We have had a flying start to the term and we are already knee deep into our new topic of Government and Politics.  We were very lucky to have a lecturer from Stirling University come and give us a talk on Government.  The children responded really well and had lots of very sensible questions for her.  We've been learning about the role of Government in the UK, The Scottish Parliament, types of Government and who's who in the UK Government and the Scottish Government.  We've also covered the political spectrum and different political ideologies.  Next we will be moving on to creating our own political party, creating our manifesto, deciding on our priorities and having a mock election.  We have moved on to Fractions, Decimals and Percentages in Numeracy and Time in Maths.  In Literacy we are working on balanced arguments and next week we will be looking at expositions (opinion).  In RME we have been learning stories from the Old Testament and have covered Adam and Eve and the story of Cain and Abel so far.  This week's piece is Noah's Ark.  In Health and Wellbeing we are concentrating our learning on internet safety and how to be a good citizen online.

Welcome Back

Posted : Tues 9th Jan

Apologies for not having posted at the end of last term.  We have had internet issues in school - well actually no internet.  It is now all fixed and luckily the children can now begin to start using digital devices again.  No more buffering or having to wait 10 minutes for a device to log on!   I've attached this terms timetable below and some of the presentations that the children did at the end of their Mexico topic.  Each group took a different period of Mexican history / culture and researched this after deciding what sort of information they should find out.  When they completed this task they then put their selves into the role of teacher and taught the other groups.  A very successful learning experience.  We are all looking forward to Term 3 and our class focus will be on taking responsibility for our own learning and behaviour as part of our transition towards high school.  

Angles, Angles, Everywhere

Posted : Fri 17th Nov

This week we have been investigating angles in Maths and we are now becoming confident in finding missing angles.  We can find missing angles on a straight line and within regular polygons.  Our Mexican Civilisation projects are nearly finished and hopefully next week we will be presenting them to the rest of the class and then I'll post them here so that you can enjoy the class's hard work.  The internet continues to slow us down a little but we are looking forward to our new broadband connection next Friday!  In Spanish, we were learning days of the week and months this week and we continue to be ably guided by Senor Bruera, one of our dad's who is a native Spanish speaker - can't thank him enough.  In Health & Wellbeing we are continuing our topic of Substance Misuse and each of our cooperative learning groups are looking at different substances and will then, as the experts, teach the other groups.  We have been learning different methods to solve multiplication and division problems in numeracy to give us alternative strategies in our numeracy toolkit.  Big Writing saw us complete our last Information Report - this time on a tourist attraction of our own choice.  We had our first rugby session with Graham, Rugby Development Officer this week which was great fun!  Another busy week under our belts!

Frida Kahlo Inspiration

Posted : Thurs 9th Nov

We have been inspired by the Queen of the Selfies, Frida Kahlo this week and have been creating our own pictures of Frida Kahlo.  As part of our Mexico and Spanish topic we have been learning about the life and work of Frida Kahlo.  We have attached photos of our "work in progress" portraits.  We are currently using pastels to add colour - more later.  We have also learned about her home at Casa Azul in Coyoacán and the fact it is a museum now.  We even took a virtual tour!  Our new class novel "Frida Kahlo and the Mystery of the Peacock Ring" is proving a great way to find out about her, learn a little Spanish and more about the culture in Mexico.  In numeracy we have moved on to multiplication and we have been learning the split strategy and or the grid method to help solve multiplication problems.  We were really lucky to have Mrs Kirsty Murray visit one of our numeracy lessons and she was really impressed with our learning!  In Literacy we wrote our second Information Report on a topic of our choice.  We have definitely used our prior learning to produce great results.  The lack of internet this week has curtailed some of our research on our chosen Mexican historical civilisations and our Health & Wellbeing project but we'll get straight back onto that as soon as things are up and running again.  Fingers and toes crossed.  🤞

Term 2 

Posted : Wed 1st Nov

The holidays already seem like an eon ago.  Everybody seemed to have had a great time and have come back ready and eager to learn.  We've all been getting used to our new Head Teacher Mrs Gardyne and are excited about some of her ideas for the school.  Our new topic for this term is Mexico and the Spanish language.  We are very lucky in that one of our Dad's is a native Spanish speaker and he is generously giving up some of his time each week to teach the P7s Spanish.  Thank you so much!  We have been learning about the geography of Mexico this week and how it's geographical & population size compares to the UK.  We also learned about Day of the Dead, "Dia de los Muertos" and used this as our context for writing an information report.  Functional writing will be our focus this term.  In numeracy we are finishing off our addition and subtraction before moving on to Multiplication and Division and our maths topic is 2D & 3D shapes and the properties and angles of triangles.  This is the children's last term with the Music specialist Mrs Askew and in PE, Mrs Arnold is teaching games.  A quick reminder that we will have rugby on a Thursday with the rugby development officer.  In our class PE slot we are learning to play "ultimate frisbee" and at the moment we are trying to control our frisbee throws so that our team mates can actually catch it!  I'm having a little trouble explaining that it is not about how far you can throw a frisbee but how well you can throw it!

Holiday Time!

Posted : Thurs 12th Oct

Everyone is excited for the October holidays.  The class has worked very hard this term and we have already completed a good deal of work.  I've seen improvements across the curriculum already from everybody in the class - I'm extremely pleased with the progress being made in numeracy and maths.  I've seen lots of light bulb moments this term.  We have all reached the stage where we are confidently using formal written algorithms for our addition and subtraction including carrying and exchanging.  Our writing is also progressing and I have included a selection of news articles that were finished at the time of this post.  You can see that after writing our news articles we also developed our computing skills to reproduce them using Google Slides.  In RME this week we were learning about the festival of Passover and why it is important to Jews and how they celebrate it.  We have nearly wrapped up World War II now, this week we were learning about VE Day and the aftermath of World War II and its impact on the world and the events that happened in the years afterwards.  I hope that everybody has a great holiday and I'll update you soon with the new timetable and the term plans.

Keep Calm and Carry On

Posted : Fri 6th Oct

This week we wrote our 2nd Newspaper Article basing it on the Plane Crash from our class novel.  Everybody has taken on board my feedback from their first piece and used it to develop their writing further.  Our last piece of newspaper writing will be reporting on the D Day landings.  In numeracy we have moved on to the formal written algorithm to solve addition and subtraction problems however ongoing children will be able to use the strategy / method that they find the easiest or most efficient.  In RME we were learning about the Sukkot (su - coat) festival or the Festival of the Tabernacles and it's significance to Judaism.  

We have continued to read our WWII mystery thriller "Letters from the Lighthouse" and we have been imaging what the lighthouse might have looked like when it was "erased" or camouflaged by the coast guard to stop it being used by the Luftwaffe as a navigation beacon.  We will be using an event in the book as our theme for next week's Big Writing.  

In numeracy we are continuing to learn alternate strategies for solving addition and subtraction problems.  Next week we will move on to a formal written algorithm - please dissuade the children from calling it a "chimney sum".  We were learning about Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) this week in RME and its importance to Jews and some of the customs and beliefs associated with it.

We have reached D Day in our World War II topic and have been learning about the amazing planning, deception and delivery that went into the successful establishment of a western front in 1944 and the beginning of the end of the war.

Learning Rationed!

Posted : 21st Sept

What a busy week, trying to cover as much as we could with one less day!  Our World War II focus this week was rationing and we learned when items were rationed and what the rationale was behind it.  We looked at propaganda campaigns promoting it and how it was used to keep up morale.  In Literacy we did some preparatory work for next week's writing which will be a newspaper article on the bombing of Haddington.  In numeracy we are still learning different strategies for adding and subtracting and will move on to more formal methods soon.  We investigated the importance of Rosh Hashanah to Jews (this was celebrated last Friday when we were on holiday) and understand that this is the New Year.  Just a few images this week, sometimes forget to take photographs!  Remember if you have not turned a photo permission form please do so as soon as possible and I'll be able to post up photographs of the children hard at work.

Welcome Back to School

Posted : Thurs 17 August

The children have returned with enthusiasm and seem to have had great summers.  We have hit the ground running and this week we have been concentrating on our  attitude towards learning and working towards our Class Charter using the UNCRC articles as our basis.  The children designed a learning pit to demonstrate how you might adopt a growth mindset attitude towards learning.  We have also created our own "dignometers" to illustrate what actions give us dignity and what kind of actions might take it away.  Next week we will settle into the timetable and lessons "proper" will begin.  I've attached a copy of the Timetable so that you know (roughly) what we are up to each day.