Our final week of term 1 was such a lovely end to what has been a very busy term! A big thank you to all of Primary 7 for being such stars and responsible leaders in both the classroom and throughout the school. Please make sure to enjoy a well deserved October holiday! 

Here are just some of the things we worked on this week: 

• We created a topic word bank for our spelling task this week. The class worked in small groups to come up with as many words as they could that related to our WW2 topic and what they have learned so far. Later in the week we then went into different groups and decided on categories for the words to fit into in. Some groups looked at specific spelling rules, others syllables and some split the words into mini topics within the topic of WW2. It was so interesting to see how different groups worked on this task! The spelling words were then helpful during a writing task about walking through the streets to see the aftermath of the Blitz on the cities. 

• P7 learned a new strategy game called "Traffic Lights". It is an extended version of the classic "Noughts & Crosses". Ask your child how to play this game - it really gets you thinking!

• We worked hard this week to consolidate our learning of what happens to values when they are multiplied by 10, 100 and 1000, as well as what happens when they are divided by 10, 100 and 1000. We discussed misconceptions around these processes and made sure the correct language was used when explaining what happens to the values and digits. 

• It was our final Badminton session in PE. P7 have thoroughly enjoyed Badminton and will have the opportunity to play full court games over some lunch times over Term 2. 

• For our art this week, we worked on drawing Spitfire planes and then created sky backgrounds for them to be placed onto. We will hopefully have them displayed at the beginning of term 2. 

• Pupil voice is really important in P7, and the class were consulted on their thoughts of the classroom environment. They asked and voted for a change in the layout and they moved the tables around at the end of the school day. Hopefully they remember and don't get a fright when they return after the holidays! 

Another week of learning has happened in Primary 7! We are definitely starting to get tired, but I'm not surprised with how hard the class have been working! A huge well done and thank you to you all for your continued focus and determination to learn this week. Total superstars! 

Enjoy some of our learning and pictures from the week, below: 

• Lots of our literacy work this week focussed around our topic of WW2. We worked on our 'note-taking' skills as this is important going forward in Secondary and a key life skill too! We watched a clip about Air Raids during WW2 and then started learning about the evacuation of London at the beginning of September of 1939. The class listened to voice clips from both news reporters and children themselves at the time, sharing their experiences. 

• Some of us worked on our speeches to put ourselves forward for the possibility of becoming a P7 leader within our Nessie Natter Groups that started up again this week. A huge well done to the pupils who went for it and had written some excellent speeches. All of the teachers were so impressed with the content and your delivery! 

• Others worked on a piece of writing inspired by an image of a shark through the roof of a house!! Your writing certainly provided some excellent reading!

• We also worked on providing evidence for our answers when completing comprehension work based on the short clip, 'Luchador'. P7 had to also read over their peers work and then highlight where the evidence was provided for their thoughts. 

• In numeracy we looked at rounding decimals either to the nearest whole number or to 1 decimal place. Their understanding of decimals is growing daily and I'm so impressed with how quickly they are picking up this knowledge! 

• After some conversations, it became apparent that as a class, division was a skill we didn't feel so confident with. We began looking at this on Thursday and will continue to focus on our division skills up until the October break to build on our knowledge! 

• PE - We had the badminton nets out this week which was great fun! We tried a game of Round Robin, but think we may have to tackle that one again next week. Next week will be our final Badminton session this year! 

• We started learning a little bit about the religion, Judaism on Friday afternoon. This is to link in with our topic of WW2 and also to help better our understanding of our class novel, "When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit". P7 contributed to the discussions with maturity. Looking through images of individuals pre-war time, they understood how we actually know very little about a person when we just look at them or see a picture. We discussed the impact of Hitler coming into power and what this looked like for many Jewish families and individuals in the mid-1930s. We will continue to look into this next week, whilst also comparing it to the experiences of those in the UK. 

A busy week again in P7 with our trip on Monday and then the Superhero Day to look forward to on Friday! This week is Maths Week Scotland and in P7 we have had a focus on developing different maths skills through various activities. Have a look at our learning and photos below. Huge congratulations to the 6 Primary 7 pupils that were selected to represent Ness Castle at a local Maths Challenge event this week. They came 2nd out of 12 schools and should be so proud of their achievement!

Another reminder that we have our Loch Insh Information Session on Monday 30th September. Please get in touch if you need further details or have any questions. 

• As part of Maths Week Scotland, we have participated in some activities that have challenged our logical thinking skills! We enjoyed answering questions from the famous 1% Club TV show. 

• We have been really developing our understanding of place value and knowledge of decimals - particularly when working with tenths. The whole class has managed to move on to adding decimals to 1 decimal place, and we may even be looking to challenge with adding to 2 decimal places next week!

• P7 have enjoyed 'Counting Collections' in class. We used this strategy to help us develop our understanding that there are ten tenths in 1 whole. 

• After our lovely trip to the Newton Room on Monday, we all wrote individual thank you letters to Tim and Jill to show our appreciation for their time and sharing of resources, and knowledge, with us. P7 have made a superb job of these and worked really hard on the structure of the text, including paragraphs and the appropriate formatting of addresses etc. when writing a formal letter. 

• In PE, we continued to work on our badminton skills and are looking forward to getting the nets out next week now that we have improved our serves and accuracy when using the racket and shuttle.

Take a look at some of the photos from our class trip to the Newton Room at An Lochran on Monday! P7 had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed the experiences they had during their Robotics & Mathematics module. A huge thank you to both Jill and Tim at the Newton Room for a wonderful day, and thanks to our parent helpers for giving up their personal time to support the class in being able to access this opportunity!

A shorter week for the class with having had the long weekend at the beginning of the week. It was lovely to see everyone return on Wednesday and carry on our learning! Have a wee read below to hear what we got up to and also have a look at the pictures too! 

*Reminder - we have our class trip on Monday. All children should take a packed lunch to school unless otherwise stated on the return slips.*

Have a lovely weekend!

• All of our literacy work this week focused on our WW2 topic. We watched a short clip about 'The Blitz' and learned about Anderson Shelters. Additionally, we mapped out the UK cities that were significantly impacted by 'The Blitz' on a map, developing our map and scale skills. Then independently, and as pairs, we read through a text that shared information more specific to the impact in Scotland. P7 were very interested in this! 

• We then spent a lot of our 3 days, planning, preparing and creating our Anderson Shelter models. Day 1 was spent drawing out a plan and creating resource lists. Day 2 was for building the base and main structure. Day 3 was for the final details and any painting/ colour that was needed. They have all made an excellent job on these!! As this was a mix of expressive arts and technology, the children had the opportunity to use saws to cut wood and use hot glue guns to be able to create more elaborate designs. 

• P7 recapped their learning about anxiety and watched a short clip from 'Inside Out 2'. They wrote a very short piece of writing to do with this clip. 

• On Wednesday morning we had a visit from Ms Grant, a Maths teacher from the IRA. P7 listened so well and engaged well in the tasks they were asked to complete. We then further developed our learning in numeracy and started to look at identifying tenths and hundredths. P7 also completed some tasks where they had to order decimal numbers from lowest to highest, up to thousandths!

• In PE on Wednesday, P7 worked on their basketball skills with Mr Connon! I saw them at the end of the day and they were all very tired! Just a reminder that our PE days are a Tuesday and Wednesday. Please can all P7s take a change of kit with them on these days.

What another lovely week we have had in Primary 7! It was lovely to have the full class in and be able to get a whole class photo to show off our brilliant P7s! I hope that all of the pupils enjoy their long weekend and I look forward to seeing them on Wednesday morning. We are very lucky to have a Maths teacher from the IRA visiting us on Wednesday to complete a maths lesson with the class. This is the start of the transition activities that will support your child in their transition to the Academy. We look forward to welcoming Ms Grant and know that we will learn lots! 

• Our literacy learning linked to WW2 this week. We read a short text about the outbreak of war, and listened to speeches made by Neville Chamberlain in the run up to WW2 and his official announcement. We completed some a comprehension task to go alongside this too. Then we completed a free writing piece where the children had creative freedom to create whichever text type or style that they preferred. I was so impressed with their work! 

• In maths, we concluded our learning about 2D and 3D shape with understanding nets of shapes and also testing Euler's theory around the relationship between the faces, edges and vertices of a 3D shape. P7 also had a mini introduction to some vocabulary used for circles. This isn't something we need to know in P7, but their interest in this meant it was definitely worthwhile touching on! Ask your child what they can remember about circles!

• In numeracy, we began to discuss and further understand the meaning of tenths, hundredths and a little bit about thousandths. On Friday, we started to build upon that knowledge and describe how much has been coloured in on a hundredths square in decimal form, fraction, percentages and also in words. The whole class were amazing at this and I can't wait to build upon their learning of this going forward. 

• We spent a little bit of time finalising our art pieces for our display. I am glad to say that it is all completed and on the wall. The children have seen it bit by bit, and I look forward to their reactions on Wednesday morning to the finished result!

• In PE, we developed our badminton skills further, and began to look at serving and working on the speed of our reactions. P7 engage brilliantly in PE! Well done to those who have remembered to take in kit! As a reminder, our PE days are Tuesdays and Wednesdays. 

• As part of our Health and Wellbeing learning, we took some time to discuss what the feeling of "anxiety" meant to us. We learned a breathing technique that we could use to support not only ourselves, but others too, if we noticed anyone feeling anxious. 

• The Micro:Bits arrived as part of our technology learning, and I think it is safe to say, that P7 are loving them! We did a few very basic lessons this week to get into the hang of understanding how they work. I think it won't be long before P7 are teaching me how they work and sharing all that they can do!

Primary 7 have shown just how responsible and trustworthy they are this week. I have been so proud of how they have conducted themselves in and out of the classroom and have been a delight to teach. Have a look below to see how our learning has progressed this week!

• We developed our shape vocabulary and made sure we were using the correct terminology when describing different properties of both 2D and 3D shapes. P7 of course had to have a go of making 3D models out of playdough...because who doesn't love playdough?! We completed some numeracy assessments to help gauge an understanding of the class and their knowledge of place value.

• P7 have been completing weekly word problems. This week, again looking at fractional amounts. They are asked to show their working through drawings and did a great job of showing equal amounts and naming the fractional pieces. 

• We started to learn some new badminton skills in PE. P7 were great at hitting the shuttlecock back and forth to their partner. 

• Daily, we did some cartoon character descriptions using our descriptive bubble to help structure our work. We reviewed our work from Wednesday and tried to improve the vocabulary used to describe colour on Thursday. With practise, and using a thesaurus to help us, we are hoping to become more consistent in developing our vocabulary. 

• Unfortunately, with no internet access we didn't get started on learning how to use the Micro:Bits this week, but we are hopeful for WIFI to return next week to begin developing our technology skills!

• We've continued with our animal art project this week, and it's slowly growing in shapes and sizes. It is going to look great! 

Our first full week! Primary 7 were so great at being responsible and supportive to their Primary 1 buddies this week, as well as last. They have been a huge help in getting P1 settled at  break and lunch, and I know the Primary 1 staff are very appreciative of all their help! 

Below are some of the tasks and learning that P7 have been involved in during week 2: 

• We started to revise our knowledge of 2D shapes and their properties. P7 developed their geometry vocabulary and then explored the shapes using the polypad on Mathigon. The class then created google slides to showcase all of the knowledge they had recapped and built upon this week. 

• We learned more numeracy card games - Tricky Click, Hero and Pyramid. 

• P7 finished off their posters showcasing their understand of the 7 descriptive perspectives. They then used these to begin structuring and writing short pieces about Scooby Doo! P7 also got involved in a piece of Free Writing, where they have complete creative freedom and is read, but not marked by the teacher. The class really liked this and all did a great job!

• We made a very small start to our WW2 topic which will be our focus for term 1 and most of term 2. Our class novel is called, "When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit", and P7 made inferences and predictions from the information they could find on the front cover. 

• In PE on Tuesday, P7 played some team building games to develop their communication skills with one another and also work with others from within the class.

• P7 started their paper plate art animals on Monday and then we painted them on Thursday. They are looking so good! We have another animal to complete this week and look forward to sharing our final display with you when it is done!  

What a start to Primary 7! We have had a lovely first week settling in and started working on developing our classroom ethos. A huge thank you to all of P7, as they have been a delight to teach!