Reflections on The Final Week of Term 1 in P6
Wow! We have made it to the end of term 1 in P6 already! We have enjoyed another action packed week of learning and fun in P6 this week. On Monday we had a change in our routine and had PE with Ms Barclay. This was due to the open morning being during our usual PE slot on Tuesday. We enjoyed a little bit of friendly competition in dodge ball and bench ball.
In maths - we have been learning about square and cube numbers with Mrs Johnstone. We learned that a square number is the product of a number multiplied by itself and a cube number is the product of a number multiplied by itself 3 times. Did you know you can make squares out of square numbers? Ask us how! With Mrs Cameron we completed our pre assessment for shape and then we did some maths journaling on what we already know about shape and what we’d like to learn about shape.
In Literacy - The children enjoyed the opportunity to do some creative writing with Mrs Johnstone, on Monday. They got the choice of two story starters and were given the challenge of continuing the story. It was very interesting to see the different perspectives, themes and characters that emerged. Some children have even been asking to work on their stories at home. This was the first piece of writing that the children got to use their chromebook to type so it was extra exciting. We learned a little about Google Docs and what the red and blue lines under words mean and how it can help us. We worked on finishing our creative stories, our Palindromic poems and reading posters at the end of the week.
In IDL this week - We tried some foods that are traditionally grown or eaten in Syria. This learning opportunity was inspired by the main character in our class novel “The Boy at The Back of The Class.” who is a Syrian refugee. We tried:
Pomegranate
Figs
Dates
Apricots
Hummus & Pita Bread
Falafel
Some children were really surprised that they liked some of the foods which they didn’t expect to like. The pomegranate and the hummus were the most popular choices.
We also finished off our Brothers across Borders comics and finished the simulation. We finished the refugees welcome letters and artwork too.
We really enjoyed having so many parents and carers coming in to visit on Tuesday morning. Thank you! The children loved showing off some of their work and sharing their learning with you. There were some great discussions around different types of bullying, regulation strategies and support networks.
Stars of the Month
Well done - Coralie for her hard work in class and always being kind and respectful!
Well done - Fraser for always working hard, contributing to the class and being kind and respectful.
Well done to our cross country team! The boys team won 2nd place overall. The team included: Liam and Calum in our class. Calum came 2nd in his race! Well done boys!
We had a lovely last day in school, we made our own superheroes relating to a chosen global goal and we had to decide what their super power would be. We then went swimming. After lunch we had a disco with an online session with a gladiator and then we had a football session with the Caley Thistle coaches. It has been a wonderful term and I'm looking forward to next term.
We hope you have a fantastic October holiday and we look forward to seeing everyone back on Monday 27th October.
Mrs Johnstone & Mrs Cameron
We look forward to welcoming all of you who can make it to join us for our health and wellbeing themed open morning on Tuesday this week between 0930 and 10:15. Following on from our learning around online safety and cyber bullying we will be talking part in a range of activities discussing different types of bullying and mental health.
This week we enjoyed Math Talk Time. This activity encouraged us to use our maths language that we know, extend on our current maths vocabulary, find mathematical links in the world around us and open up mathematical discussions in the class. Check out some of our recent Maths Talk Time responses. We completed our post topic assessment and also started our Maths Journaling. The children wrote about how they feel about maths and what they feel they are good at and what is tricky for them.
We learned about Palindromes in literacy with Mrs Johnstone. A ‘Palindrome’ is a word, sentence or phrase that reads the same forwards and backwards. We read the poem "Refugee" by Brian Bliston. This is an example of a mirror poem or Palindrome Poem as you can read it both forwards and backwards but the meaning or interpretation of the poem changes. The purpose of this is to get people thinking. We are working on creating our own poems about something we have a strong belief about. We are creating a plan using a template on our chromebook then writing it out on paper with our best handwriting. In reading we were looking at inference and answering questions about different photos.
We had an amazing time at Lochardil woods on Thursday afternoon, even though it rained the entire time! The children made some amazing dens and showed real leadership, team working and determination skills throughout. We spoke about how it would feel to have to be in this overnight or during a storm! The children then collected water from their tarps as this would be another problem to solve if you did need to find shelter and you had nothing with you. This has all linked into our Refugee topic. A big thank you to our volunteers and Ellie Carlisle. Also a big thank you to anyone else who did offer to come along, without you we cannot do these things with the children.
We are very proud of each and every one of the children throughout this topic with their maturity and respectful attitudes shown when discussing some very mature topics.
We have had a really busy week this week, We hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Star of the week this week is : Emilia for her brilliant leadership skills when we were doing den building! Well done Emilia!
You are invited to join us for our Heath and Wellbeing themed open morning next Tuesday 6th October any time between 0930 and 10:15.
This week has been a busy one! We have been working hard on staying safe, strong and smart online. The children have all been doing really well with this and will be sharing some of their learning with you next week as their first HQAT coming home.
We have also been enjoying maths week and the theme of “wild maths”. We entered the national Sumdog competition and are enjoying keeping an eye on the leaderboard to see how we are progressing. We took part in an online lesson from Ellie Carlisle from Nature Scot. Ellie has been working with the P7 children to collect data and map features of our outside areas. This is looking at how eco friendly our school is and how we can improve. This session showed the children how important maths is in the world of work. We learned about a mathematician called Fibonacci and a special number sequence that he discovered: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8… Can you spot the pattern? We found out that this pattern can be seen in nature and we created our own “golden rectangles” with Fibonacci spirals.
We have been focusing on a new skill in our reading, working on clarifying what we have read in our books and in writing we have started to use our notes and research to write biographies on our chosen famous refugee. We have continued with creating our Brothers across borders comics in IDL, which the children are really enjoying.
This week we have been really busy in class!
On Wednesday afternoon we have Nichola in from Jacobs to complete a STEM lesson with the children about what equality, equity and removing barriers are. Nichola is a Transport Engineer for Jacobs and she looked at the butterfly effect with the children, (https://steam.jacobs.com/butterfly-effect/human-rights/ ). They got into groups of 3 and acted out the different scenarios and then they had to try to draw themselves when they were equal to others, when they were equitable to others and when all barriers were removed for them. This led to some good conversations in class.
On Thursday morning we had our online stay safe and strong webinar. This was looking at how to stay safe online! This webinar spoke about - How their phone grabs and holds their attention
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The pressure they may feel to be online
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What cyberbullying might look like
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Banter vs bullying
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The impacts of social media and bullying
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How to stay safe
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How they can build a positive online space
This is going to be part of our High Quality Assessment Task this term. The children then looked at our own Lochardil school ‘Acceptable Use Policy’ and the children identified areas which they think are important and thought of new items they would like to add.
In Maths we continued with Multiplying by 10, 100 and 1000 and the children completed a dominoes matching activity. We also completed our Maths SOFA this week.
In Reading we continued with our books and had different tasks to complete.
In Writing we continued with our plans for our Biographies on a famous refugee, ready to start writing these next week.
Star of the week this week is - Ellis for all her hard work and determination to get her work finished! Well done Ellis!
We have had a very busy week this week! Wow! We are at the end of week 4 already! The children have all worked really hard over the last four weeks and are looking forward to the long weekend coming up.
This week, in reading, we continued to work on creating a well structured summary of what we have read. We read more of our class novel and we completed a comprehension task on this to demonstrate our understanding and find information within the text. In Maths with Mrs Cameron we have been learning about multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000 and with Mrs Johnstone we took our maths outdoors this week to review our learning on place value. Children enjoyed creating giant place value charts in the front playground and took part in some friendly competition to identify number values using natural resources and round to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000.
In IDL this week, we started a new interactive activity called “Brothers Across Borders”, an interactive movie set in Syria and Turkey. In an engaging and capturing fashion it shows the living conditions of people who are affected by the conflict in Syria and the choices they have to make. It combines visual story telling with game play which is based on multiple choices. This enables the children to “experience” the life of a Syrian refugee as the journey takes them to real locations in Syria and Turkey and lets them choose how to proceed. This Red Cross resource aims to challenge the children and encourage them to be curious, ask questions and reflect. The aim is to increase the understanding of the situation for people who are asylum seekers and refugees as well as inspire action by the students to help and support fellow human beings. Children will be making a comic book that shows the choices they made and the impact their choices had on the character’s life. All the children have been having in-depth discussions about the choices they make and are enjoying the activity.
In digital skills this week, the children are continuing to enjoy practising touch typing with Mrs Johnstone. This week, we were learning the letters that are above the “home row” and how to “jump” our fingers from our home keys. It is getting a little tricky but we are enjoying the challenge.
The children have created some beautiful pieces of “hand in hand” artwork that demonstrates the themes of humanity, no discrimination and love. The children chose quotes to add to their artwork that resonated with them. Here are some of our finished pieces.
Swimming is going really well. Thank you to all the volunteers again as without you we wouldn’t be able to go.
Our stars of the month this month are:
Ava - for her resilience, hard work and love for everybody.
Megan -- for always being respectful, kind and hard working.
Well done to you both! It is always a hard decision as all the children are doing really well.
This term in P6, the children are very excited to have got their own personal Chromebook devices. In class we are supporting the children to explore resources and information online, and develop an understanding of responsible digital behaviour, learning how to keep themselves safe and secure . As part of this learning, on Thursday 18th September, our class will be watching an online webinar delivered by Kooth Digital Health, a company who provides an anonymous, online counselling and emotional wellbeing service for young people aged 10+.
During the Webinar: “Staying safe, strong and smart online”, our young people will explore:
•How their phone grabs and holds their attention
•The pressure they may feel to be online
•What cyberbullying might look like
•Banter vs bullying
•The impacts of social media and bullying
•How to stay safe
•How they can build a positive online space
We have had a great first few weeks back. We have done a lot of getting to know each other and getting settled into our classroom routines. Everyone has loved getting their new chromebooks. Swimming has been great so far and everyone is enjoying it!
With Mrs Johnstone, We started practising touch typing. The children were amazed that Mrs Johstone could type without looking. We have been learning about the home keys. Some people managed to type with their hands covered. It was lots of fun.
As part of our IDL topic, we are working on creating a piece of art inspired by our class novel “The Boy at the Back of The Class”. We are drawing hands holding each other, showing the theme of welcoming and no discrimination. We had lots of great discussions about ways we can make people feel welcome and included and had some great discussion around some very grown up themes including racism, prejudice and discrimination.
We have started our new reading books in our groups and have written a summary of what we have read so far. We have also been continuing to work on place value in class.
For IDL we designed a small shelter on paper in groups or individually and then we went outside on Thursday afternoon and built them. They were AMAZING! We are so proud of all the children. They worked on their team working skills, problem solving and thinking outside the box! We have been talking about Refugees and how children come to our country to be safe, and how they are still children and still want to play and have friends and be included just like we do.
We have started to research famous refugees and will be writing an information report on them in writing. We found lots of people who we never knew were refugees.
The children have settled in really well and we are having lots of fun. Swimming is going great!
Week 1 Louis for his brilliant effort and behaviour in class.
Week 2 Maeve for trying really hard and persevering when things get hard.
Week 3 - Zainab for being a great member of the class, working hard and being very respectful.
Well done to you all!
Welcome to our P6 blog page. We have just got our blog up and running for this session but we will have a more detailed weekly post, starting from next week. We have settled well into our new class and are getting on really well. We have really enjoyed the first few swimming sessions and are super excited to have our very own Chromebooks. Please find below our Term 1 overview.