Another Busy Week

Week 3 has been another busy one in P5.  

We have been working hard on creating our persuasive leaflets for a country we picked.  This has involved researching information about our country, selecting appropriate images and also designing an eye catching leaflet.  

In maths we have finished our Information Handling topic.  We have demonstrated our skills in collecting information using a survey and displaying the data on a bar graph.  Some of us also worked hard on sorting information within Venn, Carroll and Tree diagrams. 

To end the week we competed in our 2nd activity within the mini olympic tournament.

This week it was athletics.  We competed in a relay race, shot put, long jump and javelin.  

Here are the medals for this week.  

Welcome to Primary 5

It is great to be back at school and we are busy getting underway with our main learning topics.

In maths we are focusing on Information Handling.  We have been busy collecting, organising and displaying lots of different types of information.

We had a bit of fun with some Skittles and worked on creating tables and graphs using these yummy sweets.

We have also made a start on our class topic 'Our World'.  So far we have been learning about the names and locations of the continents and oceans.  We have also been trying to learn the names of as many countries as possible.  This is our class challenge for the next few weeks.  

To link in with our topic, our class PE this term will take the format of a 'Mini Olympics Tournament'.  

This week we competed in Basketball.

We split into 4 teams and each team is representing one of the world countries.  

Blue Team: Great Britain

Orange Team:  Japan

Red:  Australia

Blank:  Jamaica

Below are photos of the medal placings for this week.

Magnus 900 week

Welcome back!

Below are some pictures of us enjoying the spring sun during our reading cafe. 

We've had a really busy first week celebrating the martyrdom of St Magnus as part of our local Magnus 900 celebrations.

We enjoyed visits from lots of specialists including a storytelling session with Tom Muir, yoga, a workshop on emotions and feelings and a very exciting archaeology session with Dan Lee.  

On Friday, we went on our very own pilgrimage walk where we placed decorated stones at an important well in Stromness.  We finished off the week with a house challenge where we created viking longships and filled them with our hopes and dreams.  They were then launched into the sea at the end of the day.   

Our longships

At World Book Day, we loved dressing up as our favourite characters, perhaps you can spot a few well known characters below.

We are really impressed with everyone's longship, they are on display in the school foyer for you to view.  They will also go on display in the Stromness Library in the Easter holidays.

 

In Jigsaw, we used drama to demonstrate how our heart and lungs work.

Last week, we had a visit from the SSPCA and we found out lots about caring for animals in the wild.

Term 3

Thank you for attending our Viking Assembly, we all really enjoyed sharing our learning with you.  

A few weeks ago, we spent a wonderful story telling afternoon with Tom Muir.  We really enjoyed hearing tales from the sagas, local myths and legends, we've continued to read the Orkneyinga Saga as we explore Vikings.

Janette Park came in and helped us find out about local Viking place names, we managed to break down the meaning of places and locate them on local maps.

A special visitor came into to share his experience of being part of the Scalloway Fire Festival last year.  We were fascinated to hear about how they make their squad uniforms and what they did.

We've investigated the runic alphabet and we can use it to write runic messages.  

This week, we explored Viking jewellery and designed a piece of Viking jewellery and made it using clay.

In PE, we've been developing our understanding of Growth Mindset, reflecting on how our mindset helps us tackle new challenges and respond to challenging situations.  In PE, we're focusing on ball control skills with a big focus on hand and eye coordination.  We're thinking of ways to challenge ourselves by adding in extra steps.  

This week, our Jigsaw session was all about our heart and lungs.  We were fascinated to find out how many times you breath and how many times your heart beats every day.

The Vikings have arrived in P4

During our first few weeks back, we've begun exploring our new topic.  We've asked lots of questions and last week we had a visit from Sandra from Historic Environment Scotland who helped us answer some of our questions.

Sandra shared some replica artifacts and we had lots of fun exploring and guessing the objects and their uses.

Here are a few pictures of us guessing what each piece was used for.

A busy few weeks in P4

This term has flown past and we've been so busy.

Here is a few pictures from our Diwali assembly, we really enjoyed sharing our learning with you, thank you for joining us.

We've begun to work with P2 and we're enjoying the opportunity to support them in their reading.  Over the last two terms we have been working on reading fluently and using punctuation to help us read.  So, we've got lost of tips to share with our P2 partners.

Our topic this term is transport and last week we were lucky enough to visit the MV Hamnavoe.  As part of our tour, we met the captain and his crew, were mesmerized by all the buttons and levers in the bridge and found out a lot of facts about what happens behind the scenes.

We've also been looking at what forces some vehicles use to move, we've had great fun making parachutes and testing them outside.

In our Jigsaw sessions, we've been celebrating differences and how words can hurt people.  We've also been thinking about how we can be a good friend and give and receive compliments.  Here are some pictures of us making letters with our bodies to create the word family. 

In RME we've been looking at the meaning of Christmas and thinking about the why it is important to us and our families.  We've taken snapshots of what we do on Christmas day and the class were tasked with guessing what was going on.

We really enjoyed Christmas dinner last week and we all wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.   

Term 2

We've had a busy and enjoyable start to term two.

In PE we've been working on developing our teamwork skills in lots of fun and challenging ways.

We've also been enjoying our new reading corner.

In RME we've started our investigation into Diwali, we've been working in groups and sharing things which give us a shared identity.

We've enjoyed spending time with Jigsaw Jino and we've been celebrating differences.

Finally in Numeracy, we've been sorting information into different groups and looking at how information is displayed in Carrol, Venn and Tree diagrams.

On Friday we enjoyed our first trip to the Stromness Library, we found lots of books and borrowed plenty to keep us reading until our next visit.

Week 7

We've been busy in our Reading Cafe developing our understanding of texts, improving our fluency whilst reading and expanding our vocabulary through language games.

As part of our mindfulness project, we explored our reticular activating system (RAS) and what role it plays in helping us focus on important sounds whilst filtering out the rest. We made our own RAS with a colander, stones and sugar.  The stones were the unimportant sounds which didn't pass through and the sugar was the important sounds which filtered through. 

Scottish Folktales

We've been busy developing our confidence and skills in skipping and we've been sharing lots of good tips.

This week we have been exploring traditional Scottish folktales and finding out about all the mythical creatures in them.

We've been creating our own folktale and acting out well known folktales to the rest of the class.

Mindful learning

We've been working hard developing our use of descriptive words and phrases.  On Wednesday we worked in pairs and had to describe people from photographs in as much detail as possible.  Our partner covered their eyes and used the descriptions to imagine the person in the photograph.  This was tricky but lots of fun.

As part of our learning on mindfulness, we explored how our brain reacts in times of stress.  We found out about three important parts of our brains.  Then we created our own brain by adding sand, glitter, confetti and water to a bottle.  We shook the bottle as hard as we could and this represented our brain handling stress, with lots of thoughts and feelings flying around.  We then placed the bottle on the table and the sand, glitter and confetti began to settle at the bottom.  This represented how our brain calms us down and allows us to respond to stressful situations appropriately.

 

Have a lovely weekend.

Welcome to P4!

We've had a busy start to the new term in P4 and we're all settling in well.

So far we've been lucky enough to have a visit from Dynamic Earth with an excellent workshop called 'Destination Space' where we discovered what is was really like to be an astronaut.  We found out how to filter water, what to wear and how to sleep in space along with lots of other information.

Last week we visited Glaitness to watch a National Theatre of Scotland production called 'Martha'.  We all really enjoyed the performance and had to think about what friendship means to us.

Tag Rugby

Change of time for tag rugby - instead of going to the 3G pitch on Friday, we will be doing it in school tomorrow (Wednesday) morning.

LEPRA workout

Today primary 2 and 3 joined together to do the LEPRA workout to raise money for the charity that helps people with Leprosy.  Here we all are working very hard.

Tag Rugby Fun

We braced ourselves against the wind and were lucky enough to have mainly sunshine for our Tag Rugby today.

Author's Live event

This morning Chae Strathie read us some of his bed time stories, sang songs and helped us create a crazy character with made up words.
We chose a comfy seat, listened well and joined in with the songs.  To keep us nice and cosy we put the lights off, shut the curtains and had a hot chocolate too.
Here are some pictures of us.  Sometimes we are relaxing, other times we are having lots of fun joining in with songs and rhymes.