Author: Miss Copeland

Rugby Week

Mr Madine and Primary 1 had a great time celebrating Rugby Week, learning how to pass and catch a rugby ball and work as a team.

Gymnastics

We have now finished our block of gymnastics. We have practised lots of travelling, balancing, rolling and of course jumping!

Art Gallery Sneak Peek

We have been working towards two pieces of art for our school art gallery, this year titled ‘Our Diverse Community’. Below you can see our second piece in progress. We have been focussing on observational drawing, taking note of the lines, shapes and colours.

Water

We started off our new topic of water with an overnight science experiment. What happens to water when it freezes? The water turned to ice and we noticed that the water grew! This expansion is one reason for the pot holes we see in the roads due to freeze/thaw.

Choosing

Morgan demonstrated her knowledge of the life cycle of a plant with the fabulous chalk drawing outside.

Using magnets and wool, Soni created this system on the whiteboard, where he could tighten and loosen the string by twisting. It gained lots of interest from the class!

Giraffe News

Sadly, as you can see below, we did not win the competition however… Well done to Primary 4 who did! We are still excited that we will have a giraffe [statue] visit our school!

The Queen’s Jubilee

Holyrood Education centre has invited us to take part in a workshop for the Queen’s Jubilee on Tuesday 26^th April (just after the Easter holidays).

The day will consist of;

• Introduction at Education Centre
• Visit to the palace
• Bunting workshop
• Invitations to visit the gardens.

School Resources for the Platinum Jubilee, 2022 (rct.uk)

As per normal, please wear school uniform and bring a waterproof coat.

This Week

Tuesday

We are hoping, weather depending, to do some outdoor learning today!

Wednesday

We are expecting a routine visit from the school nurses at 9:30am.

Bus Tour – Thursday

We will be taking part in a trial open top bus tour with Cobble the Scottie Dog which launches to the public on 2/4/22.

The bus tour will take place this Thursday 31/3/22 from 1.30-2.30 during school time.

Please wear school uniform and bring a waterproof coat/hat.

Last week was the launch of British Science Week. We have been very busy doing lots of different types of enquiries.

Cress Test

This was a fair test enquiry. Does cress grow better in soil or cotton wool?

“We need to put water in it” Clara
“I enjoyed looking at the cress with Safia” Amina
“I like looking through the magnifying glass” Jack
“They are seedlings. They are called cress seeds. If you put water in it it will go into the root so it can grow” Corey
“We put soil in the green pot” Mohtada
“We put cotton wool in the pink pot” Ethan
“When we put the seeds in they growed, they growed in 3 sleeps” Alfie
“Cotton wool didn’t grow the seeds properly” Mason
“The seeds growed in soil” Morgan

Gummy Bear Osmosis

This was an observation over time enquiry. What happens when we put gummy bears in water?

“We put the jelly bears in the water. The one that was in the water went big” Johnpaul
“When you put the water in the red bear turned white” [clear] Alfie
“The one that did not have water it stayed the same” Alfie
“The gummy bear expanded” Amina

Hand size

This was a pattern seeking enquiry. Do our hands get bigger as we get older?
We measured each of our hands and then lined up from the smallest to the biggest hand size. We then chose the middle person to represent our class. Our median hand size is 12.5cm. We asked all the classes in the school to measure their hands too.

“We were measuring our hands” Alfie
“We were testing if our hands get bigger as we get older” Corey

Scrap Vegetable Growing

In our tuff tray we left scrap bits of vegetables and plopped them in some water.

“We were growing carrots and different foods” Mason

Balloon growth!

We observed what happened when we mixed two ingredients together. There was a chemical reaction and gas was formed. This gas expanded the balloon.

“We were doing an experiment. We made a balloon go big because the air” Morgan
“We put [bicarbonate of] soda in the balloon” Emily
“We put the balloon on the bottle of vinegar” Morgan
“It made bubbles.” Oskar
“The powder made the vinegar go fizzy because it mixed together and it made the balloon blow up” Jack

Choosing

During choosing a group of pupils tried out the experiment without adult intervention. There was excellent communication where they had to decide who was going to help do each step so it felt fair.

“We were doing an experiment” Mason
“I was using the blue thing to get it in the balloon and Corey was holding it and Mason was putting it in” Tafari
“We were working as a team” Mason

Certificates

The Primary 7 House Captains hand out certificates every Friday

“The P7s came and give us certificates because we finished our house point chart” Jack

Primary 2 Showcase Assembly

Well done Primary 2 on your assembly celebrating different cultures.

“P2 were doing a show” Georgie-Lee
“It was about chinese [new year]” Emily
“They singed a song” Johnpaul

Maths

We have been looking at place value this week, in particular using base 10 blocks (also known as Dienes blocks)

We count up using this flip card counter
https://ictgames.com/mobilePage/flipCounter/

We enjoyed playing this game https://www.ictgames.com/sharkNumbers/mobile/index.html

You can find online interactive Base 10/Dienes blocks here https://www.coolmath4kids.com/manipulatives/base-ten-blocks

“We were playing a game and when we got 10 blocks we give it to [Miss Copeland] and [she] gives us a stick of 10” Corey

Pupil Council Trip

Amina went on her first trip as our pupil council representative. She met a very brave police officer and dog. The dog was injured while working as a police dog. They are trying to change the law so that there are stronger punishments for people who hurt animals.

“I went to the Parliament and I got to pet a dog. It was a police dog. He got hurt but now he’s better” Amina.

Giraffe About Town

Last week we explained we are entering the Giraffe about town competition. Here is our entry! We divided our giraffe into different sections and we each drew our favourite things on it, ranging from Cristiano Ronaldo to the sun and Lego! We voted red to be the background colour as it is our school colour. Fingers crossed we win!

RMPS Art Gallery

Here are some work in progress photos of our school Art Gallery entry on the topic ‘Our Diverse Community’… We can’t wait to show you our finished piece!

Read Write Inc.

This week Mrs Finlayson visited our classroom and showed us how to do our new literacy programme called Read, Write, Inc.
One of the important points in this programme is that pupils work in pairs while reading. We explicitly teach how to encourage someone when they make a mistake e.g. Say ‘try again’, rather than ‘no, that’s wrong’, and to give praise.

Cold Writing

This week’s cold writing was based on the story of Pandora’s Box. The pupils very much enjoyed this story and we had brilliant chats. The pupils were then asked to write a personal response to the story; sharing how it made them feel e.g I felt nervous when Pandora went to open the box. Staff assess this piece of work against their last piece of cold writing.

International Women’s Day

Primary 1 had a lovely time with Mrs Ho talking about International Women’s Day. They each drew a woman who inspires them and wrote why they think they are amazing

Mason, the author

We loved reading Mason’s book he made at home. Well done, Mason!

This Week

This week is SCIENCE week! This year the theme is growth. We will be using lots of skills such as asking questions, predicting, setting up experiments, observing, writing reports, communicating our findings AND evaluating! Phew!

WOW! What a busy week we have had. Here are some of the things we got up to…

Giraffe About Town

P1 are entering a competition to design a giraffe for the Giraffe About Town tour.
To help us with the design process we started by going on a treasure hunt in our room, finding a blue item, something soft etc before then finding something that we love. We then had a vote to decide our background colour. Red won the vote, because it is our colour, our school colour, Royal Mile Primary School. Our design will allow each pupil to draw their favourite things, because we are all unique. We will share our finished design with you next week.

Shrove Tuesday

We have enjoyed exploring baking equipment and making pancakes in play. Decorating pancakes with different toppings – sometimes decorating half a pancake in a different flavour. We also had a pancake flipping race!
P1 did some beautiful writing and drawing all about the Christian celebrations of Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and Lent, sharing what they would give up (fasting) and how they could be kind (Almsgiving).

World Book Day

On Thursday, we all looked at little bit different. Some of us dressed up as characters and some wore their pyjamas for the theme ‘Bedtime Story’. We have lots of dressing up options in our classroom too, and some of us enjoyed making costumes in the classroom!

A big thank you to Clara and Mohtada who brought in books to share with our class. Clara’s book, The Story Orchestra – The Nutcracker, had special buttons which played music. This was a big hit with our class!

Our first visitors to our room were from the Scottish Poetry Library who told us 3 funny poems. We all got the giggles!

We had so much fun following Mrs Rush’s Book Character Treasure Hunt. We found all of the photos in the school and tried our hardest to remember all of the character’s names.

After lunch we used our communication, team work and creativity skills to make a reading den. Learning how to share resources and work together is so valuable. It wasn’t easy! We experienced lots of emotions during this, and everyone did brilliantly to talk these through to find solutions. Once the dens were made, we chose our favourite books to read. Some people even used their writing and reading skills to make their own books and signs for their dens!

Try making a reading den at home! Here are some design ideas from IKEA

At the end of the day we were so lucky to have Amina’s mum, who is from Australia visit. She shared 3 books with us; Edward the Emu, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Mozzie, and Jeremy, a story about a baby Kookaburra. We loved hearing all about the different animals they have in Australia. Thank you so much!

Home Learning

Self-isolating didn’t stop Mason from working hard at home! For world book day he wrote his own book and made some Gruffalo crumble cakes where he used his maths skills to weigh out the ingredients using scales. He made pancakes for Shrove Tuesday and watched a story about the celebration. He also played kids Monopoly, working out how much to pay or receive. WOW! We can’t wait to read your book! 

Corey and Emily have also been busy making pancakes at home and wanted to share their photos. They look so yummy!

Next Week

Profile Jotter Week happens twice a year. For one whole week all the work we produce gets put into your profile jotter. By the end of P7 you will see how for you have come! We always do a ‘cold’ piece of writing during this time. Although the pupils will not receive academic support such as being told how to spell something, they do get lots of moral support and praise. Independent work shows what they can achieve on their own and helps us to create learning targets.

Tuesday is International Women’s Day. Have a chat about a woman who inspires you. Did they do something brave? Did they create something cool? Are they a super hero to you?