Shhhh!

We are working very hard, preparing for our Scottish Assembly.

If you want to know what it's all about...

 

 

you will have to come along on Thursday 13th December!

 

 

Keep practising and LEARN YOUR LINES!

 



Human Compasses!

We are all working on directions at the moment. 

Becoming a human compass helped us to work out how many degrees are in each turn. 

We heard some interesting ways of remembering the order of the compass directions...

Naughty Elephants Squirt Water, Never Eat Shredded Wheat, Never Eat Squishy Worms! 

Do you know any others?

 

 

 

A Royal Visit

This week we have been very honoured to receive a royal visitor from the past. Mary Queen of Scots came to tell us all about her life. She gave an exceptional and very articulate account of her early years having been sent to France, her marriages and finally her imprisonment and death at the hands of 'Good Queen Bess' - Elizabeth I.

We were treated to an enactment of the last few hours of the life of her second husband, Lord Darnley, which came to an explosive end!

 

The Reading Hour

Did you know this is The Scottish Book Trust's  Book Week in Scotland? Part of Book Week is the Reading Hour which we shared with P2F. We enjoyed it a lot and we hope the other classes have as much fun in their Book Hour. We hope we can do it again soon!

 

 

Why is the day so short?

We are coming up to the winter solstice on December 21st when it will be the shortest day of the year. At this time of year we can watch the sun rise above the horizon on our way to school and see sunset in the afternoon at school. By the time we leave school it is dark.

Why is the day so short in winter and so long in summer?

This is because the earth tilts on its axis. If you live in the northern hemisphere it is winter, the days are short and it is colder, because we are tilted away from the sun.

This diagram is not to scale. The sun is much, much bigger and much,much further away!

When there is a lot of activity on the sun a solar wind is created and particles fly across space towards earth. The particles are drawn in to the earth at its magnetic poles. This creates the aurora borealis or 'northern lights'. When this happens we can see the lights if we look towards the north.

We are lucky to have a dark night sky which is mostly unaffected by light pollution. Since we also have more hours of darkness we are more likely to get a good view of the lights which are sometimes called 'The Merry Dancers' in Orkney. The closer to the north  pole you live the better the view you get! Here is a video of the aurora borealis from the north of Norway.

 

 

Of course the best view is from space.

 



 

Have you seen 'The Merry Dancers'?

 

Traditional Scottish Sports

 

Our Scottish sports group have been finding out about golf and curling.

To start with we were given a  knowledgeable introduction to the foundation skills before two groups went through to the hall to try out indoor versions of the sports. After a talk about the history of golf and present day competitions, the group organised the activities themselves and, though this was a challenge, they did very well and had prepared a well structured session during which each group had a chance to try out the sports.

Some great individual coaching was offered. Thank you sports team!

We hope to have time to find out about netball next.

We have new reading books!

Tiger Tubbies - 'one dog and his boy' by Eva Ibbotson.

Groovy Babies - 'Golden Goose' by Dick King-Smith

Bonny Bunnies - 'Cliffhanger' by Jacqueline Wilson

Funky Chickens - 'The Giants and the Joneses' by Julia Donaldson
 

Brilliant new books by amazing authors! Look out for our book trailers - coming soon!

Traditional Scottish Foods: Shortbread

This week the group that is finding out about traditional Scottish foods made shortbread with Mrs Thompson. It was a great success! Well done. We hope they will have a chance to make another traditional favourite later in the term.

The class debates!

 

This week we had a debate about whether re-introducing animals to Scotland was a good idea. Bears, wolves and beavers were some of the animals which were once native to Scotland.

 

Each team made very good points and followed the rules of the debate well, allowing everyone who wanted to speak to have a turn, trying really hard to hold on to their ideas while they waited for a turn, as well as replying to the points the other team were making.

 

 

We compared our opinions at the end of the debate with our opinions at the beginning and discovered they had become polarised! No-one had changed their minds or been persuaded by the other team. Everyone had become even more convinced that their opinions were correct.

 

Had we been too influenced by films like 'Brave' and myths and legends about wild animals?

or,

do we think of wild animals like we do our pets?

Children In Need 2012

P5 loved coming to school in their jammies...so did Miss Gillies! 

We all helped to raise the fabulous total of £630.94.  It was good fun for a great cause.  Some even played football in their pyjamas! 

 

Thankfully, everyone remembered their swimming kits

so there were no soggy PJs in the afternoon!

 

 

Wordles

Bug Brother by Pete Johnson

 

These are our wordles made with words we have selected from our reading books.

 

George Speaks by Dick King-Smith

Everyone individually chose interesting descriptive words or unusual vocabulary that the author uses.

The Sheep - Pig by Dick King-Smith

The more often the words were chosen the bolder they are in the wordle.

Invisible Dog by DIck KIng-Smith

 

They chose some lovely, rich and juicy vocabulary!

 

This was the final literacy activity with these books because next week we start our brand new books!

Our first Book Review Glogs

Have a look at our wiki pages to see the Funky Chickens' and The Groovy Babies' reviews of their latest books, The Invisible Dog by Dick King-Smith and George Speaks by Dick King-Smith. The Tiger Tubbies reviewed The Sheep-Pig by Dick King Smith and the Bonny Bunnies reviewed Bug Brother by Pete Johnson. We have used two of our book detectives' activities to share on the video clips - the summary of the story and an interview with one of the main characters in the book. We hope you enjoy them!. Follow the link to the Glogs on the sidebar.

Scotland the Brave!

Our first two weeks of the term have been so busy! We have decided what we think we know about our topic for this term, 'Scotland', and what we would like to find out. We think we know quite a lot about music and culture but we have groups of people finding out about traditional foods, Scottish sports, myths and legends, castles, lighthouses, kings and queens and nature! This will involve drama and dressing up, model making, cooking and baking, getting sporty and lots of research.


 

Happily for us the whole school went to see the film 'Brave' which raised some questions! Had bears lived in Scotland? Which other animals had lived in Scotland and were now extinct? Had any been re-introduced? Should they be reintroduced? Lots of useful thinking has been going on which will feed into debates.

We recognised that the film makers had tried to accurately reproduce landscapes and native Caledonian Pine Forest.  for the film.(Did you know there is only 1% of the original forest left?)

 

 

This year the BBC Autumnwatch team have been based in Scotland. One of the animals which they have been watching is the beaver which has been re-introduced in a controlled trial at the Aigas Field Centre near Inverness.

There are more beavers living wild in Argyll as part of the Scottish Beaver Trial.

 

We have begun labelling the big map of Scotland in the classroom...

 

 

and designing our own tartan!