P4/5 Welcome Back!

Primary 4/5 have enjoyed the return to school and especially having the chance to see our friends again. Over the last 4 weeks we have been getting used to our “new normal” and routines to keep our school and wider community safe. We have seen signs around the school reminding us to “keep left” in corridors, to wait outside the toilet if there is someone else inside and to clean our hands. We have been very good at telling Miss Bennett when we should clean our hands and how we should do this properly.

Health and Wellbeing

During our return to school we have been talking about some of the good times from lockdown as well as some of the challenges. Each morning we check in with Miss Bennett through our own “feelings wheel”. We have shared with Miss Bennett how sleep has sometimes been a challenge and so we asked for some lessons on why sleep is important and how we can have a good night’s sleep. In class we have been practising “sleep stories” and relaxation strategies including mindfulness practices and yoga. We have learnt that a good night’s sleep is an important part of a healthy lifestyle to give us learning power.

We have also been revising the rights of the child. We learnt that, sometimes, we don’t have the words to explain how we feel but that we still have a right to express how we feel (Article 13) so we had a go at creating Mandalas to express ourselves through pattern and colour. We created some Cubism art to brighten up our classroom and make us feel good.

We created our class charter with the theme of a boat “riding the waves” as we realised, as a school community, we are ‘in this together’ and although we can’t always contol what is happening, we can ride the waves together, building our resilience to handle change.

Finally, as we adjust to our new routines, we have reflected on why this is important right now. Mrs Jadid taught us about viruses and vaccines. We learnt about microbes and how they can spread. We remembered well from our lessons last year on how to clean our hands properly and can demonstrate this.

Here are a few things we had to say about Health and Wellbeing:

“We relax because, if you work very hard all the time, you deserve a rest. ” – Nina

“We have a lot of rights.” – Lena

“If you work really hard, you need to breathe in and breathe out or you can listen to some calm music.” – Maja

“A virus is something that makes you ill and a vaccine is something that stops you from being ill.” – Valerio

“A vaccine is something they give you with a tiny bit of the virus and it helps your body to fight it or train the body to fight it so it knows how to defeat it.” – Iliana

“I shared with the class how hand sanitiser and soap works.” – Mikayeel.

“We had so much fun doing P.E. We were playing fun games and stretches.” – Olivia C

“We have been doing art in the style of cubism in the style of shapes and lots of lines.” – Amara

Literacy

In class we have been reading ‘Akimbo and the Baboons’ and practising Reflective Reading, using the text to visualise images and think about how the author has used language to help us do this (metalinguistics). We have also been reading our group reading books which we keep in class now and complete comprehension activities on them. Reading books will not be sent home but reading will be assigned on Rising Stars to read at home. Details on this will be shared later.

We have been revising spelling strategies such as when to use double consonants when adding -ed or -ing. We have also considered verbs and their tenses including irregular verbs such as ‘wrote’ or ‘bought’. We found this a little tricky and this is something we could practise at home. We have really enjoyed practising our joined handwriting too. Many of us have found this quite relaxing.

Here are some of the things we had to say on literacy:

“We learnt how to make our handwriting better in our literacy jotter and to do our spelling.” – Lena

“When we write in our literacy jotters, we practise our spelling and joined handwriting so we can get better.” – Oliwia O

Numeracy

Miss Bennett has been asking us lots of questions to get to know what we have remembered. Each day we have practised a ‘number of the day’ or times tables. This helps with our recall of number and our mental agility to solve problems. We have revised whole number and how to round to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000. Some of us had a go at rounding decimals to the nearest whole number and nearest tenth. We realised we do this a lot when at the shops. We will continue to practise this as we move on to estimation and using our rounding skills in problem solving questions. In the meantime we can always be practising our times tables. We know ourselves now which ones we find tricky and 5 minutes practice every day will really help with our recall.

Here is what we had to say on numeracy:

“We work out rounding when you add whole numbers together.” – Valerio

Reminders

Please remember:

• – To bring a piece of fruit for morning snack.
• – To wait outside the toilet beside the sign if someone else is in the toilet.
• – Ask Miss Bennett if you are not sure of anything or are not feeling well.
• – Useful links and relevant information have been shared on Google Classroom. Photos of pupils’ work have been shared via Gmail and Google Drive.
  

Stay safe,
Miss Bennett