P6/7 Blue October 2017

Welcome back to everyone in St Peters RC Primary School and to P6/7 Blue!

What an amazing and busy first week back we have all had together. We have returned to our lovely school refreshed and eager to learn after our October holiday break.

Last week Jammin’ Fitness, Andy MacKechnie, came in to our school and engaged us in some motivational public speaking and impromptu interviews. We had great fun with Andy and learned some crucial skills to build our confidence in speaking out.

We have been working on our Pope Francis Faith Award (PFFA). Currently we are increasing our knowledge of Catholicism in school, at home and in our parish. We recently had a film crew in to interview us.  Several of us took part in interviews explaining our PFFA and discussing things we have been learning such as the Mysteries of the Rosary.

In gym with Mrs Armstrong we are doing table tennis this term. With Miss Alford we are doing High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). Regular exercise is crucial for not only physical health but also for our mental health.

We are continuing to develop our knowledge in our topic, Digital Technology. Through this topic we have been learning about coding, binary numbers, Google and Microsoft programmes, and safety in the modern world of technology. This new, modern and interesting topic is keeping us up to date in the modern world. We are aiming to move towards paperless homework and have already been participating in Google classroom homework tasks. Not only will this develop our skills for the ever advancing workforce ahead of us but we are also conscious of the environment and how this will positively reduce our own carbon footprints.

In modern languages we have been not only immersing ourselves in the languages but also in the cultures of China and Germany. We have been working with Miss Sunny learning mandarin. We have been perfecting our German with Frau Bain and Frau Lena, and even baking German Pretzels. We incorporate these languages into our classroom wherever possible through greetings, counting and general chit chat!!

In music we have been working with two exciting teachers, Mr Horton and Mr Dawson. We engage in choir and whole class music lessons. In drama we have been getting into the festive spirit and preparations for our Christmas panto, Cinderella and Rockefeller, are well underway!! Roles have been cast and our drama teacher, Mrs Hutton is helping us to put on a show to remember!!! We enjoyed listening to bassoon players last week.

Throughout all these exciting learning experiences we are improving on our team work, cooperative learning skills, technology skills and social skills. We integrate cross curricular learning in numeracy, literacy, IT and expressive arts.

Numeracy

Previously we explored measurement in maths. We completed various practical tasks to deepen our understanding of time, weight, length, volume, capacity and perimeter. In Numeracy we are continuing to develop our Mental Math strategies through various games and tasks. We are also continuing maths problem solving tasks weekly. We are moving on to fractions, decimals and percentages for the next few weeks.

Literacy

In Literacy, we will continue with assigned reading books for homework and complete reflective reading tasks on these books to develop and challenge our comprehension. In school we read individual books from the Accelerated Reader library. These books are reading for enjoyment books. We complete AR assessments once we have finished a book. Students are encouraged to continue reading for enjoyment at home as several books are available in the AR assessments. Through regular reading and engaging in activities, we aspire to ignite a continuous love for reading and broadening our imaginations. This helps us with texts of all varieties and aids in developing our writing. In writing we will be studying and writing persuasive texts as well as continuing imaginative and creative writing. We often present our own work to our peers which always gives us a confidence boost!!!