Mrs Sophie McAndrew
Spring Term
What a busy and enjoyable term we have had in Primary 4b! In the first week of term, we had a lot of fun getting to know each other. We made iPhones with apps to describe our interests and other important information about ourselves and we particularly enjoyed giving each other maths challenges in a ‘Figure me out’ activity in which we had to solve math calculations to find out information such as birthdate and shoe size for example. Another first week highlight was the STEM challenges such as constructing tall, strong towers out of dried spaghetti and marshmallows. We worked cooperatively, explored our problem solving skills and discussion skills in which we had to provide quality feedback to our peers.
In literacy, we celebrated book week, our highlights included reading with a buddy in a P3 class, Miss Blair coming to read to us, as well as making character puppets and book covers to decorate our classroom door based on our class novel ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. Moreover, we had the pleasure of two parent volunteers, Maya’s Mum read the picture book ‘Extra Yarn’ by Mac Barnett and Alasdair’s Mum read ‘Stig of the Dump’ by Clive King whilst cleverly making links with our 1960s topic in which we discussed similarities and differences of our childhood with the characters in the novel. We impressed Mrs McAndrew with our functional writing skills in which we wrote a job application for a 1960s job and explored features of newspaper article inspired by the popular Harry Potter novels. In addition, Primary 4b have also produced outstanding poems using onomatopoeia to add interest and are beginning to up-level vocabulary by using interesting adjectives and verbs in their imaginative writing too.
In numeracy, we have learned to share mental arithmetic strategies through a ‘Number of the Day’ approach in which pupils choose a number and complete math challenges to share their understanding, making links with their knowledge of SEAL. In mathematics, we have explored analogue and digital times in 12-hour and 24-hour format. At home, please continue to explore both analogue and digital times with particular focus on quarter-to times. For further challenge, please continue to explore time differences on two analogue/digital clocks to calculate time durations. We have also been revising our times tables knowledge, please continue to practise these at home.
Thank you to everyone in P4b for giving Mrs McAndrew such a warm welcome and being so helpful in class. Mrs McAndrew is very much looking forward to the summer term in which we will begin learning about the Rainforest.
P4 Challenge Homework January 2019
P4 Challenge Homework- December
This morning, Maya’s mum, Eliza, came in to do some art with us. She read us a book called ‘A River’, about the different landscapes a river flows through. In pairs, we drew and painted our own landscapes. We loved getting to see the river all together at the end!
For our topic last term, we were learning about the wildlife around the Water of Leith. Yesterday, we got a chance to see some of these animals on our trip to the Water of Leith Conservation Trust. We had a brilliant day searching the woodlands for minibeasts and water dipping for fish. We also went on a walk through the woodlands to investigate the prints of animals that live there.
This term, P4b have been learning about persuasive writing. We designed posters for the Halloween disco, thinking about the key features of posters. Then we put them up around the school for everyone to see!
