Category: Buckstone Primary School

Hello, I hope that you have had a good week. The P1 Bright Sparks have had a fantastic full first week of school! Welcome to our Bright Sparks blog. This blog will be the main avenue of communication from the class, so please read it each week!

This week we have been learning:

Literacy

We have been focussing on developing our fine motor skills to provide us with a foundation for handwriting. We have fine motor skills play around the classroom with peg boards and sorting, as well as numerous writing opportunities of postcards, letters and café orders!

We are also really focussing on listening and talking as we go through our memory boxes. Everybody has done a great job of presenting to the class and listening to our friends. We are excited to hear more next week!

Numeracy

This week, we have explored the numbers 1-5. Bright Sparks are doing a great job of writing the numbers and recognising dot patterns. Next week, we will continue with numbers 6-10 and practise our counting.

Other Areas

Our big focus in this first week has been our health and wellbeing, in particular building relationships. As we learn through play, it has been lovely to see new friendships form and children growing in confidence. We also enjoyed our first PE sessions. We have been thinking about spatial awareness and movement with space bubble games and relays.

Construction area – this helps to develop skills in creative thinking, problem solving and team work. We have built castles, bridges and marble runs!

Loose parts play – the children have been enjoying our house corner, which is mainly used as a café with the loose parts as our food orders.

Reflective Friday

This week, the Bright Sparks said they enjoyed drawing pictures, playing with their buddies, colouring in their bubble numbers and taking part in PE!

General information:

On Thursdays, Mrs Conlin will be teaching the Bright Sparks.

When bringing in ‘junk’ for modelling, for health and safety reasons we cannot have toilet rolls or egg boxes.

Please put names on all waterbottles, clothing, Tupperware etc!

To receive notifications for this blog, please download the Feedly app!

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Croal

It’s been lovely being back at school this week and finding out what everyone did over the summer. Pupils have enjoyed ‘catching up’ with old friends and getting to know new ones.

This week, all classes in the school have chosen the name of a character from a book as their class name. We decided that our class name, in P3B, should be ‘Bouncing Benjamin Bunnies’.

PE

There will be two days each week when pupils should come to school wearing clothes suitable for participating in PE activities. More information about our regular PE days will be provided soon, but for next week, pupils in P3B should come to school in their PE kit on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Have a great weekend!

Mrs Bailey

Welcome to P6NM with Mrs McFarlane and Mrs Nicholson.

The pupils have all settled back well and we have really enjoyed meeting everyone this week. 

Important Information 

Our PE days will be on Mondays and Wednesdays. On these days, please come to school in comfortable, weather appropriate clothing and footwear, which you will be able to exercise in.   

This week we have focussed on the expectations and routines in P6 and lots of Health and Wellbeing.  

Here are some highlights from our first few days in Primary Six: 

• We started to read a book called Wonder. 
• Self portraits in the style of the cover for Wonder.
• Having pictures taken for learning partners.
• Solving riddles.
• We decided on our class name (P6 Nanny McPhee). 
• Starting a patchwork quilt for our class charter.
• Starting ‘rough jotters’.
• Making birthday cards for our classmates to get throughout this session.
• We have enjoyed catching up with existing friends and have had the opportunity to widen our friendships even further with our new classmates. 
• We have enjoyed more freedom of movement in the playground at break and lunch.
• Teachers and pupils getting to know each other.  

Have a great weekend, 

Mrs McFarlane 

Welcome back to our online learning. We hope you had a great weekend and managed to find a way to enjoy the sunshine.

Every day this week we will post our blog the evening before (therefore there will be three posts today, this one, one for todays learning and one for tomorrow’s learning) . We think that this will help parents to be ready for the next day. Please don’t worry if you can’t do the home learning, we rather have happy families and children than stressed and unhappy ones!

We will provide an activity for Literacy, one for Numeracy and one other area a day. Please work in the way that best suits your family needs and keep in touch if you need anything (via the school email address). We also understand that some children might be ill therefore your child should not be doing work when unwell and should not try to the work that hasn’t been done while unwell.

We will meet every day at 9.30 and we will send you the link for this meeting on a daily basis. Microphones should be muted when joining the meeting. Please for today’s meeting bring paper and pencil/pen or whiteboard and whiteboard pen.

Feel free to post your child’s work on your child’s e-learning journal. We will politely ask you to only do one post a day ( you can add up to five photos on each post!).

Your reading book is already available on your child’s e- learning journal. We are aware that this way you have to look at two websites however this is the only way we can keep your child’s information private and available to you. As you know it is only once a week that we provide a reading book so you don’t need to look every day on the e-journals for home learning information.

We will post again at 8.30 with today’s work.

Looking forward to seeing you all at 9.30!

Mrs Cross and Mrs de Bonrostro

Monday 7th June 2021

Good Morning Lovely Lions,

I hope you had a lovely weekend and enjoyed playing in the sunshine!

This week we will be learning at home but I will meet with you on Teams once a day. Today we will have a whole class meeting at 11am.

Each day I will share one literacy, one numeracy/maths and one other curricular area task. Please do not feel pressured to complete everything as I know this situation may be difficult for you. I am here to support you! Learning will be uploaded onto the blog the evening before.

Please share your learning on the Learning Journals! I would love to see what you are getting up to this week! Feel free to ask any questions on the learning journals or via email, I am more than happy to help with anything.

Thank you all for your support,

Miss McGillivray

Here are today’s learning tasks:

Literacy:

Reading:

I have shared on your child’s Learning Journal which book they should access from the Oxford Owl website. Along with the log in details on how to access the book from the website.

Tasks:

1. Predict what you think your new book is going to be about before reading. Read the book with an adult, ask them to ask you questions about the story: characters, setting, plot etc.
2. Complete this Beginning, Middle and End worksheet (attached below). Draw a picture of a key moment at the start, in the middle and at the end of the story. Write a sentence/few words describing what is happening.

Phonics:

This week we will be learning the last few sounds in Block 3 of the Literacy Rich Programme. Each of these sounds only has a few words to learn, so we will be looking at 2-3 at a time!

Today’s sounds are: ‘rk’ and ‘rf’

Tasks:

1. Please watch the powerpoint attached below. In this powerpoint, there is a number of tasks to do whilst you watch. Reading words, writing words and as an extra challenge writing a sentence using words which have our new sounds in them.
2. Use paint, flour, pasta, sand (etc) to write and create words which have the ‘rk’ or ‘rf’ sound in them. Be creative! Focus on the accuracy of spelling within the word.

Tricky Words:

Attached below are the tricky word powerpoints we use in school. Ask your child to say the words quickly. They should be able to read these words from sight memory as we cannot sound them out. We have looked at all of the Block 3 words now, however, these still need some revision.

As an extra challenge ask your child to write some tricky words from memory. Please continue to practice these – especially Block 3! However it is good to go over block 1 and 2 daily!

Numeracy/Maths:

This week we will be revising our fractions maths topic.

Starter:

Practice your mental addition skills with this speedy maths challenge.

• Select the level which you would like to try.
• Have a go at using your mental maths strategies (fingers/head counting/number bonds knowledge) to help you!

Today’s Focus: Fractions

This week we are going to be revising our learning of fractions. Do you remember what ‘half’ and ‘whole’ means?

Watch this video to revise our learning of fractions from last week.

Main Tasks:

1. Watch the video above.
2. Complete the attached fractions worksheet below.

P.E:

Watch this short video for our warm up for P.E today

Main Task:

Think of all the different ways you can move your body. Have a go at trying all the different ways you can think of then answer these questions verbally with an adult.

• Which was the fastest?
• Which was the slowest?
• Which one could you do for the longest before getting tired?
• Which one was the most fun?
• Which one did you travel the furthest doing?
• Which one did you travel the least doing?

This week in P2W…

Literacy – this week we travelled back in time with Mr Ed to help us learn our spelling rule for ‘ed’. We also continued our exploring of non-fiction texts and created posters with facts from our reading books. This week we have been learning about commas when writing a list and we took a trip to the class sweet shop to help us!

Numeracy and Maths – this week we continued our learning of place value and have been practicing adding tens and units. In mathematics we have started learning about measure. We were learning how to use a ruler and explored measuring items in cm and m.

Health and Wellbeing: this week we have been discussing how to be resilient and what our brains need to stay healthy.

Other curricular areas: This week we have been creating Monet inspired artwork using our oil pastels. We also got to explore magnifying lenses in our outdoor learning a slot.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

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This week we faced yet another situation which meant that the class had to be flexible and prepared for change any moment. They have all been fantastic. especially as none of us really knew what would happen next.

Thank you for all your support this week with an ever changing school day.

As always this week’s blog is compiled by P4H

Next week’s Spelling

–le ending rule

…..where the first syllable is long vowel sound, only 1 consonant is required before adding le eg trifle

table, cable, staple, ladle, title, trifle, Bible , noble, bugle, cycle

Tricky words also, always

Literacy

We continued exploring Ottoline and being reading detectives looking for clues. The story is getting really exciting . Mr Monroe has gone undercover to try and prove the Yellow Cat is a burglar.

Group Readers

We al started new books this week and set the chapters to read.

We also predicted what our books might be like by looking at the cover and the blurb.

Some of us have Ottoline books.

Paragraphs.

We continued to practise writing in paragraphs. Writing a story is like a hamburger . The top and bottom of the roll is the beginning and end . The bits in the middle are the different stages and paragraphs in the story. Then we created our own adventure story concentrating on punctuation, grammar, layout and paragraphs. We were pleased with our finished stories and are going to assess them next.

Home Learning

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zvwwxnb/articles/z9n73k7

Numeracy

We revised subtraction with borrowing. We chose the challenge which we were happy with , using 2 or 3 digit borrowing .

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Fractions

We worked out what 1/4 and 1/3 are of a whole. We also tried written word problems where we had to divide things between 3 or 4 .Fractions use tables.

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..Money

We practised putting in the decimal point . We also tried to work out change from £5 and £10. We have to subtract to find out how much change we get.

We also did calculations using borrowing and remembering where to put the decimal point again. We found it tricky especially when it was a 0.

Home Learning

Practise fractions here.

https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/fractions-intro/latest/fractions-intro_en.html

Try these sites to practise money skills…..

https://natwest.mymoneysense.com/students/students-5-8/the-change-game/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zp8dmp3/articles/z2s6hv4

Titanic

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We continued to research information using the laptops and also pictures and information books. We added lights to our own Titanic which makes it sparkle. It was probably lit up the night of the 14th April 1912 when it hit the iceberg.

PE

We developed our bat and ball skills using tennis rackets and balls. We played with a partner and also on our own. We did keepie uppie with our rackets and balls.

Assembly

It was good to see everyone who is working at home. We enjoyed the pirate quiz . We got 9 and a half out of 10

Have a great weekend

From P4H (and Ms Hastie and Mrs Murray)

Hello P2M, Parents and Carers,

This week has been a tricky week at school – well done to P2M for all their hard work and resilience with all the last minute changes, I’m very proud of you!

Literacy:

• adding -ed to words to make them past tense
• eg. looked, waited, twisted, crashed, pushed, played
• ‘Jelly Baby Writing’. This week we used Jelly babies to help us with our writing. They were very clever and yummy! (gelatine free sweets were given too)
• Dictation and Hold the Sentence (-ed words)
• Reading – Poetry
• This week for reading we have explored ‘My Shadow’
• Optional activities were sent home
• We also completed a Poem Review
• Thank you to everyone that has shared their learning with me. Here is Connor learning in the sunshine……….

• Handwriting – ascenders and descenders.
• Handwriting – we are now focussing on writing correctly on the lines

Numeracy:

• Measure – this week we have started to estimate the length of an item based on prior knowledge
• we looked at different items and estimated the length before we measured
• 3 times table
• Times maths challenge

Other Curricular Areas:

• Outdoor Learning – Numeracy (Bingo)
• P.E – tig games and ball games
• Learn Through Play
• Health and Wellbeing – ‘Healthy Brain Recipe’

Highlights from this week:

“The timed chilli challenge” – Kaiden

“the timed challenge” – Rayyan

“Colouring in” – Max

“Writing” – Abdullah

“Learning with the building blocks” – Carl

“Mindfulness colouring in” – Lewis

“Counting in 3s” – Zoe

“Counting in 3s” – Scarlett

“I enjoyed the counting in 3s” – Mahdis

“I enjoyed doing -ed and dictation” – Beth

“I enjoyed doing the writing” – Ella

“I enjoyed doing the Jelly Baby Writing” – Megan

“I enjoyed doing mindfulness colouring in” – Eesha

“I enjoyed the building blocks” – Connor

“Timed challenge” – Fergus

” I enjoyed doing writing” – William

“I enjoyed doing handwriting” – Jack

“I enjoyed doing the Jelly Baby Writing” – Kayden

“I enjoyed writing about jelly babies” – Lily

“This week I enjoyed learning about having a healthy brain” – Miss McGhee

“I enjoyed some of P2M making me a tree to sit in” – Mr Monkey

Extra Info:

• Please return any Learning Stories you still have at home (blue folder)
• Please bring your poem to school every day
• Next week we are continuing with Poetry
• A poem will be sent home for you to read together. We will also explore this poem throughout the week at school and do activities linked to it
• I will also send reading activities home – these are optional and do not need to be returned to school

Enjoy the weekend, see you on Monday!

Have fun and stay safe

Miss McGhee

Please see full Reflective Friday post below – here are the photos!

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Reflective Friday WB 31.5.21

What a busy week with lots of different learning opportunities, well done everyone! Please can we also take a moment to thank all the children and their supportive families for the challenges that we have faced at school this week. We are very grateful for your continued patience, support and understanding with learners in school and those Learning Together at Home.

Pictures to follow – hopefully technology allows!

Thanks for all Learning Stories so far – a final plea for any last ones to be returned as these will be coming home again soon! Thank you! 😊

Literacy

We have been learning to:

• Spell unfamiliar words using our spelling rule – words with a short vowel and double consonant – e.g. puzzle.
• Use accurate spelling of our new spelling rule words within passages and story contexts.
• Create our own dictation challenges using our weekly spelling words.
• Create our own word-search using accurate spelling.
• Understand what a riddle is and how these can be used as effective Literacy techniques.
• Analyse riddles as an aspect of poetry – consider different effective riddles to find how they are structured and successful – look carefully for parts such as rhyme, questions and clues.
• Write our own riddles using the elements that make a riddle successful.
• Prepare and present our writing to the class.
• Listen, enjoy and engage with different stories and texts.
• Find evidence in our reading texts to answer a variety of questions.
• Use evidence from our reading to help us answer questions.
• Consider how to use facts from different sources to display these in an engaging way.
• Read for information and use this information to write an interesting fact-file.
• Find out information from a range of sources and technologies to help us share facts with others.
• Self- and peer-assess our learning.

Spelling for next week:

Main Teaching Points / Spelling Rules:

Over the years the pronunciation of words has changed and some letters appear in the spelling of words which are no longer sounded

Silent ‘b’  – ‘mb’ / ‘bt’

Silent ‘g’  – ‘gn’

L.I. – WALT Spell words with silent sounds.

Tricky words:  from /  form

Below you will see our Fantastic word list (see the challenge below for those of you who like a Spectacular challenge!)

WORD LIST

lamb

crumb

thumbs

doubt

plumber

debt

comb

gnome

gnash

gnaw

Daily Spelling Activity Task: choose a different spelling activity from the pack that you have at home and remember to Look, Cover, Write, Check.

Challenge – can you create your own Spectacular list using this rule and by researching words?

Ideas for Learning Together at Home:

• Use chalk or coloured pencils/pens at home to try some spelling outdoors – like we did in class this week in the sunshine! – or rainbow writing
• Watch or read some more riddles (here are some links to try that we worked on in class – https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z4mmn39/articles/z84p97h  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXz5o5UCf8Y or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vToEvbDkoJk

And a new link with some tricky riddles to solve from the past – have a go at these! https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z238cmn

Write your own riddles like we did in class!

• Look for a book at home that you can enjoy – see if you can set yourself some questions to answer about it (remember for a challenge we think about the Higher Order Thinking Skills like analysing or evaluating) see picture attached below.

Numeracy

We have been learning to:

• Develop our knowledge of number facts, using addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
• Revise our understanding of addition with the traditional method – using 2- and 3- digit numbers
• Build on our knowledge of fractions by understanding some equivalent fractions.
• Understand how to find equal fractions to create a fraction wall.
• Use our knowledge of fractions to solve challenges and play games.
• Revise our learning in Maths through taking part in different challenge tasks and starter activities.
• Use traditional methods for addition and subtraction of money values with decimals.
• Use our problem-solving skills, including logical thinking and trial and error, to solve multi-step challenges.
• Continue to build speed and accuracy in our number work.
•  Develop our ability to solve more complex 2-step problems and word problems, using addition and subtraction, with our knowledge of money.
• Develop our multiplication understanding, using opportunities to learn the times tables.
• Self- and peer-assess our learning.

Ideas for Learning Together at Home:

• Practise traditional method for addition and subtraction by writing yourself some questions to try.
• Continue to build on your Times Tables by choosing or creating a fun game or speed challenge for yourself or using Sumdog. https://www.timestables.co.uk/speed-test/
• Practise creating your own fraction wall or finding equivalent fractions – https://mathsbot.com/manipulatives/fractionWall http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/EquivFractionFinder/

Across the Curriculum

 We have been learning to:

• Use ICT and other sources to find key information about a historic event (Titanic)
• Use detailed drawing and observational skills to create a large drawing of the Titanic
• Play team games in PE, developing our knowledge of different sports positions and activities.
• Develop skills to work well together.
• Work together as part of our school Assembly
• Look for inspiration outdoors, using outdoor objects and ideas, to solve and write riddles.

Ideas for Learning Together at Home:

• Learn more about the Titanic using a range of sources – including https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/discover/history/general-history/would-you-have-survived-the-titanic/
  https://www.twinkl.co.uk/blog/facts-about-titanic-for-kids https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z8mpfg8/articles/zng8jty and other websites that you might find. Remember we are creating an interactive poster/fact-file about it that you can continue fact-finding for!
• Draw your own picture of the Titanic at home – think about all the parts we discussed in class and take your time to make it as detailed as you can

Have a great weekend everyone!
From Primary 4, Mrs Williamson and Mrs Ling 😊