Category: Uncategorized

P3C round up (27th – 31st March)

This week our bloggers are Ellis and Kimi. Here is their round up of our week.

At the start of the week we combined some of our previous Elements of Art, using colour and shape to make some overlapping artwork.

Our new Element of Art this week was texture. We learned that texture is how something feels or looks like it feels. In little groups we went on a texture hunt, taking pictures of different textures around us before putting them together in presentations on the iPads. We enjoying looking at art work by Vincent Van Gogh and thinking about how he created texture in his paintings. Later in the week we made stamps with lots of different materials and textures and then stamped them on a piece of paper. Once we had tried our own stamps we made some collaborative art works.

For Literacy this week we were inspired by two famous paintings to do some creative writing. We could choose our own style of writing – we wrote comic strips, stories, letters and postcards.

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte – Georges Seurat
The Scream – Edvard Munch

In PE we were doing gymnastics with Miss K and made up routines in little groups. Some of us got gold medal stickers for our routines and some of us got silver. Our dance teacher, Bobby was off this week but we practised our waltz steps. We think we are getting better and look forward to showing Bobby our progress after the holidays.

This week we used our knowledge about Ramadan to make Keynote presentations to share our learning. We also learned about another religious festival that takes place at this time of year, Easter. People shared their Easter traditions such as seeing family, decorating and rolling eggs and of course chocolate!

It’s the holidays now for two weeks, we hope you all enjoy the rest!

P3C weekly round up (Monday 20th – Friday 24th March)

Here is our round up from last week written by our bloggers Elaina and Eliza.

Some children in the class have decided to start a Tidy Club to keep our classroom organised and looking lovely. People can volunteer to help tidy up our classroom. Mrs McCracken is very impressed and a little surprised!

We have been learning about Ramadan which started last week. We know that Muslim people celebrate it for a whole month. Some people fast but you have to be a bit older than us to do that. They fast to understand how other people who aren’t as lucky as them feel. Ramadan ends with a big celebration called Eid. You get presents and people usually have a big feast.

Our Element of Art last week was Shape. We learned that French artist Henri Matisse was a painter and then changed to collage when he had a big operation. We made collages like Matisse using geometric and biomorphic shapes. We made pictures with our plastic shapes from our maths lessons and created a wire shape curtain inspired by American artist John Garrett.


We swam lots of breadths of the pool in the Swimathon, it was very fun and exciting. Some parents volunteered to count for us, thanks for helping out.

We have been learning about biographies and last week we wrote our own autobiographies. It was fun to write about ourselves, we know everything and we don’t get anything wrong!

Elements of Art: texture

This week’s focus in our Art topic is texture. We took the learning outdoors and went on a scavenger hunt to find different textures in the nature strip. We used words like bumpy, lumpy, smooth, hard, soft and crunchy to describe what we found. We used the ipads to take photographs of our findings and shared our results back in the classroom. Tomorrow’s learning will be how to create the look of different textures when sketching.

P3C weekly round up (Monday 13th – Friday 17th March)

P3C have decided to take it in turns to post a roundup of how our week has gone. Two pupils will be in charge of recording our week in photos using the iPad and then working with Mrs McCracken to write the blog post at the end of the week.

Our first bloggers are Boris and Sophie.

On Tuesday P3C had our first ballroom dancing lesson with our teacher, Bobby. We have started learning to do the waltz. Some of us were leaders and moved forward while the rest of us were followers and moved backwards. It’s a bit tricky but we are getting there with practice.

In PE with Miss K we did gymnastics. We walked on balance beams and tried different types of rolls like teddy bear, backwards and pencil rolls.

The Element of Art we focused on was Line. We made posters to show different types of line, we drew ourselves with a bad hair day and used lines and complimentary colours to create artworks.


By our weekly bloggers Sophie and Boris.

Elements of Art in full swing!

Our Elements of Art topic is in full swing now. So far the class have explored colour, looking at the work of a range of artists including Yayoi Kusama and Steven Brown.

This week we have already made a start to our learning about line. The children worked collaboratively to mark out as many different types of lines as they could on large posters. Then then used these ideas to create their own individual ‘Bad Hair Day’ art.

We have also been lucky enough to welcome a former Scottish Champion Ballroom dancer into school to work with the children. Everyone enjoyed learning the first few steps of the waltz and can’t wait to learn more next week!

Bake Sale Success!

Rengim and her friends were delighted to share the total raised from last week’s bake sale at assembly today. An amazing £500! What a super total and for such an important cause. Fantastic effect from all those that organised, baked and bought!

Bake Sale

What an amazing turn out for the P3 Bake sale today! The stall was organised by 7 pupils from 3A and they put in so much effort in promoting their stall by speaking out in assemblies, making posters and speaking to individual classes. Thank you to all who made cakes for the stall and for the parents who helped in the preparation and on the day – safe to say it was a roaring success!! We cannot wait to find out the total raised to be donated to the aid efforts for the earthquake in Turkey. Well done everyone!

World Book Day

3A had fun yesterday for World Book Day. There were some super costumes and the children enjoyed kicking off the day with a guess the character game. They also enjoyed joining a live lesson all about books and designing a gift card for a book shop. The gift card designs will be entered into a UK wide competition with some amazing prizes available for the school and all the children in the class if one of the entries is the winner – wish us luck!

Angles, Position, Movement and Coordinates

We have spend the past few weeks looking at directional language, angles and coordinates.

Today we embraced the chilly weather and went out into the playground for maths.

We moved round 3 stations. One was using our own ‘angle eaters’ to find as many right angles as we could. Station 2 involved blindfolding a partner and using directional language to guide them through a path we made from cones. Finally, station 3 was all about coordinates. Working in small groups to design a coordinates grid and then giving each other a set of coordinates to mark the bean bags.

A busy morning where the children were able to really show off their new knowledge!

Bake sale prep!

Some of our lovely p3s have decided to organise a bake sale to raise money for the awful earthquake in Turkey. They have worked collaboratively to design posters and some spoke at assemblies today to get the word out there!

The bake sale will be held next Friday, 3rd of March, at 12:10 in the playground. Come along to buy some tasty treats and raise money for an important cause!

Amazing Scottish Islands

To showcase the knowledge and understanding gained during our Scottish Islands topic, the children have been busily creating their very own islands.

They had to use their knowledge of landscape, industry and population to design the islands. They also had the added challenge of sticking to a budget. Only able to choose certain items and having to prioritise which would be most beneficial to the islanders.

After designing their islands, the class enjoying having a look at each others designs, leaving feedback on the star post-it’s.

We hope you enjoy having a wee look at some of our designs!

Art Critics

As part of our Scotland topic we’ve been looking at the Scottish artist John Bellany.

Everyone worked really hard to create some stunning harbour pictures using paint and oil pastels.

We then took a ‘trip’ to the p3A art gallery were we enjoyed appreciating everyone’s beautiful and individual art work.

As art critics we were able to write down some comments about one another’s art. We wrote specific things we liked about the pictures as well as how they made us feel.

Ceilidh Fun!

We have been enjoying learning a variety of Scottish country dances as part of our Scotland focus this term. To celebrate the end of this block of learning, we enjoyed a wee ceilidh this morning.

The children worked brilliantly in their partnerships, danced in time to the music and we even showed off our Virginia Reel dance to p3B at the end of our ceilidh.

Then it was back to the classroom for some shortbread, yum!

Brilliant Budgeting

Today we were combining our recent work on Toys and Money. Pupils worked collaboratively in pairs to research the best gifts to buy for different characters. They had to take into consideration the age of the character and had to stick to a set budget.

They also developed their tech skills by navigating their way around, and filtering the website.

Super teamwork and excellent budgeting, well done 3A!

Toy shop

To round off our ‘Toys’ topic carried over from last term, today children in P3A worked together to create their own toy shop in the classroom. The children discussed and planned what a shop needed, the things they would need to make to sell and how it should look. Lots of thought went into how to help the role play come alive with ideas of name badges for the shop keepers, scarves and hats for the customers coming into the shop and even gift cards to purchase! There was great delight when all the elements came together and the shop was ready to open, even complete with a security team – see if you can spot them in the photos! The children loved calculating how much money to spend and how much change to give, connecting up maths and the toys topic.

Creating Yoga Sequences

We’ve been enjoying a block of yoga in p3 this term. We have been focusing on our breathing and making the yoga poses flow into one another.

This week the children worked hard in small groups to create their own short yoga sequences which they then presented to the rest of the class.

I was really impressed with the creativity and team work skills shown by everyone.

Perfect start to our Toys topic!

We had a brilliant afternoon in 3A today. We started our new Toys topic off with an afternoon of play.

Many people kindly brought in a toy from home. It was lovely to see people playing so collaboratively and enjoying sharing each others toys.

I had a brilliant time and enjoying being introduced to lots of new toys too!

Excellent Enterprising

A big well done to Ben, Ossian and Munro for working together to raise money for the recent floods in Pakistan.

The budding artists decided to make and sell their own drawings to raise money. They worked collaboratively and organised the sale independently and by the time I made it over everything had sold!

Well done for such good team work, looking forward to finding out the total you raised on Monday.

Marvellous Maths

We like to keep things active and hands on in p3 when it comes to maths. Here is a wee snap shot of what a typical numeracy looks like for us.

We split the lesson into 3 stations. Station 1 is with the teacher learning new skills and showing our understanding.

Station 2 is usually a follow-up or consolidation task. Today we completed a Number of the Day task in our jotters. This is a good way for us to apply lots of our number knowledge.

Station 3 changes daily. Sometimes there are targets activities or games and other days itsba free play Station. Today we worked collaboratively in our maths groups on targeted tasks linked to the learning done on the carpet.

We hope you enjoyed this little insight into what a maths lesson looks like for us!

Learning about Food Miles

We are nearly at the end of our Food and Farming topic and today we were learning about Food Miles.

We worked in groups to investigate Food labels to discover where they were grown. We then used the food miles calculator to see how far the food had travelled to reach us here in Scotland.

It allowed us to see how the foods we eat can have an impact on out environment. Lots of great discussions and team work, well done p3!

Fantastic Foodbank Appeal

Well done to our super p3 team. You all worked so hard communicating information to all the Sciennes families, presenting in front of classes and at assemblies and collecting, sorting and organising the items ready for pick up today.

The staff from the Foodbank project were super impressed and grateful for all your efforts!

Thank you to all the families who contributed, we really appreciate it!

Fitness Skills

In p3 we have been enjoying tracking and developing our fitness skills in P.E. We’ve been working our way round different activities and tracking how we improve on a weekly basis. Some excellent core strength, balance and coordination skills on show this week!

Brilliant Bread Bakers!

As part of our Food and Farming project we enjoyed making bread this week. We were surprised to learn we could make bread out of just 2 ingredients. Great sharing and team work from everyone!

Foodbank Appeal

Dear families,

Here is a message from our P3 pupils:

P3 is doing a Collection for Foodbank with the Edinburgh food project. We are needing you to bring in canned food and food with a long life such as dried pasta, rice, cereal. Please bring in any Donations that you can Before Friday 14th of October. Please can you bring it to your classroom and P3 will collect it from you.

Thank you for your support of our enterprise project 😀

P2B animal classification

We have been learning to classify animals into different groups. We sorted lots of different seashore animals into vertebrates and invertebrates. We can put animals in the correct group and we can explain our choice. Here are some examples of our independent work.

P2A and P2B symmetry

We have been enjoying learning about symmetry in P2. We understand what a line of symmetry is and can create our own symmetrical designs…. Some of us are already learning to make patterns with 2 lines of symmetry. We have worked hard and had lots of fun!

P2B play-based learning

P2 had an exciting morning today as the classes rotated round clockwise and visited a different p2 classroom. P2B had the chance to experience the different play opportunities in Mrs Walker’s room and really enjoyed our morning. We have been developing our story telling, writing, data-handling, construction skills and creative skills through our play.

P2B play-based learning

P2 had an exciting morning today as the classes rotated round clockwise and visited a different p2 classroom. P2B had the chance to experience the different play opportunities in Mrs Walker’s room and really enjoyed our morning. We have been developing our story telling, writing, data-handling, construction skills and creative skills through our play.

P2B numeracy

P2B have been working hard on the early skills for multiplication and division. Today we had a warm-up song counting in 3s and then a variety of small group and practical tasks to help build our understanding of grouping and sharing. We are very good at working together and supporting and challenging each other in our learning. We can create equal groups, describe these groups and say how many items in total, using skip-counting, doubles and repeated addition to help us.

P2B seashore fun!

We are very excited about our new topic ‘The Seashore’. We enjoyed reading ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch’ this week and creating art work and story maps. Today we had a morning of play focussed around our learning from this week. We had a a great time and showed some really independent learning.

P2B multiplication and division

P2B continue to work hard on the early skills for multiplication and division. This week we are building and describing arrays and using arrays as a strategy to solve word problems. We have enjoyed lots of opportunities for active learning and are great at supporting our peers in their learning.

P2C Victorian Topic

P2C are really enjoying learning about the Victorians. Before the holiday we were learning about Queen Victoria and her life. We made comparisons between objects from then and now. This week we have been investigating some important inventions from the Victorian era and thinking about how they have impacted our lives today, for example, the telephone and the postage stamp. We have been inspired by the Victorians and today we started to think about what we would invent if we were inventors. We put on our inventor hats and have come up with some great ideas. Later this week we will create models of our inventions. Thank you for all your junk donations so far.

P2b Victorian Inventions

Primary 2 are learning about important inventions from Victorian times which have had an impact on modern day life. Today we learned about Alexander Graham Bell and made our own telephones using paper cups and string. We had lots of fun testing them out! We also learned about Samuel Morse, who invented the telegraph system and Morse code. We wrote our names and a short message for a friend to decode.

Victorian school tour P2B

P2B had a very exciting afternoon today. As part of our Victorians topic, Mr Scott took us on a tour round the school to look at some features that have been here since the school was build in 1892. We got to see the old boiler room, which would have stored a large pile of coal to stock all the fireplaces around the school. We also saw the swimming pool and the attic and spotted where the original girls and boys entrance doors would have been. It was very interesting and we enjoyed seeing areas of the school that we do not normally have access to. Thank you Mr Scott!

P2A measure

We have been learning about measure over the last few weeks. We have been learning to use mathematical language to compare items, e.g. heavier, lighter, shorter, taller, greatest, least, we have been measuring items using non-standard units of measurement such as cubes as well as having an introduction to standard measuring tools. We have been so interested and have engaged really well in every lesson.

P2b Numeracy

P2b are still working hard, even in their Christmas jumpers! Today we were consolidating our understanding of place value by playing mini board games and making numbers with materials. We are showing that we can understand how numbers are built using hundreds, tens and ones and that we can identify the value of each digit.

P2C So far…


Primary 2C have had a wonderful term so far and wanted to share some of their learning with you. Some of the learning so far included creating our own imaginary street, families and houses as part of the street topic. The Mayor of Sciennes opened our wonderful Sparkle Café and then there was a mysterious break-in the following week. We looked at the evidence we had and wrote a newspaper article telling the residents of Sparkle Street. We have also been practising our counting on and back, sequencing and grouping and sharing. In literacy we have been working on our sounds, spelling, reading and writing. P2 made their own 3D moving models to show what they would like to do with the road space if it was closed. P2 have worked incredibly hard, shown resilience and a can-do attitude to each task. A big well done P2C, now it is time to enjoy the October break with your families and friends. Thank you to all the families for your continued support. Have a relaxing well-deserved break.

Greenspace p2b

P2B have been working to create a greenspace for the members of their Nature Street Community. We talked about how we needed to meet the needs of different groups of people. We worked in small groups to draw a design for our space and then made a 3D model. We used problem solving skills, team work and lots of creativity. We are really pleased with our designs.

I can design and construct models and explain my solutions.TCH 1-09a

Wonderful Work

P2A are fantastic learners. The class wanted to share some examples of their wonderful work to date. We hope you enjoy what you see! 📝

Number bonds
Our wonderful number bond clouds
Colour Monster Daily Check In
Adjectives
Mapping
Sentences
Literacy
Love Lane
Alliteration
Our class charter
Number work

P2b ‘Nature Street’

P2b have been very busy learning about all the people and places that make up our local community. They have made their own fictional street and have made houses and families for it. They have been learning about the needs of people in the community and developing their mapping skills. Tomorrow will be an exciting day as it marks the opening of ‘The Nature Street Cafe’. The children have worked so hard to make food and menus and have been learning about the roles involved in running a small business.

P2 Curriculum Presentation and Overview

P2 Curriculum Presentation and Overview

Due to current restrictions, we have been unable to invite you to Curriculum Evenings in school this term.  However, teachers have worked together to prepare the online presentation below. We hope this will give you an insight into what learning looks like at Sciennes for your child.

https://sway.office.com/gxAjYYtEOplEemra?ref=Link&loc=play

Please also find attached a Class Overview, ‘P2 Learns’

p2-newsletter-aug-oct-2021Download

P1 End of Year

We finished the year with lots of fun and laughter. We had to tidy out our trays yesterday and got to blow lots of bubbles in the soapy water to help get them nice and clean!

We had a class party this morning to celebrate the end of year. We played musical statues and musical bumps before trying to keep the balloons off the ground while showing off our dance moves. It was a brilliant end to the year. Have a great summer P1A and P1B!

P1B artists

We learned about the artist Pablo Picasso and looked at some of his artwork. We liked the shapes and colours he used in his paintings. We created our own ‘Picasso faces’ in the style of cubism. Have a look at our paintings:

We also got to experiment with some printing and created colourful abstract pieces of art. We started off by adding lots of paint to the background in various colours. Then, we used different tools to create different patterns in the paint. Once our backgrounds were dry, we used some rollers, lego and shapes to print onto our paintings. Mrs Anstruther loved our abstract prints so much she is going to display them in the school for everyone to see!

P1B play

We have lots of opportunities to play in primary 1. It gives us the chance to create, use our imagination, share and take turns with others. Here’s a snapshot of some of our play this year.

P1B sports fun

To celebrate the Euros tournament we have had a football focus in P.E. We were really lucky to have some football skills sessions with P.E. student Miss Dobie in the hall during May. We practised dribbling around cones and through tunnels, trapping the ball, and passing the ball to our partners.

We continued practising these skills outside in the playground and even tried some football rounders in P.E. too.

We loved cheering on Scotland in their first game in the Euros competition too! Some of us wore our Scotland gear and we made some flags as well.

We had an amazing afternoon of Football fun in the Meadows last week. It was a lovely sunny day and Mrs Anstruther organised three activities for us to try. First, we had lots of fun in the play park!

Next, we had some free play with footballs, frisbees, the parachute and lots of other sports equipment with Mrs Anstruther. Then we got to cool down with some yummy ice lollies before we had our football tournament with Mr Armstrong.

As well as having lots of football fun this term, we had two tennis taster sessions with Alex at the Meadows too. We walked to the tennis courts and played some games with our partners to practise throwing, catching and hitting the ball.

P1B numeracy work

We spent the last few weeks in numeracy focussing on grouping and sharing. We created equal groups using different materials and learned to describe how many groups there were, how many items were in each group and then added up how many items there were altogether.

We looked at sharing items equally too. We had lots of fun sharing pom poms between the teddy bears, making sure they each got the same amount. Some of us chose to try the challenge to write number sums using the multiplication and division sign!