P6/5 have had a busy couple of weeks back in the classroom. We have been spending time catching up with our friends and continuing our learning about Ancient Egypt and properties of 3D shapes. We have enjoyed taking our learning outside to make the most of the fresh air and space. We have started looking at a text called ‘The Egyptian Cinderella’ and are in the process of creating a story map before we have a go at writing our own stories.

Please click below for the Term 3 Termly Overview for P6/5.

This week, we have been thinking about Remembrance Day. We linked the this with our topic by creating Charles Rennie Mackintosh inspired poppies!

Our learning doesn’t only happen in our classroom! For homework this week, we created our own poppies at home to show our community we are thinking of them at this time.

Today was Outdoor Classroom Day and P6/5 spent all day outside. First, we had PE, then we studied the Robert Louis Stevenson poem “From a Railway Carriage” and used our school grounds as inspiration to write our own “From a Classroom Window” poems. And this afternoon, we planted our new fruit bushes into planters before they go outside and enjoyed our class novel with some hot chocolate! Learning feels so different in the fresh air, and such a beautiful day to enjoy it.

Today P6/5 watched a very tense clip from The Cube and thought about how the participant, Sam, was feeling at certain points during the challenge. We used the Emotion Works 5-cog model to support our discussions. We thought about the triggers for Sam’s emotions, body sensations that he might have felt, behaviours that we could see and regulation strategies that Sam could have used to keep calm.

I love this video of the reactions to Sam’s final try at the challenge. We talked about the body sensations that we felt while watching.

It has been lovely to see lots of smiley faces back in school after the October break. P6/5 have got straight back into the swing of things, with lots of hard work already this week.

Our new topic for term 2 is ‘Scots who changed the world’.

This week we have started to learn about Mary Seacole. She looked after wounded and sick soldiers during the Crimean War. Her Dad was Scottish and her Mum was Jamaican.

We studied the work of expressionist artist Alma Thomas and created our own art inspired by her colourful style. Alma believed that creativity should be independent of gender or race.

In PE, P6/5 enjoyed skipping to music. There was lots of competition to see who could skip for the longest without stopping.

P6/5 have been enjoying using the Chromebooks and iPads to write stories about facing a fear. They worked with a partner to provide feedback and suggest edits for each other’s stories.

We chose new table names this week. I was very impressed when the Bald Eagle group decided to write down all their suggestions and have a vote to decide on their table name.

In PE, P6/5 worked through a circuit of different exercises which worked muscles in the whole body and released lots of endorphins!

Today P6/5 watched the Pixar short – Piper. We paused the short film in different places to discuss how the creators showed how Piper was feeling. We talked about body language, facial expressions and how the music was used to create atmosphere. We linked this to Emotion Works by generating emotion words, thinking about the triggers for Piper’s emotions and the behaviours that he displayed. We will transfer these ideas to our own piece of writing next week.