P5a – A busy week!

What a busy week in P5A!

In numeracy, we completed a new assessment to judge how far our learning has come and see what gaps we need to fill before the end of the term. Most people made a great improvement and some are even trying a more difficult assessment. We have identified that we still need to work on fractions of amounts, division and prime numbers. We also tried a new method of completing revision sheets as part of our research project. We have renamed the sheets ‘amazing’, ‘brilliant’, ‘fantastic’ and ‘marvellous’ and these names will swap each week. We have done this as it means we need to look at the questions to decide which is most suitable for our ability, rather than Miss Griffith telling us which ones to do.

We have also been reviewing our literacy lessons and have decided to have a reading homework task grid, and trial an in-class rotation.

On Monday we received a letter from New Village Builds about the importance of educating the villagers on the effects of smoking and alcohol. Once we had discussed this topic further, we decided to create a homework task. Everyone is working in small groups to design a poster or power point about the effects of smoking and alcohol to present to the class. We took some time this week to complete a reading comprehension about smoking to give us a head start.

On Tuesday we had a surprise visit to Queensville village from two Sikhs who are brothers and had come to the village to decide if they would like to move there. We spent the afternoon learning about Sikhism. Some things we learnt included: the 5 K’s of Sikhism (which are important objects like the Kanga, Kirpan and Kesh), the story of Guru Nanak (god’s teacher), and that they only believe in one god. On Thursday after they left us to visit Kingsville, we wrote persuasive letters to the Sikhs to persuade them to stay in Queensville village. We used techniques such as strong language, groups of three and rhetorical questions.

In skiing, the beginners learned to use the button-tow (some people fell off!) while the advanced groups went up to the red band and top of the slope.

Every four years the world cup happens; this year it happens in Russia. During huddle we had to draw two countries to research and find out information such as how to say certain phrases, team players, and general facts about the country. We drew Argentina and Australia, which we are very happy about because Miss Griffith has been to Argentina (during the last world cup final!) and Gregor has been to Australia.

Next week we are looking forward to a day off on Monday, skiing and the Mile for Macmillan.