Almost half way through the term.

We spent some time researching lifeboats this week. We need this information for our class assembly. We found out that there are 3 lifeboats in Orkney - one each in Kirkwall, Stromness and Longhope on Hoy. The Kirkwall lifeboat is a Severn class boat.

 

We've been investigating how sand is formed. We made our own sand from stones and shells. We then looked at it using the microscope. We'll be adding some photos of what the sand looks like in the microscope.

We enjoy practising our spelling using different strategies. Here's 2 of them - back writing and newspaper search. It was quite difficult to find our spelling words in the Orcadian and Orkney Today - but we tried.

Mrs MacNab made some people do money problem solving in maths. It was really hard! We were very pleased when we finally managed to do it! We had to use 2 different problem solving strategies together to work it out.

We did a 'team memory' challenge. It was quite fun, and it's helped us to think about what information is important - and that we don't need to learn the exact words from books, we can just remember the important facts and put them into our own words.

We're still enjoying football. Mrs MacNab is very impressed with how good people are getting at dribbling the ball now, especially the people who had never played football before.

Can you guess what we're making here? It's something that lives in the sea. 

Mrs MacNab was very glad that nobody took a photo of her trying to blow up the balloons!

The term is flying by....

That's the first 4 weeks of summer term already over, the time seems to be flying by.

We're really enjoying our topic - coasts. Here we are researching using books, trying to find out more information about some of the plants and animals which live around our coast.

What do you think you would see in a kelp forest?

We got the digital microscope set up on Friday afternoon (Mrs MacNab was very glad of having such expert helpers). It's really exciting! We can magnify things like sand and shells to 60x their normal size. We're going to be using it again next week and we'll try to take close-up photos of the sand and post them for everyone to see.

We're doing money in maths at the moment. A good way of practising using money and giving change is by having a class shop. We made our own smoothie shop this week. Which one would you like to buy?

It was lovely and sunny on Friday afternoon so we got to do PE outside. We're hoping we get more chances to go outside this term - keep your fingers crossed that the weather is good for us.

 Did you know that you can click on the photos to see them a bit bigger?

I wonder...

Working together, we wrote some 'I wonder' poems about the coast.

Do you know the answers?


I wonder...

Do crabs lay eggs under rocks?
How big is an adult whale?
What lives on cliffs?
How big is a puffin?
How are big cliffs made?
How many whales are there?


I wonder...

Why are rocks heavy?
How do fish swim?
What do jellyfish eat?
What do crab eggs look like?
How can jellyfish sting?
Who invented lighthouses?
How many people go to the beach?

 
 
I wonder...

Why is the sea salty?
Why do crabs hide?
How fast can sharks swim?
How are waves made?
What do fish eat?
How do dolphins jump?

Do whales lay eggs?
How heavy is a crab?
What is a mermaid’s purse?
What does a shark eat?
How are waves made?
Why are stones sometimes pink?

Coastal poetry

We've been writing poems about the coast and its wildlife. We hope you like them.

If you view the slideshow as full screen and then pause each slide you should be able to read our poems.
Here's the first 8 poems:
(Alanah, Abbie, Amy, James, Joe, Jessica, Ewan, Dani)


And here's the rest:
(Molly, Molly, Magnus, Kaitlyn, Lee, Reid)


Mrs MacNab says sorry about the quality but uploading them seems to change the quality settings so they're not as easy to read as they should be.

Storytelling

We've been doing some storytelling for our link school in Canada.  We've now got 3 stories put onto our wiki - we hope other people will listen to them too, and maybe even leave comments for us here.
You can find the link to the wiki in "Class 3/4's Links" on the right of this blog, or click here to be taken direct to the Orkney storytelling page.

We hope you enjoy listening to our stories.
 

Our Canadian orcas

We've been painting Canadian style orcas in art. We hope you like them.



Do you know why we're doing Canadian style art?

It's because our link school is in Canada. They're the Outma Sqilx Cultural School in Penticton in the Okanagan region of British Columbia. We wonder if they've seen orcas?

Money, money, money

We're doing money in maths at the moment. Here we are playing money bingo.

We enjoy playing games on the whiteboard too.

Some people helped set up the shop. Now we'll be able to go shopping and practise buying things and giving change. We'll have to work out what we can afford to buy. We wonder how much money Mrs MacNab will let us spend.

We've done lots of other things this week too.

This isn't music (though we look like a choir) - it's actually drama.

Here we are practising our spelling words.

We're doing SRA reading comprehension. Most people love it!

We looked up information about coasts, watched some videos of waves creating coastal features like caves and found out what sand is made of. We started making our own sand too.

We practised our passing skills in football.

In Golden Time we had lots of fun!  What would you choose to do?

(We made these things and took all the photos ourselves too.)

Under the sea ...

Under the sea is a nice play to be .... to think, or read.

This is the under the sea corner in the classroom. We have this because we are studying the coast this term. In Golden Time craft we are making things to go under the sea. What do you think we will make?

Here we are in Circle Time playing a game. Do you think we managed to pass the keys round without making a sound? We had to try it with a tambourine too.

We're doing some work with Mr Giles in drama this term. It's great fun!

We're all hoping to build our confidence at performing so that we are confident when we do our class assembly later this term.

Trip to Scapa

Last Wednesday we went to Scapa beach, We went by bus. When we got to the beach we got off the bus and sat on the sand and we got colour cards to look for your own colour. Next we were looking for an interesting stone if you found one you had to explain why it is interesting. Then the teachers got a Nature detective book we had to tick the things we found then we had our snack. When we finished our snack we played a game. When the P3 went back to school the P4 did a Bag the Bruck we got about 70 pieces of rubbish. I was happy because it was fun.

by Magnus


Last week we went on a trip to Scapa beach. We were going there to learn about the coast. We were all given a different colour of card which we had to match it to something in the environment around us, we gathered lots of matching things and put them in trays so we could take them back to class and look at them.
We played a food chain game that was really fun. It was about the midges chasing the otter, the otter chasing the salmon and the salmon chasing the midges.
I helped my class “Bag the Bruck”, we bagged around 70 things from the beach.
Mrs Whitworth came with us and she taught us about birds and seaweed and how to protect the environment.

by Ronan

Biodiversity at Scapa

We went to Scapa today to see what we could find there. We have been investigating the biodiversity - the variety of life - of our coast.

The weather was better than we expected - although the wind blowing the sand meant we got sand in our hair!

We looked for things of different sizes and colours.

Sometimes looking very closely at small things was the best way to see the variety of colours on the beach.

We enjoyed a snack break in the sun (even though the weather forecast said we should be getting sleet).

We were 'Nature Detectives' and marked what we found in our record books.

Mrs Whitworth from the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) taught us a game about food chains. It was fun!

  

P4 did a mini 'Bag the Bruck'.  

How many marine animals do you think might have been killed by this bruck? 

We collected about 70 pieces of bruck - mostly plastic and rope - and a CD! We were quite surprised there was so much as the main ECO Orkney Bag the Bruck was last weekend so the beach was cleaned then.

We had a great morning out - and in the afternoon we spend time investigating and recording what we had found. We had found evidence of around 23 types of life at Scapa including birds, shells, seaweed and crabs.

We are going to be making powerpoint presentations about the biodiversity we find at the coast and we will put them on the blog so that everyone can learn about it.