Fun with science

We had great fun doing science experiments on Thursday afternoon! We were investigating rocket propulsion.

Here we are trying to prove that there was gas being created in a bottle.

We talked about the experiement and then wrote reports on it.

We did drama outside this week. We went into groups and made up plays to show why it's good to be honest, then we acted them in front of everyone in the courtyard. It was fun. Mrs MacNab said that was the best acting we've done yet - we made up the plays ourselves and most people remembered to talk loudly so the audience could hear.

We also did more maths this week. It's getting difficult now. One group were dividing by 3, another were finding out about remainders and the other were using strategies to help them multiply numbers that aren't in the times tables (like 36 or 120). We'll be doing more practice of that next week.

Did you know there's games online where you can practise maths? If you click on the 'Class 3/4's Links' on the right of the blog you can find maths games to play.

In RME we've been doing the Easter story and practising our songs for the Easter performance. Next week we'll be finding out about how they celebrate Easter in Greece, and we're hoping to teach Miss Persidou about how we celebrate Easter in Orkney.

Storytelling

We've been doing some storytelling for our link school in Canada. We've finished the first story - Tam Bichan. You can hear it on the wiki we created to give the pupils in Outma Sqilx's Cultural School information about Orkney.

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 story.

We're hoping to add more stories as we get them recorded.

We love books

We celebrated World Book Day this week. We watched a live broadcast with Michael Rosen - he was really funny!

Then we had our own World Book Day event in class. Everyone brought in their favourite fiction book and their favourite non-fiction book. We did book reveiews and then had time to share our love of books. Everyone got very enthusiastic about sharing their books.

Mrs MacNab and Mrs Scott had brought in books too - their books were older than us!

We enjoyed seeing other people's books, and we found interesting facts about space in a lot of the non-fiction books. We also looked at Winnie the Pooh in Polish.

We also had World Maths Day this week. Lots of people took part in live maths games against people from all over the world. We were very proud that Molly C came top of the school for Level 1.

The rest of the week work carried on as usual. Here we are doing drama. We are making plays about being honest.

This is us looking at newspaper articles to find the 5Ws - who, what, where, when and why. We noticed that you can always find the 5Ws at the start of an article. We wrote our own newspaper articles about the space shuttle. Some of them will be appearing on the blog before the end of term.

Problem solving in maths - we were working together on different strategies to solve a problem.

We had an exciting time on Thursday and Friday when Mrs MacNab said we all had to become teachers and teach other people in the class. At first we were a bit worried, but in the end we loved it!

We went into groups to research all about how astronauts live in space. Some people found out about what they ate, some researched how they sleep, one group found out about how they keep clean and the last group researched what astronauts do in space when they're not working.

Here we are doing our research and making and highlighting notes to use to teach our group.

We went back to our original groups to teach them, so that everyone learned all about how astronuats live.

Do you know what astronauts eat?

Did you know that astronuats wear nappies when they are on a space walk?

We had to speak clearly so our group could hear us.

Did you know there is a keyboard in the International Space Station (ISS)?

Mrs MacNab showed us a picture of an astronuat playing it and Ewan spotted that he wasn't sitting on a seat, although he looked like he was sitting down there was no seat!

We watched some astronauts being interviewed in the ISS. They had some apples and oranges but most of their food is dried and needs to have water added and to be heated up.

We would like to be teachers again.

Our box has arrived in Canada!

Our box has arrived in our link school in the Okanagan in British Columbia, Canada. The pupils have opened it and they liked all the things inside it. They left a message for us on our blog here.

They sent us some letters too and we enjoyed reading them. We're hoping to reply to them soon. We found out that they like a lot of the same things as us, but the wildlife they see is very different. They have bears and rattlesnakes!

Did you know they're getting a new school built? We saw photos of the place where the new school will be built. There's wild horses there just now.

World Maths Day

It's World Maths Day on Wednesday 3rd March. We've all got logins for the World Maths Day website (it's linked on the sidebar here too). The website is running now so we can practise - on Wednesday there will be real competitions on it all day.

Today we were practising and we played against other children all over the world. You have to answer as many questions as you can in a minute - so you need to think fast! We played people in Canada, America, Ecuador, Japan, China, Germany and more countries. The website shows you a map of the world so you can see where the people you are playing against come from.

Lots of people are planning to use the website at home while it's live for the next week. It's fun playing against children in other countries!

Good luck everyone.

Our Solar System and PE

Here's the constellation some of us created this week. We wrote a myth about it too - that will be appearing on the blog in a few weeks when the other groups have done theirs.

Abbie got a planetarium and brought it in for us all to see. We enjoyed watching the planets orbiting the sun and we discovered that they stay in the same order so Mercury is always the planet closest to the sun.

The first day the classroom wasn't dark enough to see the constellations on the ceiling, but Mrs Scot held a big piece of paper for us to see the constellations on. Then we got some curtains and put them up and shut the blinds and we were able to see the constellations faintly on the ceiling.

Can you find any constellations in the sky?

We're still trying to look at the moom every night. What shape is it tonight?

Here are P4 writing newspaper articles about the space shuttle. They watched some interviews with astronuats and took notes first. Taking notes was hard!

Here we are doing tennis in PE. We learned how to play tennis rounders!

In RME we've been learning about Hinduism. This week we learned about reincarnation and karma and we made a game. Do you know what karma is?

This was our last week of gymnastics with Mr Berry and we were showing off how much we have improved, especially at balances.

In Golden Time some people were making aliens, others were using the techno lego to build things. We're hoping we get to use techno lego again next week.

Do you like our models?

What would you make?

Lots of fun

We've been having lots of fun again.

Here we are in drama, acting out scenes to show good ways and bad ways of responding to people. We had lots of ideas of good ways to act and we are trying to remember good ways to deal with things in the playground too.

In PE with Mrs MacNab we have started doing tennis. It's great fun!

In PE on Fridays we're doing gymnastics with Mr Berry.

Here we are doing listening skills.

In our topic we've been finding out why the moon looks like it changes shape. Do you know why?

Some people pretended to be the Sun, Earth and Moon so we could act it out.

In our topic we've been finding out about stars and constellations and some groups have made their own constellation and written a star myth about it. Here is one group working with Miss Persidou (who is from Greece).

We made 'pinprick pictures' of 2 constellations - Orion and The Plough - to help us find them in the night sky at home. Do you know what they look like?

In maths we've been working hard at multiplication and division. Here we are doing loop cards and trying to get a new record time.

P4 learned lots of 'magic tricks' to do with the 9x table.
Did you know you can use your fingers to help with the 9x table?

Tables practice - with different people taking turns of being 'teacher' and leading the tables.

P4 were challenged to teach Mrs Scott the 9x table ausing as many 'magic tricks' as possible. How many different ways do you think they used?

Divison is fun!

Fun in Golden Time - blowpainting aliens ....

... colouring in (these are Rangoli patterns. Do you know what a Rangoli pattern is?) ...

... and chess.

Who's winning?

Another fun week in P3/4.