Primary 3b Kirklandneuk

Our new topic

2012-02-15T18:05:00.000Z

We made a learning plan for our new topic "The Circus".

We were asked about how we might bring the Circus to Kirklandneuk, so we decided to do it ourselves! We have been getting some help and advice from Koko the clown.

He has been setting us some challenges - for example he asked us to look at the pros and cons of using animals in the circus and then to have a debate.

We looked at the pros and cons here and asked ourselves the question "Should we use animals in circuses?" Lots of people gave their opinions during our debate.

After our debate we put post-it votes on a continuum. You can see the results below.

Later we made bar graphs of the results, remembering to put in a title and labels for both axes.

Drawing animals

2012-02-15T00:33:00.000Z

We watched detailed videos on the drawingnow website about how to draw animals. We drew along with the video and later we drew animals for homework. They look great and you will see them on the wall on our open evening. Here we are practising drawing horses.

Gladigator

2012-02-14T23:27:00.000Z

We had a talk all about how to keep our teeth healthy last week and as a reward for listening carefully and answering the questions well we had a visit from Gladigator.

He set up a fantastic obstacle course for us and we had great fun fighting our way through it!

Everyone had a great time!

Visit from Quarriers

2012-01-26T00:46:00.002Z

Jennifer from Quarriers came to visit us this week and to tell us all about what they do. We gave her the £47 we raised from our Spy Party and she told us that it would go towards helping people with disabilities such as epilepsy and to help families and young adults. We told her that we had researched lots of different local charities, made presentations on them and then voted on which one we would fund raise for.

We wrote evaluations about our Caring Kids topic and had lots of ideas about what we had done well and what we might do better next time.

Our brand new school

2012-01-06T00:38:00.001Z

After our fifteen month decant, today was the first day back into our new refurbished school. Everyone was amazed at the changes and gave them a big thumbs up.

Here you can see our teaching wall in the background and all our new furniture. Everyone is wearing soft shoes so that we can keep the new carpets clean.

Here we are walking round to the back of the school where we will line up first thing in the morning and after breaks.

You can just see the new part of the infant block on the left hand side. We aren't allowed on the grass yet as it is a bit muddy!

Here we are in our new cloakroom. We can put our outdoor boots and shoes under the bench below the pegs. Behind the cloakroom outside the classroom, there is a breakout space for painting and other activities.

Everyone is looking around at our new class as they come in the door for the first time!

You can see the big number 8 etched on the glass for our room number. The glass looks out on to the breakout space and the cloakrooms.

We had our first assembly in the newly refurbished hall. It has a lovely stage and two whiteboards, one of which rolls down from the ceiling on the stage!

Read our comments below or add you own!

A whole lot of spying going on!

2011-12-14T00:28:00.001Z

Today we held our Spy Party in aid of Quarriers. We all came to school dressed as spies and you can see for yourselves how good we looked!

Definitely some good undercover agents here!

We played some games that we made up earlier. This one was to see how observant we were. We placed some objects on a tray and then someone took something away and we had to guess what was missing.

We also made up some messages in secret codes and then tried to decipher them. It was quite hard!

We also made up some secret missions for each other to complete. They were quite difficult to do without anyone noticing!

We all made secret agent badges which had a space for our fingerprints and we made up alias names for ourselves.

Some of us enjoyed spying from under the tables and behind the bushes!

Later we danced and played the four corners game.

Here are our two winners of the 'best dressed spies' and we all agreed that this was a great way to raise money for charity!

Christmas Party

2011-12-12T23:37:00.000Z

With only a few days to go until the end of term, it was time for our Christmas party today. We joined up with Rooms 8 and 10 for a great party with lots of games and prizes. Everyone enjoyed pass the parcel, musical statues, musical bumps and the four corner game. Here we are trying musical arms for the first time!

We are really looking forward to our Spy Party tomorrow! This is the fund raiser we have organised for our Enterprise Topic and we have thought up some great games to play!

Bad weather for the Christmas Concert!

2011-12-12T23:26:00.001Z

Here is one of the last views of our snowy decant school before we move back to Ard Road!

Heavy winds and rain meant our school had to close on the day of our last concert. However, parents and friends managed to change their plans and turned out in force to support our rearranged Christmas Concert and Nativity.

Here we are rehearsing our song 'Do You Hear What I Hear?

And here we are performing at the Christmas Concert!

Quarriers wins!

2011-12-12T23:05:00.000Z

After researching local charities for homework we joined with Room 10 to work in groups to make presentations about different charities such as the Sue Ryder Foundation, the Dogs' Trust and the Thistle Foundation. We worked cooperatively to make a poster about each chosen charity.

Next we worked on our presentations so that we could persuade people to choose our charity. Everyone played their parts in the presentations and then we voted for the best presentation.

Quarriers won the vote, so the money we raise during our Enterprise topic will be sent to them.

Enterprise topic

2011-12-12T22:51:00.000Z

We made a learning plan for our new Enterprise topic - Caring Kids. We are aiming to find out about charities, what they do and how they raise their funds. We are hoping to choose a charity that we can raise money for, so we have been finding out about various charities that are local to the area. We didn't know that there were so many different charities!

Caring Kids

2011-11-20T22:47:00.000Z

Our new enterprise topic is called Caring Kids where we choose a charity and raise money for it. Coincidentally it was Children in Need Day this week and the whole school have been raising money for Pudsey. We made some Pudsey masks and wore our own clothes for the day, for a donation to Children in Need. Here we are with our masks.

We have been getting some good ideas from the rest of the school about how to raise money for our charity. We also have been researching different local charities and soon we will be deciding which one to raise money for.

Friendship

2011-11-20T22:33:00.000Z

We have been discussing friendship and how to make and keep friends.

We used a carousel to work collaboratively to answer some difficult questions such as what would you do if:

someone stole from you and said they would beat you up if you told anyone
someone told lies about you
someone called you names
people don't let you join in their games.

We discussed each other's ideas and held a 'secret friends' day. In secret we chose a name out the hat and tried to do something nice for that person. It turned out that some people do nice things to everyone all the time not just at secret friends time! Aren't they kind?

Hallowe'en

2011-11-20T22:05:00.000Z

Here we are dressed up for Hallowe'en and our Come as You Please Day.

We wrote spooky stories and planned them using a mind map.

We looked at pictures of spooky houses and imagined what ours might look like. We thought about what we might hear and see and who might live there. We tried to use good openers for our sentences and good descriptions all the way through! Our teacher was scared to read them!

Scottish Sandwiches

2011-10-14T10:11:00.000+01:00

Bobby set us a challenge to give instructions on how to make a variety of Scottish sandwiches for some friends of his from abroad. We looked at ingredients you could get in Scotland such as white bread, brown bread, rolls, wraps and burger buns and found some fillings such as strawberry and raspberry jam, cold meat and cheese and pickle to put inside.

We made our sandwiches and ate them too! The following week we wrote down the instructions on how to make them. We concentrated on getting them in the correct order and used time connectives at the start of each sentence. We also reminded ourselves of the order here.

Here we are making our sandwiches and making them disappear again very quickly!

Windmills

2011-10-14T00:48:00.001+01:00

One of the questions we set ourselves was to find out how electricity is made in Scotland. We found out that Scotland produces electricity from lots of sources including oil, gas, coal, water power, solar power, wave power and wind power.

We made some windmills ourselves from card and straws held together by a pin.

Firstly, we coloured in the card.

Then we cut and folded the corners into the middle.

Next we pinned the windmill to a straw.

We had to take care with the pins!

Finally, we blew some wind into our windmills to make them move.

Scotland topic

2011-09-30T02:29:00.002+01:00

Primary 3 have been having fun learning some Scottish Country Dances during their Scotland topic. You can see them here trying out a Canadian Barn Dance. We have just started practising the Gay Gordons which is a little more tricky!

Goggs has been helping us to learn about scottish landscapes and we are making a giant wall map of the River Clyde along with the other Primary 3 classes. We have also written some sense poems about scottish waterfalls and we are going to try videoing ourselves reciting our poems.

We have been using http://www.tutpup.com to help us improve our addition, subtraction and tables during active maths. This website lets us play maths games with children from all over the world at our own level.

Marcus Macaulay is our new anti-bullying rep and Kyle Bunch is our eco-school rep. They will be feeding back information to the class from their respective groups.

Meet Primary 3b

2011-09-08T23:52:00.000+01:00

Primary 3b are back at school after the summer holidays and raring to go! We drew each other's faces and then interviewed each other to find out some facts about our friends that we didn't know before.

Primary 3 have been showing off the beautiful handwriting they learned in Primary 2 - let's hope they keep up the good work!

We got together and worked co-operatively to make a class charter and then we all signed it.

We've also been planning this term's topic. We made a learning plan all about Scotland.

We took advantage of a little spell of sunshine and went outdoors to draw a map of Scotland in the playground. We managed to mark some of the main cities in Scotland.

Baking Pies

2011-06-28T12:34:00.003+01:00

We decided that we would like to bake our own pies - but fruit pies not bird pies like Mr Twit!

We collaborated in our groups to see what fruits we might use and we came up with apple and cinnamon, strawberry and lemon, mixed fruit and raspberry and blueberry.

We made the pies by placing some pastry on a pie tin first. Then we chopped the fruit and put it on top of the pastry. Next we sprinkled a little sugar on top of the fruit. Finally we placed some pastry on top of the fruit, brushed the top with milk and cut a few holes to let the steam escape.

Miss Kingsley kindly agreed to bake our pies in the school kitchen and she even brought them up to Room 9 in the afternoon! She said they smelt delicious!

Here we are about to tuck in!

The Twits

2011-06-19T15:26:00.001+01:00

Mr and Mrs Twit are getting more disgusting by the minute as we read through the story. We watched an extract from The Twits which showed Mrs Twit making spaghetti for Mr Twit. See if you can see the worms mixed in with the spaghetti!

Mr Twit likes to eat Bird Pie every week but we thought we would like some different pies! We looked up BBC Good Food and found our own favourite pies and made them into a book. We called it Primary 3 Pies and they look delicious!

We also painted and decorated trees in spring, summer, autumn and winter and looked at their differences through all the four seasons.


Seasonal Trees

Visit to the Glasgow Science Centre

2011-06-19T14:59:00.000+01:00

Primary 3B made a very successful visit to the Glasgow Science Centre last week and as you can see from the pictures a lot of learning was taking place.

We had a lesson on the journey of food through the body and discovered that our intestines are over 7 metres long! Here we are being the muscles that push the food through the intestines.

We also went into the planetarium and lay back on our seats to watch the night skies. We saw lots of constellations and discovered that the sun is our nearest star.

There were lots of other things to see in the main hall – even an Alice in Wonderland section where everything was not quite what it seemed!

Air pressure pushes the balloon up!

Water pressure pushes the water along!

Weighing each other.

The Twits

2011-05-15T18:05:00.000+01:00

We took each other's photos and made ourselves look like hairy twits!

Our new topic is about "The Twits" by Roald Dahl. The Twits are really disgusting because they never wash, they fight and they play tricks on each other! We are looking forward to finding out what happens to them throughout the book.

We started off by looking at the different parts of a book such as the front and back covers, the spine, the contents page and where you find the publisher. We found out that the illustrator of the book is called Quentin Blake.

Mrs Twit has a glass eye which she took out and left at the bottom of Mr Twit's glass of beer - isn't she disgusting! We decided to make her picture with a moveable glass eye. See what you think of them below.

You just have to pull the tab to see her four different glass eyes!

To pay her back for her nasty trick Mr Twit decided to leave a frog in Mrs Twit's bed - what a horrible pair they are! We looked at the life cycle of a frog and we are going to try the quiz where you drag and drop the names.

We made giant frogs using split pins where all the joints in the legs are. Primary 3 are going to leave comments about which activity they have enjoyed most so far.

Our long-legged frogs.

Science in Term 4

2011-05-04T19:54:00.000+01:00

We have started our new science topic about Plants and Animals. Mrs O'Brien came in and helped us to make our learning plan. As you can see we know quite a lot already but we have lots to learn and we are looking forward to finding out more about the lifecycles of frogs and butterflies.

Easter Bonnet Parade

2011-04-21T00:15:00.000+01:00

Today the infants were joined by family and friends for their Easter Bonnet Parade. Primary 3 performed two songs and two poems and showed off all the lovely bonnets they had made. Here they are performing their first song.

Open Evening - Ancient Egyptians

2011-03-24T02:45:00.004Z

We had a very exciting evening on Tuesday when we presented all the work we have been doing on the Ancient Egyptians to our parents. There were lots of activities to do from playing an Ancient Egyptian board game and fruit tasting to designing a shaduf and making a mummy on the computer.

Here we are wearing the head and neck pieces we made in class.

There was even a photo opportunity where you could get your photo taken with the baboon god Hapi on a special chair made by Kara and her Dad.

We used mod-roc to make a mask of Tutankhamen's head.

The final sarcophagus.

These are the scarab beetles we made.

Making the Scribe's desk.

We sewed Hapi the Baboon God

We had to co-operate with each other to make giant jigsaws and we had to be careful to match the colours at the joins.

We did lots of writing activities such as making fact files and we wrote an adventure story about finding some treasure inside a pyramid. We also designed our own gods and made an annotated diagram to describe them.

Looking out the door from inside our pyramid down onto the River Nile.

We made shabti figures which the ancient egyptians believed would do work for the Pharaoh in the after life.

We made our own papyrus out of bandages!

We made a map of the River Nile which is the longest river in the world.

The Ancient Egyptians liked to mummify their pets so we made Mr Macaw into a mummy too!

All in all we had a great evening and the parents were very pleased with what we had learned. Our teacher was very proud of us!

Mr Macaw and Healthy Eating

2011-02-27T22:50:00.001Z

Making the walls for our Pyramid

We had to quickly make more stones for the inside of our Pyramid as we were beginning to run out! But you will have to wait to see all the other exciting things we have been making for our museum!

Mr Macaw has been enjoying his weekend visits. Read all about his times with Jennifer, Jessica, Aimee, Beth and Alix on Mr Macaw's blog.

We have been learning all about healthy eating from Miss Paterson and she gave us a food diary so that we could keep a record of our snacks to make sure we are eating healthily. We have learned about the food groups – starchy food, fruit and vegetables, protein and dairy products and Miss Paterson also organised a fruit tasting session for all the P3 classes which everyone thoroughly enjoyed. There were all sorts of exotic fruits such as kiwi fruit, passion fruit, coconuts and dates and lots more - Mr Macaw kept a beady eye on them all from his perch in the classroom!

Active Health Month

2011-02-17T22:48:00.000Z

The whole school took part in aerobics for 10 minutes before the start of school this morning. Everyone was wide awake and ready for work by the time they reached the classroom!

Pyramid or Museum?

2011-01-25T23:14:00.001Z

We couldn't decide whether to make our classroom into the inside of a pyramid or a museum so we have decided to do both!

We worked in our new groups and brainstormed what Big Questions we wanted answered. How could we transform our classroom? What writing activities could we do? And what open evening activities could we have? We worked in a carousel and then typed up all the answers.

Have a look at Mr Macaw's blog and see what he got up to with Miss McCurdy at New Year and Liam W, Caitlyn and Jennifer in January.

A Visit to Paisley Museum

2011-01-15T00:15:00.002Z

This week we visited the Ancient Egyptian section of Paisley Museum. There were lots of things to see and do. We especially liked dressing up as Egyptians.

Ancient Egyptian hairstyles!

Which one is the Mummy?

An Ancient Egyptian mirror and bowl.

We made a learning plan about what we know about Ancient Egypt and what we would like to learn more about.

We have lots of links to websites about Ancient Egypt at the foot of our class page on the school website.

Evaluating our badgemaking

2011-01-12T20:46:00.001Z

We thought about the things we did well with our badge making project and things we would do better another time.

Here are some of them!

Mr Macaw went home with Liam W last weekend. You can read about Mr Macaw's visit here.

We still haven't decided what to do with our £41 profit! If you have a good suggestion for us please leave a comment below.

Enterprising Badgers

2011-01-06T20:12:00.001Z

Once the order forms were handed in, we wrote the name of the designer on the back and then cut out the badges from the order forms.

We put the picture between a metal badge and a piece of plastic and then inserted it into the badge maker. Finally we added the pin to the back of the badge.

We put the badges with their order forms into plastic bags before sending them back to all the people who ordered them.

Once we had finished making all the badges for the rest of the school we made some for ourselves. Here they are in their packets before we took them home.

We made over 80 badges and the money group added the money and found that we made £41.20 altogether so we will have to decide what do with our profits!

Mr Macaw's travels

2010-12-21T23:57:00.001Z

Read about a snowy weekend with Jack and the last of the Clan Macaw with Liam on Mr Macaw's blog.

Mr Macaw is getting into the Christmas spirit and is looking forward to spending his Christmas holidays at Miss McCurdy's house!

Christmas Activities

2010-12-21T23:27:00.001Z

We all wrote letters to Santa last week and today a big envelope arrived in our classroom with replies from Santa! There was even a special video message for Jamie from the North Pole!

We had our Christmas party with the other Primary 3 classes. We had great fun playing games in the Gym Hall before we had some snacks in our classes. Everyone looked great in their party clothes!

Christmas Concert

2010-12-21T16:38:00.016Z

We had a great time performing our song at the Christmas Concert. We sang 'Frosty the Snowman' and our own 'Frosty' came alive on the stage (with a bit of magic from the Magician) and danced across the stage with the other children.

Making Badges

2010-12-18T00:45:00.000Z

Our 'Badgers' company has received lots of orders this week. We have been sorting the orders and making lists for each class.

We practised cutting out circles and then each group chose the best people to cut out the badge designs from the order forms. We also have to label them with names so that they don't get lost.

Mrs Gray came into our class to show us how the badge making machine works and we are looking forward to making the badges. The designs people have been sending in look very colourful!

Frosty the Snowman

2010-12-08T17:33:00.003Z

Why don't you leave me a message and tell me what you have been doing while you have been off school. Just click on the 'comments' below.

Enterprise

2010-12-03T02:03:00.000Z

Primary 3 have been working hard on their enterprise topic. Miss McCabe helped us to set up our co-operative learning groups to make and sell badges.

Our business is called ‘The Badgers’ and we have already visited classes to find out what sort of badges they would like to buy and what price they would be willing to pay.

We put the results onto graphs using the pictogram website at http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/numbers/pictogram/pictogram.htm

The Advertising group have been choosing the best posters to advertise our badges and we are busy making order forms to give to classes.

We have been writing about monsters. First of all we made our monsters and gave them names. Then we had to write good descriptions about what they looked like, their personalities and how they behaved. We peer- assessed them and they will be going up on the wall soon.

Firstly we chose the monster's head.

Then we cut out a body.

And finally we chose some legs or a tail.

After we made our monsters we wrote about them using good WOW words.

2010-12-02T23:00:00.001Z

Mr Macaw can't wait to visit Craig's house!

Primary 3b have been learning to tell the time in maths this week. We looked at a big clock on the smartboard and used our mini whiteboard clocks to draw what time we thought it was.

We have started to learn our song for the Christmas Concert and Mr Frosty hopes it will be ready on time!

You can read about Craig's weekend with Mr Macaw.

Christmas Fayre

2010-11-27T00:48:00.001Z

We made calendars and christmas cards for the school Christmas Fayre.

We took each other's photos and then dragged the photos onto a calendar template. Once they were printed and laminated we threaded coloured ribbon through the top so that they can hang up at home. We sold them for £1 each.

Our Hand Made Christmas Cards were assembled by decorating snowmen with googly eyes and a jewel nose and colouring the scarf with glitter pens. We then added the mouth and buttons with black felt tipped pen. We stuck them onto coloured card with a pritt pad and drew in some snow with a white pen. Miss Kingsley gave us some sandwich bags so we could display them at the Fayre. We sold them for £1 as well!

You can read about Mr Macaw's weekend visits to Jodie's and Kara's houses.

Mr Macaw flies into Primary 3B

2010-11-13T21:54:00.002Z

Visit Mr Macaw's blog to see what he has been up to.

New school - new classroom!

2010-10-28T22:33:00.001+01:00

We love our new school. We enjoy it. Our new smartboard is the best smartboard ever and we use it a lot. Our class room is smaller than Kirklandneuk but it has bigger ceilings and windows so we really enjoy it here. It is a nice class room and it is nice to meet all my friends again and new people. Our new school is a really good school. It has got a big football pitch and playground. Some of us now get to go on a bus. This year we are up stairs. Gordon says he is nearer his friends in St James’s now.
By Beth

We made a pumpkin mask and it was lots of fun.
By Craig

Supermarket Sweep

2010-10-04T00:10:00.000+01:00

We priced items for our shops and then bought from each other. We had £1 to spend and had to work out how much change to give.

We also practised a supermarket game on the computer where we had to give the correct money to pay for the items at the checkout.

September Weekend

2010-09-27T21:17:00.002+01:00

This week the Magic Monkeys won the Group of the week.

We had a very busy week leading up to the September weekend holiday and two pupils volunteered to write this week's blog:

We have been designing and making carrier bags for our own shops and we had to choose a shape for them first. Then we wrote instructions on how to make them.

We have also been learning about Muslims and made a mindmap of Islam. Muslims pray five times a day. Their prayer mats are called mussala. Muslims don't eat at daytime during Ramadan.

We have been learning about our local area and about money in problem solving. We have also been doing our 3 times tables on tutpup. Remember to sign in to get credit for your wins!

by Beth and Alix

2010-09-20T23:00:00.000+01:00

The Blue Dolphins were the Group of the week this week and will get to wear their badges for the next week. They managed to work well together, encouraging each other with their work and keeping their group area very neat and tidy! Well done Blue Dolphins!

This week we looked at one of the Muslim festivals - Eid-ul-Fitr. We also had a virtual tour of a mosque at http://www.thebcom.org/mosquetour/index.htm

Two Stars and a Wish

2010-09-17T01:00:00.001+01:00

During their study of the local area this week Primary 3B worked very hard on writing what they know about Renfrew. In order to encourage the children to reflect on their own and each other’s learning we used the peer assessment strategy of 2 Stars and a Wish where we looked at the success criteria of the writing and evaluated each other's work.

Personal Learning Plans

2010-09-07T21:33:00.001+01:00

We have been looking at our Personal Learning Plans this week and some of us are learning the 2, 3, 5 and 10 times tables and some are concentrating on being lightning fast at number bonds up to 20.

We have been using Tutpup to practise but there are lots of other websites such as Primary topics and this Flashcard quiz.

Our Local Area

2010-09-02T22:11:00.001+01:00

This term we are looking at our local area and last week we made a mindmap of things we would like to find out more about in the Renfrew area.Today we looked at Google Earth and spun down through Europe, the UK and Scotland till we reached Renfrew and our school grounds. Some of us managed to find our way home from school on the map. We even saw some houses on street view!

Look at Kirklandneuk on Google Maps here

We have been making graphs with the help of an online program at http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/numbers/pictogram/pictogram.htm and discovered that no-one in our class has a birthday in September or November!

New session

2010-09-02T21:02:00.000+01:00

Primary 3b have made a great start to the new session, looking very smart in their school uniforms and working very hard in class to make up some class rules for our ‘Can Do’ classroom.

Take a look at our pencil portraits of each other and see if you can recognise anyone!

We practised standing in a quality line and it is so straight that you can hardly see anyone!