RME Assessment

This week was our last week for the term in RME. The assessment activity the pupils were to complete was a trailer, advertising one of the festivals they had learned about during the term.

We had looked at Diwali, Hanukkah and Christmas and I let the children choose which festival they wanted to share about in their assessment.

The students then co-constructed the success criteria with me for their work before setting off on the activity.

Our success criteria was;

• Clearly identify which festival they were doing.
• Have the members of the whole group named in the trailer.
• Include lots of facts about their story.

The classes all worked really hard during this activity and although there were some groups that had problems with dynamics, they generally were focused on their learning through the entire session.

After undertaking this activity with the first class last week I realised that the best way of approaching the trailers was to first write out the 'story'. Groups that didn't do this then struggled to focus their work through the task and so I made sure they all completed their storylines before they began to take films and pictures.



I found this a particularly interested assessment activity as it really required the students to think about what they knew happened during each festival. They had to fill in a certain number of spaces in the video and had to think up that many different features of the festivals. Some of the groups retold the stories of the festivals rather than looking at the actual festival, but this also shows a deeper understanding than they had to start.

Buddy Reading

In P1 the children have taken to their new reading programme with great fervor. Now they are developing skills that allow them to buddy read effectively.

This enables children to support each other and model good reading strategies, whilst also developing an enjoyable reading experience as it is something that they are doing with their friends.

We talked about how to sit and behave correctly when buddy reading and covered the EEKK approach.



Then the children spent 10-15 minutes buddy reading in the class. They even got to choose their own buddies!

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Measurement Assessment MNU 1-11a

This term we have been learning about length and weight. I wanted the assessment for this unit to be a practical hands on activity and spent a while thinking about what we could do.

We ended up making a Lego model that met certain requirements. They had to weigh 300g and measure 25cm (height, length or width).

The children seemed to really enjoy this activity and worked hard to meet the criteria for their models. Only three children actually achieved it though.

I wasn't too concerned about the children managing to get their model to weigh 300g and measure 25cm but I was interested in the children being able to show me that they were competent in using and reading scales and rulers correctly. There was a lot of evidence of this through the entire assessment and the students also got opportunities for developing other knowledge and skills too.

Through the morning I had plenty of opportunity to sit with each pupil and assess their understanding of the measurement topics we have covered and have left the information for the class teacher to use in their paperwork.

Student Led Music

For the past few weeks there has been a student in my class who was really keen to teach The Cup Song to her classmates.



On Monday, she got her opportunity.

When the rest of the class were told about this there were some initial issues as they re-adjusted their mindset around their peer. I said they had to treat her as they would a teacher and I was going to be watching to make sure that happened. Once they started learning the song, the class quickly fell into good relationship.

The girl did a great job in sharing with her classmates and managed to teach most of them the whole pattern. She shared the job with a friend who already knew the song and they worked with half the class and smaller groups to support the rest to learn it.

I feel that student led activities are hugely beneficial for the students in a range of ways and hope that this activity will open the door for more requests/suggestions from the children in this class so that they can become more involved and engaged in their learning.

Outdoor Pattern Making

As part of our shape work we decided to go outside and make patterns with the items we found in the playground.

I was particularly impressed with the patterns that the students managed to create which included a lot of patterns with 2 piece repeating pattern but a few 3 part patterns and more.

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RME

This week we have been learning about the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. We introduced the topic last week and got the opportunity to make and play with driedels. This was a great game and the pupils all grasped the concept quickly and enjoyed playing with each other.

We used a template from the BBC website.



This video showed us how to use the driedels and used counters to play.

This week we looked further into the hanukkiah which is a special symbol for Hanukkah. The class discussed the differences between the hanukkiah and menorah, which are two very similar jewish items.

We saw that the hanukkiah had more candle arms than the menorah and also featured a shamash which is the central candel holder that is slightly higher.

We then used paper to create an art piece based on the hanukkiah. The classes did a fantastic job with this and had to solve a lot of problems along the way.

Phonics Fun in P1/2

In P1/2 this week the Primary 1s were learning about the letter f and the primary 2s were learning about words that end with all.

We did a phonics carousel to help us consolidate our understanding and knowledge of these words and sounds. The pupils in this class are getting much more confident in undertaking a carousel independently.

Last week we did some art and the trays were stored in sandwich bags to use next time. Unfortunately there was an accident with the trays and the paint ended up getting mixed and spilled. So we took this as an opportunity to use the paint bags as a multisensory phonics activity in our carousel!

The children also got a chance to explore the mixture of colours with this activity which they enjoyed.

We also made the letter f with Lego, and spelled out some words that started with f. The pupils really impressed me with this activity by staying focused and not messing around with the Lego during work time.

They also completed some worksheets to help with their letter formation.

RME 1-06b

In RME this term we have been learning about the festivals of light. The first festival we looked at was Diwali.In class the students watched a story telling us the background of the celebration which they got to reenact. The classes enjoyed this activity and along with developing their drama skills they worked on team work and collaboration, which some groups struggled with. Then we looked at the importance of Rangoli during the festival and talked about how they are used during the celebrations. We looked at examples online and practiced creating our own designs on paper in class and took the opportunity for some outdoor learning and drew designs in the playground using chalk.  I was particularly impressed by the results and how focused the pupils were during the tasks.

Geometry P1

In primary 1 we have been learning about shapes - focusing mainly on triangles, squares, rectangle and circles.

Our maths lessons have been combined with art lessons and we are currently working on creating a Kandinsky inspired shape mobile, which we spotted on Pinterest.

As I only work with the class one day a week we will be doing one shape a week for 4 weeks and then combining the shapes into our mobiles. I think they will look fantastic in the classroom with the nice bright colours we are using.

The children have made a great start to their mobiles and tried really hard to keep their squares the right shape. We also got to use the brand new paints and brushes we received after moving into our new school!

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Nim's Island Paper Mache

Last term we completed our work on our paper mache islands.


The students had already created their topographic islands but still needed to mache and paint them.


We decided to use PVA glue mixed with water as the adhesive in the mache stage. I was initially apprehensive about how well it would work as I hadn't used this before and we had a rather watery mixture but once the glue had dried it gave a good result.


Some of the students struggled with the idea of only using small pieces of paper, and some didn't smooth their paper down quite enough so ended up with a rough texture for painting.


Then in the last week we painted our models. This was a great activity and the students were only provided with the primary colours and white. It took a bit of conversation for the students to understand why I had chosen those particular colours - not just because they would be good island colours.


The pupils really enjoyed getting to mix the colours and discover what they would make. They painted their islands and all looked fantastic once they had finished. We had a mixture of ideas in the islands but the whole point of this project was that they were to use their imagination so all ideas were accepted.


I would definitely do this activity again with another class, or with a different design.

Plant Science

Wow! Our plants have grown so much.

This week we had another look at our plants in their mazes. Most of the plants have now grown through the maze and out the top.
 
 



Hopefully this experiment will solidify the children's understanding that plants can move. I think it is important for students to have experiential activities to demonstrate concepts rather than me just telling them that plants can move and expecting them to believe it.

Unfortunately one of the plants was broken when we were looking at them. But this has given us an opportunity to see if they will continue to grow or not.

We continued our observation table and compared the lengths of when we measured last week with the lengths this week. Some groups of students were unable to measure their plants because the ruler wasn't long enough. They were able to problem solve to use two rulers to help them.

Art and Geometry

This term I have been working on creating medicine bottles for their novel study of George's Marvellous Medicine. We completed ours this week and they have been displayed in the school. I was particularly impressed with the student's creativity in this activity. They were given the brief of creating a medicine bottle
from a piece of A4 paper using pastels to colour in. They came up with the rest all by themselves.

This class has also been working with some classes on geometry and we are finishing off our unit on 3D shapes by making models out of 3D junk objects we have around our houses.

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Once the students have completed their models they will fill in a shape analysis page which I can use to assess the knowledge they have developed over the sessions of this topic.

Nim's Island

In P5 the students are doing a novel study around Nim's Island. As a result we are completing art projects with this theme too.

We started off recreating a piece of volcano art which I discovered on pinterest, but later that week I watched a TED Talk by Cindy Foley about creativity and thinking like an artist. I realised that the volcano art we were doing in class was teaching the students about artistic techniques but not encouraging or utilising the students creativity.



In light of watching this video I decided to come at the art lessons from a different approach and asked the students to think of ideas that they could do to create art around the Nim's Island theme.

The responses from the students surprised me and I enjoyed seeing the different ideas that the students had come up with.

After reading the results from the children there were a lot which talked about paper mache, making Nim's hut and creating life-size pictures of the characters.  So I decided to let the students do all of these activities.

I prepared the resources the students required and let them choose which activity they wanted to do. Now the students in my art class were coming up with the ideas for their art lesson and then choosing which activity they most prefer out of a selection. Until the school holidays we are working on our paper mache islands and our life-size Nim's. The students are being given freedom in their art to use their imagination and creativity - this is actually a requirement in their work, and are also having to problem solve how to use the materials to achieve the result they want.

Plant Science

Last week we checked in on the progress of our phototropism experiments. The students were very excited to see what had happened in their boxes during the week and were surprised by the range of results that we got.

The students used their new measuring skills to measure the growth of their bean plants which we recorded on a class table.




We closed up the boxes and will have a look again next week to see if any of the plants have made it through the maze.  We also learned that the plants that were dropped(!) before they made it into the mazes are still growing.

One group observed that the plants were quite pale looking but we're not sure why that has happened - pupils thought it could be because of the lack of sun, lack of water or due to the air. Our next experiment will hopefully help us to identify what has caused this to happen.