It's Friday again...

We have had another busy week of learning in Primary 5.

Here are a few of our activities to give you a taste of what we do in Primary 5 during the week.

In spelling we have started to revise some of the letter sounds, patterns and rules to help us improve our overall spelling ability.  This week we were looking at the letters 'e' and 'a' together - ea

We made a list of all of the words we could think of that had these letters together.

We then realised that these letters, when put together, can make different sounds.  

Then Miss Kelday gave us a challenge to help us practise our spelling of these words.  We had to write a paragraph using as many 'ea' words as possible.  Anna won with 17 different 'ea' words!  Well Done Anna!  

Estimation was the focus of our maths work this week.  We were given 8 different containers and we had to decide what the capacity of each container was using the vocabulary litres or millilitres.

We were really good at making suitable estimates.  We then went on to measure out the actual capacity to see how close our estimated were.

Oops - we made quite a mess on the floor with this activity.  There was water everywhere!  Miss Kelday spoke to us about being responsible and thinking carefully about our actions when working on these types of activities.  The next group were much more successful and used some clever strategies to stop water spilling all over the place when we were measuring.  

Our team work skills are really coming along now.  We have shown that we can have fun together and we can use some of the skills we have been learning about - taking turns, letting others join in, not always thinking about ourselves for the best jobs, talking to each other etc.

We were put to the test this week during team work time.  We played dodgeball.  This game is great fun but can also bring out people's competitive side!   We had to play this game while putting into action our team skills.  

Miss Kelday was watching carefully to see how we did.  Not to bad! We were sharing the ball, taking turns to throw, making sure everyone was getting a turn and using a clear voice to communicate with our team members.

Some of us were not keen to 'go out' when they were hit with the ball.  This is something we will discuss and work on in the future. 

In grammar this week we were continuing to learn about direct speech.  We like to use speech in our story writing so Miss Kelday thought it was important to spend time on getting it right and knowing the rules.

Some children were working on the 'take a new line' rule. It is important to separate out speech so it make it clear to the reader who is speaking.  They were also adding in a variety of 'said' words to keep the reader interested.

Other children were working on punctuation.  When writing speech down it is important to use speech marks to show the spoken words. 

for example:  "Hello," said Bob.  

They were also exploring a variety of said words to show how the speaker is speaking. eg whispered, shouted, cried, screamed etc.

Another group were exploring something called 'Adverbial Clauses'.  This is when extra information is added onto the end of the reported clause (said words) to say what is happening.  

for example:  "Hello," said bob, shouting over the top of the music.

OR

"Hello," said Bob, whispering so as not to interrupt the lesson.

Scottish Parliament Outreach Visit

Ian from the Scottish Parliament Education team came to Orkney this week.  SPS were lucky enough to have him visit our school.  P4 and 5, P6 and P7 received visits.

He began by explaining what the Scottish Parliament was and how it is organised.  We learned about the Political Parties and their leaders.  We also learned about the powers that the Scottish Parliament have and what decisions they are responsible for making.  

He asked us some questions and we got to use small controllers to cast our vote.  This then came up on the whiteboard as a graph, showing the results.

We then made our own political party.  There were 6 in total.  Each party elected a leader to represent their group.  Then we wrote our manifestos. 

Our leader then presented our manifesto to the rest of the parties.

We had to listen to each group and then vote for the party we would like to elect.  We were not allowed to vote for our own party.  We had to put a cross on our ballot paper, just like adults do when they vote.  Unfortunately 2 people made a mistake and put a tick.  This meant that their vote could not be counted.

After our elections, we then learned about debates.  

We chose a topic to debate.  We picked - School should be 4 days a week.  We wrote for and against reasons for this debate.  We had some interesting ideas!  

We looked at pictures of the debating chamber in the Parliament building and watched a short video clip to find out how a debate works.

We elected a Presiding Officer - Zach.  His job was to chair the debate.

We copied the process of the debates in the Scottish Parliament.

We all stood up when the Presiding Officer arrived.  

1. The Presiding Officer opened the debate by introducing the topic.

2.  The Presiding Officer invited MSP's to speak - giving their opinion on the topic.

3. MSP's voted using their controllers.  YES / NO / ABSTAIN (choosing not to vote)

4. Presiding Officer closed the debate by announcing the majority vote.

We found out that if there is a draw then the Presiding Officer has the casting vote.  Fact: The Presiding Officer must always vote NO! 

It was a super visit and we learned lots about the Scottish Parliament.  Thank you very much to Ian for coming to work with us.