Digma could smell stink of the clay on his wings so he stretched  his wings out and the clay dropped of like water !

With a voice like thunder he roared like a wave of fire.

This week we organised lots of activities to raise money for Children in Need. The theme of the event was Super Heroes-we all had to dress up as someone we admired. Almost every person in our school dressed up! We had Dennis the Menace, The Thompson Twins,The BFG and Batman. All our teachers dressed up too-they dressed up as VCOP -they are the heroes who help us with our writing-Victoria Visualiser, Captain Connective, Extrodinary Opener and Doctor Punctuation! We all had great fun playing at all the different games like ‘Guess Pudsey’s Birthday’ and ‘Pin the nose on Pudsey’, but the best fun off all was our Super Hero Treasure Hunt where we had to find the pictures of our heroes and villans outside. We have not counted all the money we raised yet but we will have by monday and will let you know the total then.

 We learned about what happens in  a  Baptisim. We worked as a class, watched a video and took notes.We discussed why people get baptised. We are continuing to learn about VCOP and this week we concentrated on ‘up levelling’ our words and using our VCOP super heros in our writing.  In Maths we have been practising ordering numbers and have been doing lots of adding, taking away and word problems!  We love our ‘Together we Count’ badges and lanyards!  At badminton we learned how to control the shuttlecock- one of the games we did to practise this was’Last Man Standing’. At basketball we practised passing and shooting.  P6&7 s completed a power point on different types of energy and how we use them-coal, oil, bio mass and hydro. Then we shared our learning with the primary 5 s and they gave us feedback on our work. In forest schools we made dens out of the forest materials .We also made peashooters and pens from elder wood.

It has been a busy week of learning!!

 Monday the 27th of october was a special day for everybody as we had an opening for our new project including all of the dunbar cluster called ‘ together we count.’  The whole school had an afternoon of maths and we used natural objects to help develop our maths skills, there were lots of different activities to take part in.There are seven badges to collect and each badge represesnts a different skill in maths.We are all working hard on our red coloured badge which represents ordering numbers and are aiming to collect all seven badges to go on our together we count lanyards.

We have started our new whole school topic based around electricity and energy.As part of our learning we visited our near by nuclear power station Torness.We learned about how electricity is made and how dangerous it can be.To start off our tour we visited the wokshop area were they would fix all of the broken equipment. Next on our tour we went to the reactors, we went up very high in an elevator, so high that you could stack 11 double decker buses on top of each other to reach our height. The electricity was made from water, then boiled in the boiler until it was made into steam, the uranium helped to power the turbine.There was a magnet inside the turbine  andwhat happened was the steam was made to spin using the blades and then the spinning steam was so strong that  it turned the magnet  inside the turbine and created the electricity.They were creating enough electricity to power 2 million houses. Then we visited the control room-this is where Homer Simpson works! There was a red carpet and if you were not trained or highly qualifed you were not allowed on the red carpet.

In addition to our Torness visit we had wind farm specialists come to talk to us about renewable,natural and wind energy, they told us about un-renewable energy and how it was not good for the enviornment. They very generously gave us goodie bags relevent to wind farms and renewable energy. These 2 visits gave us a balanced view on each type of electricity.

P6-7 have been having an amazing time at forest schools in Stenton woods. Because it was Halloween, we made skeletons out of sticks and leaves,we also made potions out of  natural elements in  the forest.We also had a great time building  a warm and refreshing fire,toasting marshmellows and telling goast strories because it linked in to halloween.Meanwhile the p5’s were working so hard on their VCOP which stands for Vocabulary,Connectives,Openings and punctuation.Their main focus this week was speech punctuation.They developed their skills and are ready for the next stage in their writing.

The whole school took part in the Bethany Trust Shoebox Appeal. These boxes are filled with essentials which go to people who are less fortunate than us.

We have had a very busy week of learning !

By Lollyand Harrison p7  

This is Bethany Trust speaking to us about the shoebox appeal!

This is our forest schools group on halloween making the skeletons.

This week we have been learning about time duration and twenty four hour clock.

We have also been writing about the Titanic in  acrostic poems- some people wrote about different things to do with Titanic.

The primary sevens are away at camp so the primary sixs enjoyed taking over shake to wake for the week- we are nearly as good as the primary sevens.

We all did posters to advertise a trip on the Titanic and marketed them for first class, second class and third class passengers.

Our skill we are focising on this week is thinking about feelings and emotions.

Abigail brought in conkers that she had been collecting from the conker tree and we wrote an acrostic poem about one of them altogether in three minutes!!

We are learning songs and practisisng our presentation for the harvest festival.

This week we painted  Titanic silhouettes. First we painted the background with watercolour paints.We learned how to mix the right amount of water with paint so that the paper would not get too wet and rip.Then we cut a black and white Tiitanic out of card.We also looked at famous moon light paintings to help us get the  reflection on the water. We thought we could perhaps have taken more time with our Titanic silhouttes as fitting the windows was quite hard.

We have been continuing with our positive circles and circle times. We have learned that different people have different opinions on different subjects-and that’s ok.

We have made our apple day powerpoint presentations. We worked with our talking partners and used computers, writing, maths, listening and talking skills for this presentation. Johnny came up with the idea that we should estimate the amount of apples per crate and then use our multiplication skills to find out who estimaed the closest.

In gym we brought all the skills we have learned together and played in a hockey tournament.

We had our Apple Day on Thursday. We all walked to Ruchlaw Farm where we picked the apples from an orchard.We learned that the fields around Stenton have names such as ‘Mansion Park’ and ‘Angle Park’. We also learned that some skeletons had been found in a field and that they were from the Bronze Age and were 5000 years old. We learned the correct way to pick apples from the trees which was by twisting them. We learned the names of different apples, such as Peasgood Nonsuch which is a dessert apple. Not all apples taste the same. Some are sweet and crunchy, others are tangy and sour. The  mackintosh red apple is sweet with pink flesh. Bramleys can be kept til next June-they have a waxy skin which helps preserve the apple.

We learned that apples come from all over the world but that local apples taste nicer and have no preservatives in them. They are also better for our environment because they have no air miles and do not cause polution. We enjoyed making apple and banana muffins and pies and learning that all apples are different. We are keeping some of our pies and muffins for our harvest festival. We  also learned how to make apple juice. First we crushed the apples with a crusher. Then we squashed the pulp in the apple press. The juice was cloudy and delicious. We are going to press more apples for juice to drink for our break.

In music we used all the different apple names and put them into a song. We had a music workshop with percussion intstruments. We learned how to play a piece of samba music. It was exciting to learn how to use percussion intsruments like the ganza, cow bells and tamborim.

We learned how to make a successful powerpoint presentation on the computers. We are practising before we prepare our harvest festival presentation.

In gym we have learned how to do the ‘slap hit’ in hockey. We practised tackling each other in small groups and really enjoyed playing the number shooting game.

In maths we have been learning about time. The percentages have been learning the 24 hour clock, the decimals have been learning about minutes to and past  the hour and the fractions have been learning about digital time.

This week we harvested potatoes which we planted in Spring. We grew the potatoes from seed potatoes. Today a group of us made potato wedges from our potatoes. We used math to work out how many potatoes we would need to cut into quarters to make sure we all got an equal amount of  wedges. These wedges were delicious and extremely popular!

We are proud to be able to plant, grow and eat our own produce.

We have been writing reports this week on ‘The Unsinkable Ship’. We had to think about backing up our reports with factual evidence. We also had to think of theories to answer some questions about who might be to blame. In maths we have been learning our tables and the link between multiplication and division. We have also learned how to make up large numbers.
We have been learning to use a moviemaker on the computers to make small group movies about the Titanic. We looked at texts and added music and pictures -we developed our ICT skills when we were doing this as we had to learn how to add music.
We had fun performing our adverts to sell a product. We learned that not everything we see on adverts is the whole truth.
In French the p6s learned how to say their telephone numbers.
In hockey we are countining to develop our skills with block tackles and push pass.
The skill focus this week has been sharing our learning.

This week we learned how to make a Titanic timeline.We used computer skills to research information.We worked in groups of three and had to work together as a team.We have been learning how to make animations on fluxtime.com/animate. Everybody worked in pairs to make different animations. In German the primary 7s have been learning  animal names – how to say them and spell them. In French primary 6s learnt how to hold a simple conversation and how to count to twelve. In maths, through learning about the Titanic, we compared measurements and used number skills and strategies. In art we have been learning about blending colours and understanding that each colour has lots of different shades.We all used these skills in our pictures for the flower show. In language we have been learning the difference beetween fact and opinion and writing about characters and emotions. The skill we  were focusing on this week was ‘help the team’.  In hockey we have been learning ‘the Indian Dribble’-ask your child about this new piece of learning.