Pre-Prep: A sneak peek of September
The Pre-Prep have settled into their new routines brilliantly and have enjoyed exploring their classrooms, the school grounds and beyond. Have a little look at what the children have been up to...
Form 6
Form 6 have had a very exciting start to the year – lots of 'firsts' such as Art and DT with Mrs Haddon, STEM with Miss Watt and Drama with Mrs McGrath.
They have been enjoying playing hockey and rugby. I have been particularly impressed with their enthusiasm in hockey and how well they are doing. Hockey isn’t an easy sport!
In Maths, we are working on our Place Value unit, looking at numbers up to 1000. So far we have looked at the value of a digit depending on its place within a number, and flexible partitioning. This is looking at splitting up numbers into different amounts, for example 534 = 400 + 120 + 14.
During Literacy lessons, we have been enjoying our new book called ‘Stone Age Boy’ and learning how to use a thesaurus. This helped us to enhance the writing that we did yesterday. The children were to rewrite part of the text looking at how the structure, presentation and punctuation can contribute to the meaning. For example, writing the word ‘loud’ three times, getting bigger each time you write it.
Skeletons have been the focus of our Science lessons – the names of bones, exoskeletons and the different animal groups. There has been a lot of interest in the skeletons of different animals and working out which one belongs to which animal.
In DT, the children have been looking at the traditional Scottish weaving methods of tweed and tartan. They have listened to some traditional ‘Waulking’ songs that were sung to keep the workers in rhythm when they were shrinking and working the wool fibers together. They have learnt about looms, the weft and the warp and practised weaving on paper before foraging for grasses and sticks to make a second woven panel. Finally they have looked at some tartan fashion design inspired by Vivienne Westwood before designing their own outfits, using their own tartan designs.
The children have now finished their stag pictures in Art, which they drew and coloured in with pastels. They were then cut out and stuck on top of their backdrops of hills and trees. There were lots of discussions about perspective – bigger trees are at the front with the hills starting half way up the page to show how far away they are.
Mrs Johnstone
Form 7
Form 7 have had an incredibly successful start to the year. I’ve been so impressed with how confidently they have transitioned into their new class.
We hit the ground running back in September, and are now weeks into our Place Value unit in Maths. Most recently, the children have been learning how to flexibly partition numbers, for example, 65 can be made of 60 + 5, but it can also be made of 50 + 15, 40 + 25 etc.
Our key text in Literacy is ‘Toby and the Great Fire of London’. The children used their prediction and inference skills prior to reading to discuss what they thought might happen during the story. We’ve also used impressive adjectives to describe Toby, as well as using our five senses to imagine what the people of London would be experiencing during this terrible disaster.
In our phonics lessons, we have been recapping 'Set 3 Sounds', such as ea, oi and a-e. We have been trying to use these sounds correctly in our independent writing.
Disasters throughout history have been the focus of Topic lessons. We will investigate the Great Fire of London, the sinking of The Titanic and the collapse of The Tay Bridge. We will discuss what we have learned from these disasters and how we have implemented changes as a result. The children have already used their skills to put together a timeline of events during The Great Fire of London.
Miss Birrell
Form 8
Form 8 have settled very quickly in to their new class. Our familiar faces have loved welcoming new classmates, helping them with routines and supporting them as they get to know the setting. Our favourite addition to the classroom has been our free-drawing jotters, in which the children can doodle, draw and decorate while keeping their creations in one place.
In writing, we have been working through the 'Foundations of Writing Scheme', which offers the opportunity to support our learners who are just at the start of their writing journey but it also gives us the chance to challenge and extend the children who are more familiar with writing.
We have also been working on phonological awareness and phonics, making sure everyone’s individual needs are being met. This means that every day, we have 4 activity stations with different literacy jobs.
In Numeracy, we have all been taking part in place value lessons. Some children have been working on place value to 10 and others on place value to 100. It has been lovely to watch everyone’s confidence in number work grow in just the few short weeks that we have been back at school.
Our topic, 'All About Me', has given the children an opportunity to get to know everyone in our class better, including who is in everyone’s 'back-up teams' and what our biggest worries are.
Mrs Gibson
Music
Form 6
Form 6 are learning how to read music. So far we have focused on pitch reading, with pupils learning about treble clef, bass clef, space notes, line notes, ledger lines and the musical alphabet A-G.
Form 7 and Form 8
Form 7 have been deepening their musicianship by using their bodies (walking in time to different beats and using body percussion). Form 8 have been using solfa hand signs while they sing, which helps us to understand pitch not just aurally but also visually and physically. Form 7 and 8 have both been introduced to xylophones and glockenspiels and are learning how to hold and use mallets correctly.
Choir
Pre-Prep choir are learning how to warm up their bodies, breathing, and voices in order to make the best sound. We are using actions to help memorise lyrics and we are noticing all the different mouth shapes needed to sing different vowel sounds. We are spotting rhyming words in a range of songs including a fruit-related round, hymns and a silly song about a frog called ‘Galumph’!
