Visit to the Power Station

We have been learning about different sources of energy this term, looking at both renewable and non-renewable energy sources.  As part of our learning, we visited the Power Station in Kirkwall and saw what happens there.  We all learned lots of new information and found it really interesting.  Here are some photos of us on our visit for you to have a look at:
 

Slideshow - Visit to the powerstation

 

Can the members of Primary 4 add some comments to tell everyone about what you learned please?  If anyone has any questions for the class, please post them on here and we will try to answer you!

Handwork

We are very lucky in St Andrews Primary to have lots of people from the community who come in to help us with our handwork on Thursday afternoon every week (in Terms 2 and 3). 

 

When we start at school we learn how to sew by making mats. We need to make two mats before we can start to learn how to knit. We are all learning to knit in Class 4 now - some of us are knitting scarves, others are knitting purses and others are knitting teddies.

       

It needs a lot of concentration to knit - and sometimes we are a little too chatty and this is when we make mistakes!

Mehndi

Class 4 have been learning about Mehndi patterns in Religious and Moral Education.  Ms Shiner had Mehndi patterns drawn onto her hands at the weekend and came to let us see what they were like today.  This is what they look like ...

If you look at the comments for this post, Class 4 will explain what Mehndi patterns are and why people may paint these on their hands.

Book reviews

We were writing our own book reviews this week.  This was new for us and we found it a little bit tricky!

These are the things we had to think about when writing this:

• the author - who wrote the book?
• the characters - who were the people in the story?  Did we like them?  How did they make us feel?
• the plot - what happens in the story? 
• our opinion - did we like the book?  What was our favourite part of the story and why?  Were there any funny or scary bits?  Did we learn anything?
• recommendation - do we think someone else would like to read the book?  Why do we think this?

Are there any books that you have read that you especially like?  If you have read any books you would like to recommend, please leave us a message!

Puppets!

We have been doing our reading differently in Primary 4 this term.  We have been choosing our own books to read at home and doing different reading activities in school.

When we are doing our reading in school, we do this in three different ways:

1) we work in our groups to read the story together and discuss what has happened so far and predict what we think might happen next.  When we have all taken a turn to read we ask each other questions about what we have read.  Before we finish, we also have to think of something good that we did when reading aloud and think of something we could do better next time.  This is called 'a star and a wish'.

2) we talk with Ms Rendall about the book and discuss what has happened so far and then read it together.

3)  we do different activities that link directly to the story we have been reading.  The activities include making a comic strip of the story, writing book reviews, writing new beginnings and endings for the story and designing our own book covers. 

This week we made puppets of the main characters from the books we have been reading.  It was lots of fun!