Primary 7

Second term is nearly at an end. Wow, how did that happen? They say that time goes more quickly whenever you keep busy. Well, that must explain it, because P7 have been super busy since returning to school in January.

Apart from the usual, and very necessary, school work that all brains need, we have made sure that we have taken every opportunity to exercise all of those other ‘brain bits’ that can sometimes be overlooked.

It’s often forgotten that maths is much more than sums. Here we are doing the maths of an old Greek guy called Pythagoras. We made squares on the sides of a right angled triangle in order to find the length of the longest side…….that’s called the hypotenuse by the way. Turns out that this bit of maths is really useful for all sorts of things – especially if you want to build a roof!

Healthy body…..healthy mind! We had our stamina, strength and speed tested to the limits when we visited Strathearn School for an indoor athletics challenge. The whole year group took part in a variety of activities, participating with determination and loads of energy!

As usual, we haven’t neglected checking out how the world works. When it comes to the world, there’s nothing more basic to study than what we stand on. One rock may appear to be much like the other, but we’ve discovered about igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks and how they can change from one sort to the other. Rocks rock!

Obviously, we just don’t stand on the surface of the earth, we and most other things move about! So, we’ve experimented with the force that works against movement – FRICTION. Turns out that although friction annoyingly slows us down, this is really quite useful. Honestly, you don’t want to be sliding all over the earth’s surface all of the time. * 

World Book Day descended upon us at the beginning of March and we had a blast sharing our favourite books and dressing up as our favourite characters. Do you recognise any?

In the run-up to World Book Day itself, we had worked hard putting together ‘Big Books’ to take down to read to the P1-P3 children. It was so lovely to see all of the effort put in, with some P7s even bringing in their own props and cuddly toys to enhance the experience for the little ones!

On the actual day, we logged on and took part in a BBC Teach Live Lesson featuring author and poet Michael Rosen and other famous faces, then became library detectives for the afternoon!

Take a look at how we brought our book characters to life using the Green Screen:

It was also a great pleasure to welcome Chloe Higginson into school each Wednesday for six weeks. Chloe guided us through a project called ‘Invisible Traffick’. We investigated the phenomenon on modern-day slavery and how many millions of people today are exploited for the benefit of others and have to contend with unfairness and injustice. Most importantly, we looked at how we can avoid these difficult situations and, through making sensible choices about what we buy and from where, how we can help communities and individuals who find themselves exploited.

*However, sometimes it is good to slide and skate and enjoy the difference in friction that’s caused by a good ‘dollop’ of snow. Now, we really hope that with Easter coming and then third term, we can look forward to some love sunny weather and more comfortable temperatures, but it was great to enjoy the one-day winter wonderland of a few days ago!

To celebrate the upcoming 50th birthday of Andrews Memorial, we transported ourselves back 50 years to the 1970s where it all began. Here are some snippets of how P7 celebrated in style!

Ahead of the big day, we had to get practising our ’70s dance moves ready to show them off at the disco!

One teacher was here during the ’70s; the other was not. We’ll leave that up to you!

Check out our ’70s-inspired outfits: