Many apologies that the quality of the sound is not good- we used the huge speakers in the hall, which played the song very loudly, yet clearly. For some reason, I think the camcorder couldn’t cope with the volume!

So, many congratulations to the pupils for their great work in preparing the song! Norway were the outstanding entry, and they won the contest, followed by Ukraine and Spain, who came 2nd and 3rd.

We all enjoyed watching our entry this morning, and we should thank Castlesound studios in Pencaitland for allowing us to use their venue, as well as Gavin Tully-Jackson from Haddington who filmed the song for us. Thanks too to Miss Traill, who worked very hard to ensure that we sang fantastically at the recording studios! How will we fare against 38 other countries? We’ll find out next Friday, 25th May!

This week, in art, we have been working on creating pictures titled, “Falling for Foreshortening!”
Foreshortening is the optical illusion that occurs when a part of something moves from one part of space to another. For example… a bridge travels from right in front of us, to far away from us on the other side of a river. The same thing can happen on a smaller level with human limbs. For this lesson, the class traced their feet and hands on paper. They then drew their arms, legs, body and head to create the illusion that the body was further away than the feet and hands. The images all end up looking like the subject is falling toward the viewer.

Looking ahead, we plan to continue to concentrate on various types of writing this term, allowing the class to develop their own styles of writing as they tackle a variety of genres. Looking back through the writing jotters, we have written some very diverse pieces in the three terms up until the Easter break! We will also on a weekly basis try to look at a piece of writing for comprehension purposes, to strengthen our understanding of different types of written work. As well as this, we’ll revise some things we have come across before, and continue to think about how we can improve the overall quality of our grammar and punctuation.
In maths, we have already looked at information handling this term, and we have been learning more about the terms mean, median, mode and range this week. We’ll look at volume and 3 dimensions, as well as revising lots of things we looked at earlier in the year too.

We are just starting a new project called Travelling Green, which takes a truly multi-disciplinary look at the ways we travel to and from school. This project is very diverse, so it will consider social and scientific aspects as well as looking at healthy eating and how we can become fitter. It includes mapping work, which will strengthen what we learned from last term, and language work, where we look at poetry! Truly diverse!

Over the next few weeks in P.E. Mr Clelland will be looking closely at who might be considered for the annual East Lothian Sports team at Meadowbank, which takes place at the end of May. Today, he was assessing the children in their long-jumping techniques, so I hope that some of P5/6 are successful in gaining a place in the team for Meadowbank.

I have today given out homework, asking the children to plan a presentation or talk to give to the class, which is due for Monday 14th May. There is a sheet which gives advice about what I am looking for. Be aware that each week, the class receives spelling homework, reading in their groups, and where appropriate maths homework. From time to time, I also ask for other things to be done, such as this talk, or other research things from the internet or which might be project-related.

Can I please remind everyone again that we have gym each week on a Tuesday and a Thursday, so everyone needs to have their P.E. kit on these days. Miss Traill will continue to work with the class on Wednesdays and Miss Turbayne will continue with the violinists on Thursday afternoons.

After the holidays, we hope to create our Schoolovision film entry on Wednesday 18th April, if everyone is available to help us that day. A number of pupils told me they’d check to see if their parents could help, so if you can, please let me know by adding a comment after this post. We’d hope the filming should take only an hour to an hour and a half, probably in the morning.

Happy Easter!