This week we have been practising the song Scots Wha Hae and today we sang it in front of the whole school.  At first we were puzzled because we didn’t know what they were going to think of the song, and a bit embarassed, but afterwards we felt happy that we had sung it well!

In literacy, we have imagined that we are ruled over by a terrible Tyrannoflax, we drew what we thought it would look like and have started to magpie ideas for a battle cry.

In maths, we have been learning how to use take-away to find missing numbers in addition problems.

We have painted a portrait of William Wallace with Mrs Barron and made his armour out of tin foil and his helmet out of card.

We have been practising our maths skills in our maths groups every day this week.  We have been learning how to subtract and all the different ways we might be asked to do this.   If we see minus, less than, take away and difference between we know we need to subtract.

We have made William Wallace and King Edward I this week.  We have tried to make them life-sized.  Edward was 6 feet and 2 inches tall but William Wallace was 7 feet tall!

We have been writing facts about William Wallace –  we have learned that he was bloodthirsty.  He killed some soldiers who accused him of stealing fish and he killed his school bully.  We think he was savage!

We have been practising our reading strategies,  particularly to read around the word we don’t understand and see what would make sense.

This week we have been practising some of the maths we have learned so far this year.  We have also been learning about different ways to subtract.  We have a new member of our class, welcome to Sophie!

We have been finding out about Alexander III and Edward I, who were kings of Scotland and England about 800 years ago.  We have looked at the Roman numerals up to 10.

We have been learning about different ways to find the meaning of words.

We have learned about the compass points and where the different countries in the UK are.

We have been using the computers to write a story about a Knight Owl.

This week we have had lots of Christmas fun, performing at the school concerts.  We all did very well and enjoyed singing in front of a large audience.

We have been making board games to learn about forces.  Our games have to use a magnet in some way and have to teach someone else about forces.  We have made them, written instructions, and played them, learning lots along the way.

We have been writing about The Snowman this week, creating our own snowman or snow woman and deciding how they would show their character.

Next week we have our Christmas party on Wednesday afternoon.  Please send your child with a change of clothes so they can change into their party gear just before the party begins.  We will also be walking to the church on Friday morning to attend our annual Christmas service.

Mrs Smith P3S 

Dear Parent/Carer,

I hope you find the following information useful.  If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

General Information:

This term all the Primary 3 classes will receive Music from the Expressive Arts team to prepare for the Christmas concert but should still bring a painting shirt as Art will take place within the class.

You will be able to follow what we have been doing in class each week by looking at our class blog and Twitter. This can be accessed via the link on our class page on the school website.

Homework will be issued on a Monday and should be completed by Thursday.  There will a selection of Numeracy and Literacy (spelling and reading) activities and occasionally topic related tasks.

Please ensure your child has an appropriate snack kept separately from their lunch.   Your child should also have a clearly labelled water bottle everyday which is filled prior to arriving at school.  Please ensure your child has a labelled weather appropriate jacket as there will be outdoor learning opportunities.

Class Dojo

To promote positive behaviour Primary 3 are using Class Dojo.  Please note we cannot access the messaging aspect of Class Dojo, should you need to contact us please do so by telephone or in writing.

PE days

Primary 3S have PE on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays.

Please ensure your child has their PE kit in school on those days.

Learning focus this term:

Our topics this term are Festivals and Forces.  We are learning about Halloween, Bonfire night, Remembrance Day, Diwali, Wesak, St Andrew’s Day and Christmas.  We are learning about Forces in science and will be designing and making a game using magnets.

Core Literacy:

• We will be working on planning and writing stories, developing characters and coming up with our own endings
• We will be creating posters to learn about firework and Halloween safety.
• As part of our science topic we will be taking notes and using these to present our knowledge.
• We will write instructions on how to play our game.
• We will be writing letters and lists in the run up to Christmas!

Core Numeracy:

• We are focussing on addition, using different strategies.
• We are learning about time in 5 minute intervals.
• We are practising times tables and multiplication facts.

Health and Wellbeing:

As a Health Promoting school we actively encourage and teach our children to make healthy choices, to enable then to become healthy, active and emotionally resilient young people of the future.

We are delighted to be able to continue to deliver 2 hours of PE a week as well as opportunities for children to be active in our fabulous new grounds.

We would appreciate your support in promoting a healthy and balanced diet, both in your child’s morning snack and in their packed lunch.  We would discourage any type of fizzy juice in school or energy drinks.  Children are encouraged to bring in a water bottle, which they can use during class time.  There are water fountains situated throughout the school for daily use.

Please encourage your child to participate in the Active Sports Clubs that are on offer at lunchtimes and after school, as well as any school based clubs that take place throughout the year.  Keep looking in school bags for further information.

A reminder that all children who cycle or scooter to school must wear a safety helmet and ‘walk’ their bikes whilst in the playground. There are bike racks available.

Can we please remind you that Redwell is a nut-free school and nuts must not be brought in in any form (e.g. cereal bars, Nutella etc)

Class Birthdays

We always celebrate if a member of the class has a birthday however we would request that birthday cakes are not brought into school to share with the class. In school, we have children with allergies who may be at risk from some ingredients. The cutting up and distributing of birthday cake also cuts into valuable learning time.

Playground toys:

We have a playground equipment for children to play with during lunchtime.  Please do not bring in your own toys – except for Golden Time on a Friday – so that we can be sure that all toys in the playground belong to the school.  Many thanks for your support.

Golden Time toys:

Children can bring a ‘toy’ to school on a Friday to play with during Golden Time. Please remember that the school cannot take responsibility for the safety of these toys and therefore we request that your child does not bring in expensive/ electronic items without your consent.  We appreciate your support with this matter.

Cuddle On Couch/ Book & Blether:

Please look out for further information on the dates and times for Cuddle on the Couch and Book and a Blether.  These are a chance for parents/carers to spend time with their children promoting reading.

I look forward to working in partnership with you this session.

Many thanks,

Mrs Smith

This week we have been learning about St Andrew who is the patron saint of Scotland.  St Andrew was a friend of Jesus.  He died on an X-shaped cross because he thought that Jesus was special and he didn’t want to die in the same way.  St Andrews was named after him because the monk Regulus brought his bones there and built a church over them after an angel told him to in a dream.  Regulus didn’t mean to go to Scotland, but the weather was really stormy on the sea and he washed up on the coast.

In maths we have been learning how to tell the time and we have been practising our times tables using the Times Fables story book.  We have stories to help us to remember – why not ask us about the robin who lands on Tyler’s chair?!

We walked to the war memorial this morning and we thought about World War One.   We were surprised by how many names there were of people who had died and some of us found names similar to our own.  We saw different things to remember people who died.  We saw a memorial with a Jewish star of David, poppy wreaths and crosses with people’s names on them.

We saw the memorial for someone who had died only 9 years ago in Afghanistan.  We were surprised as we didn’t expect to see that people still died in wars.

We saw poppy wreaths which had been laid by some local churches, the police, the Beavers, the Cubs and the council.  Molly and Elise laid a wreath that we had made at the base of the statue.  We have also put a QR code that links to a video and poem we have written at the base of the statue.

The statue showed Saint Margaret who was a queen of Scotland 1000 years ago with soldiers at her feet.  Saint Margaret looked after children and orphans when she was alive, and she was caring. Saint Margaret’s husband and son were killed in a war and so we think she would understand what it is like to lose family members.

Thank you to all the helpers who meant that we could visit the war memorial, from P3S.

P3S are now on Twitter.  Check out #redwellp3s to see what we have been up to over the last week.

Last week in literacy we retold the story of The Witch of Fife.  The witch gets up to lots of adventures all over Scotland and ends up rescuing her husband from the Bishop of Carlisle.

In reading, we have been practising using expression with our faces, voices and bodies by reading and performing plays.  We had to work as a team to do this successfully.

In maths, we have been practising adding over the 10s barrier by using a number line to help us.  We have also been thinking about multiplication as “groups of” and have learned a few multiplication facts using a story to help us.

We learned about the Buddhist festival of Wesak in RME and over the next few weeks we are going to explore the different ways that different cultures celebrate this festival.

We have had a Halloween theme this week.  We have read The Worst Witch, The Witches and the Witch of Fife.  We made a story string with leaves and stones to tell the story of the Witch of Fife.

Every morning this week (except Friday) we took part in Rookie Rockstars.  Some of our favourite songs were Never Give Up and dancing to We will Rock You at the end!

We have written an Ochil Fairy Tale about Wee Tommy, who fell off a cliff but was rescued by the good fairies.

We have also learned about the History of Halloween and completed a crossword using the clues and our knowledge.

In maths we have invested our times tables using patterns and also maths investigations working as a group.

In literacy we went for a senses walk and looked, listened, felt and smelled all the autumnal things around us.  Then we wrote a poem about all the things we saw, using adjectives to make it interesting.

In RME we have looked inside a Buddhist temple and have learned about a day in the life of a Buddhist monk.

We have learned about using the internet safely with a catchy song and we have logged onto sumdog for the first time.  The sumdog logins are now in homework jotters and can be accessed from home.

In PE we learned about possession and played benchball and rugby.