2017-2018

Class Newsletter: Term 4 

Primary 1:

Dear Parent/Carer,

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

Learning in Term 3:

In Term 3 we learned all about Scotland. We learned that Scotland is the country that we live in and we learned about towns and cities. We can locate Scotland on a map and some of us even know the countries that make up the British Isles. We also learned to speak in Scots and used this knowledge to sing the ‘Heid, Shooders, Naps and Taes’ song and also recite the ‘A Hae a Wee Dug poem’. Through reading some Katie Morag stories, we identified the differences between life on the mainland and life on the island. We could not believe that the island did not have a big Tesco! We also wrote many fabulous stories about Hamish the Highland Cow and his many adventures to famous landmarks in Scotland. We also used local artist, Steven Brown as an inspiration and created our own ‘McCoo’ pieces of art. Not forgetting that we were superstars on stage and shared all of this learning with our loved ones and were brilliant tour guides at our Sharing of Learning afternoon.

Even though we were tired after all that hard work learning about Scotland, we still managed to learn about money, addition, 3D shapes and develop our mental arithmetic skills and share our learning strategies with our class mates. We also continued to learn more sounds in our reading lessons and we are becoming more confident, fluent and expressive in our reading.

Learning focus this term:

Through our learning context, Redwell’s Wildlife, we will be learning about:

• Animals found in our playground and how to create fact files about them
• The effect of litter in our playground and how to reduce this
• Fair-trade and what this means
• Trees and Plants in our grounds
• Areas of our playground, such as the pond and the vegetable patch
• Recycling at Redwell and within the wider community
• Life cycle of animals
• Food chains and food webs
• Sustainability and the Global Goals
• Pond dipping
• Role of the environment and our role in looking after it
• Human impact on wildlife

If you have any skills or knowledge in this area we would very much appreciate any input during our topic. If you would like, you could be a guest speaker in our classroom, or a learning leader in our grounds to help us learn even more about Redwell’s Wildlife. Any keen gardeners or wildlife enthusiasts please speak to class teachers to arrange a suitable time.

Core Literacy:

• We will continue to learn more sound digraphs and revise previously taught sounds.
• Tricky words will be taught and used in class.
• We will continue to focus on using capital letters, finger spaces and full stops in our writing. Some children will develop their use of connectives to join 2 sentences together.
• We will learn about labelling within our writing.
• We will begin to write imaginative stories where we will create our own characters.
• We will also learn about functional writing such as writing letters, postcards and invitations.

Core Mathematics and Numeracy:

• We will be learning about measuring length and will be able to use non-standard units of measure (hand span, cubes and straws etc.) as well as standard units such as centimetres and metres.
• We will be learning about measuring weight using kilograms.
• We will be learning how to estimate measurements and then check these using appropriate units.
• Through our topic about Redwell’s Wildlife, we will develop our data handling skills and will be focusing on using tally marks and creating different tables and charts.
• We will also be continuing to focus on counting in 2’s, 5’s, 10’s and identifying the numbers that come before and after a given number.

Core Health and Wellbeing:

• We will be learning about the life cycle of a plant.
• We will be learning about different needs of living things, including humans.
• We will be learning about different families.
• We will also be covering the Clackmannanshire Council’s Relationships, Sexual Health and Parenthood Education course of work.
• We will be learning about how to look after a baby.

Thank you for your continued support.

Kind regards,

Miss Fuller and Miss Stephens