Merry Christmas from Primary 4.  Wishing everyone a well deserved rest during the Christmas holidays.

Boys and girls, I’m looking forward to seeing you all again on the 7th January 2019, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Happy New Year to you and your families! I hope 2019 is full of health, happiness and lots of fun times for you 😘 Love Mrs Robertson.

As part of our LOL – Love Outdoor Learning sessions, P4 have had the opportunity to take apart various pieces of electrical equipment such as computers, desk fans, toasters, remote controls, straightners and use pliers and screwdrivers to investigate inside.

• This term, as part of our Autumn/Winter IDL, P4 have learned about Hibernation and Migration.

One child in our class owns a pet hedgehog called Luna and her mum brought Luna into class to visit us and to share some very interesting facts!

P4 prepared for Luna’s visit by writing a list of questions to ask.  Pupils confidently asked their questions and listened respectfully to the answers given! They then wrote a few paragraphs describing Luna’s visit and a few facts they had learned.  A lot of primary 4 were surprised to learn that Luna loves cat food, she doesn’t need to hibernate as she is a pet and is kept cosy at home and that her prickles are sharp enough to draw blood if she is frightened and curls up into a ball.

Many thanks to Luna and our P4 pupils parents for visiting our class!

P4 love generating their own questions using a wide variety of words as the answer.  This is either set as a 9 o’clock challenge or as part of our class literacy time.  EXAMPLE:-

Pupils are asked:-

Hair is the answer, what is the question?

They are then encouraged to come up with as many questions as they can.  P4 also enjoy creating their own riddles for classmates to answer.  Tasks such as these encourage pupils to strengthen their questioning skills which is a vital skills for learning, life and work.

P4 have learned various strategies to help with their subtraction sums such as the use of number lines and equations.  Some of the class find this method very helpful and enjoy recording their equations on whiteboards.

P4 will have regular opportunities to improve their fitness and stamina this term by taking part in “Gym Shoe Camp” – (kid boot camp).

They will complete bench presses, ski jumps, skipping, shuttle runs, squats, arm circles, star jumps etc.

Please take a look at photographs of us during our first “Gym Shoe Camp” below.

P4 enjoy using Literacy games in our classroom to help develop their knowledge and understanding of vocabulary.

Pupils can roll a dice and read story starters/prompts then write sentences on their whiteboards. They can choose words from various coloured envelopes and construct silly sentences.  Pupils can also match up rhyming words and pairs of words to make compound words.

Please take a look at some of our work.

At the end of term 1 P4 enjoyed creating their names in Viking Runes using sticks.

Primary 4 have been learning different ways to help them with their knowledge and understanding of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

Pupils have used manipulatives and resources such as hundred squares, number lines, counters, pegs, numicon and arrays to help deepen their conceptual understanding.

Today we learned that addition can be used to help with subtraction sums. Pupils created equations on their whiteboards to demonstrate this.

Primary 4 love kicking off their shoes and relaxing in our new reading area.

Pupils have chosen their own chapter books to read this term and will undertake a range of Book Detective roles to help them to investigate texts.

Our reading area is a great designated area for quiet reading and reflection.