Dalrymple Primary 3 2022/2023

This week we have been continuing learning about the World Cup and completing different activities within different curricular areas.  We started off using our researching skills and numeracy skills to work out how many goals had been scored in each group during the group stages.

We then took this information and presented it in a bar graph.

In numeracy, we have also been revising how to identify a specific square on a grid using grid references.  Unfortunately Santa had lost all of his reindeer, but luckily we managed to help him find them so he can still deliver all the presents on Christmas Eve 🎅 🦌

We have been continuing reading our class novel ‘Horrid Henry’.  This week we were concentrating on characterisation and how the author gives an insight into the characters through using alliteration in their names, with the first word being an adjective, either in a positive way or negative.

Miss Hunter challenged us to creative alliterative names for children in the class in the same style as the author.  She was so impressed at what we came up with:

Fabulous Fara (created by Mollie)

Creative Caoimhe (created by Anna)

Kind Kyle (created by Conner)

Lovely Lacey (created by Charley)

Flexible Fara (created by Sophie)

We are back to doing some more work on multiplying and dividing and learning the facts in some more times tables.  This week we have started focusing on the 2 times table, and will build on this with the 4 times table and possibly the 8 times table before we stop for our Christmas holidays.

On Wednesday the whole school visited the Palace Theatre in Kilmarnock to get into the festive spirit.  We really enjoyed watching their pantomime ‘Snow White’.

Our French lessons just now are focussed on learning the vocabulary for colours.  We are really good with these orally so we are now trying to recognise these when they are written in the French language.

This week we have started reading a class novel rather than reading in our groups.  We are reading ‘Horrid Henry’ and have really enjoyed the first short story in the book.  Miss Hunter challenged us to create a character description of Henry using our prior knowledge of the character and what we learned about him from reading this first story.

We have also been using the internet to research a country that has been taking part in the World Cup.  We discussed facts that we could find out about our chosen country and then made notes on what we found out.

This week saw us move into December and the excitement of all things Christmas.  Charley was the lucky person to open our class advent calendar on the 1st.  Each day of the advent calendar allows the lucky person to put a bauble on the Christmas tree, choose a wrapped book for us to listen to in the class and perform a random act of kindness.

This week we also started looking at the concept of symmetry.  We started off exploring symmetry in the flags of the countries taking part in the World Cup, then tried to complete some Christmas themed symmetrical pictures.

Well done to Mollie for receiving an award at assembly this week for displaying the values of joy and ambition in her numeracy work.

We have had a very busy week this week but unfortunately not many photos to show the amazing work we have been doing.

We have built upon our addition work in P2 and have started looking at how to add 2 digit numbers with other 2 digit numbers.  We have been using the partitioning strategy to help by combining the units firstly and then the tens. We have also explored how to write this in a more formal way.  Not only have we done this with 2 digit numbers, we have carried out some calculations which involve 3 digit numbers.

Within our science lesson this week, we were trying to find different materials that were insulators of electricity and those that were conductors.  We enjoyed experimenting with our circuits and different materials around the classroom.

This week was Book Week Scotland.  We were very lucky to all receive a bag full of goodies from the Scottish Book Trust which we were excited to take home and explore what was in them.

Throughout the week we did some book related activities including a listen and colour activity linked to some very well known book characters.

We also listened to a story every day, some of which were previous books gifted to children through the Read, Write, Count campaign and voted at the end of the week on which we was our favourite.

Our morning challenge this week has built on previous learning in P3 of comparing numbers using the greater than (>) symbol and the less than (<) symbol.  However, this week it was not numbers we were comparing, but simple calculations which we had to answer first before we could choose the correct symbol to put in to complete the statement.

Finally this week we have put our learning of electrical circuits from last week into action by building our own circuits using the necessary equipment.  We were all really excited when we could see the light bulbs lighting up and there was even some problem solving happening when some bulbs didn’t light up.

This week we have started a block of work on adding and subtracting.  Firstly the children were challenged to create a poster showing their understanding of these concepts from previous learning.

Then we used the 0-9 digit cards to help us create number families to show the link between addition and subtraction calculations.

We have been continuing using the features of a word document during our time in the ICT suite.  This week we used the common words we have learned so far during Stage 3 of the East Ayrshire Literacy Phonics programme, typed them on the document and then changed the font, colour and size of them.

In Science we started to look at electrical circuits and the components needed to create a circuit. We watched a video first and then tried to draw a circuit using our understanding of what we watched.

This week our morning challenge has been to write as many calculations as possible that would give the answer in the middle of the screen.  This is in preparation for a block of work on adding and subtracting, but also gives us the chance to revise the work we have been doing on multiplying and dividing.

During our Health & Well-being lessons, we have started looking at Substance Misuse.  We have been thinking about substances that are safe and unsafe for us at this age.

Well done to Anna for getting our first individual award at assembly on Thursday.  She received this for displaying our value of ‘Ambition’ within her writing through the vocabulary she is using.

We have had an extremely busy first week back after the holidays.

During writing, we have been making use of different aids to help us with our spelling.  We have started using the new double-sided phoneme mats with all the phonemes we have learned in P1 & P2 and we continue to use our common word key rings which are set up like a dictionary.

This has been our first consolidation week to revise the new phonemes we have learned in P3.  We have enjoyed playing Musical Chairs and creating graffiti walls with our chosen phoneme.

On Thursday of this week, Chris from the SSPCA visited our class for a ‘Rabbit Rescue’ workshop.  We had a great time learning about everything to do with looking after rabbits.

We have also started learning about a new concept in numeracy.  We have been learning how to round numbers to the nearest 10 with the aid of a number line.

We have all settled into P3 really well in our new classroom.  Term 1 has flown past and we have already finished week 1 of term 2!  Please see the attached document which details some of the learning we will be doing in term 2 in the lead up to our Christmas holidays.

Term 2 Parents Overview 22-23

To help us improve our writing, we have started to use the highlighter pens to identify the core targets we need in every piece of writing we do (punctuation – yellow, openers – green, connectives – pink and interesting vocabulary – blue).

As you can see from the above examples, we are quite good with most of our core targets but many of us need to try to include more interesting vocabulary as there are no words highlighted blue in these pieces.

Now that we are becoming more confident at logging into Glow, we have started to use Microsoft Outlook as a way of emailing people.  Miss Hunter got bombarded with emails from all of us this week.

We performed our Harvest Assembly to the rest of the school and those parents/guardians who were able to join us for it.  We enjoyed some time visiting the ECC in the afternoon to sing some of our songs again as the boys and girls in the ECC had been learning them too.