Hurlford Primary School and Early Childhood Centre

Good morning, we have been very busy settling back into school routines and would like to draw your attention to our new gym slots for term 3. From next week we will be having gymnastics on a Thursday and ball skills on a Friday. Please can you send your child with shorts and gym shoes on both days and remove any earrings or jewellery too, this will be a great help. On a Thursday because it is gymnastics please could your child wear socks not tights, joggers or leggings for safety. If possible could your child please also wear shoes that they can get on and off by themselves, this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

In literacy we are continuing to revise and learn our initial sounds and this week we have been learning all about the letter uU for the sound unicorn and uniform in addition to the sound that u makes in the words umbrella and up.  The children have loved building a den in the class for under to help reinforce this phonics work. The children are continuing to concentrate hard developing decoding skills making 3 letter words with a, e, i, o and u in the middle. I hope you are now beginning to see in your child’s reading that they are becoming more confident at deciphering 3 letter words due to their phoneme knowledge and can now make 3 letter words well helping our writing skills. I have included a homework task involving rhyming 3 letter words. Thanks for your support with reading and helping your child gain confidence and in turn this will develop their fluency. The children enjoy being word detectives skimming and scanning for words using finger torches in class but this could be adapted at home with your child’s own books.

Topic Toys – the children are now having a go at reading unfamiliar stories and texts using their knowledge of the reading strategies across the curriculum. We are currently exploring the topic toys and how they work so if you have any books or are playing a game can you please support your child to understand the rules or encourage them to have a go at reading less familiar words. Through toys we are looking at forces, magnetism and how toys have evolved so if you have any of your childhood toys or game, it would be nice if you could look at them together too.

In maths, we are continuing are looking at addition. Counting quickly in 2s, 5s and 10s. I will add some Education City games for the children to try out.

For health and wellbeing, we are looking at safety and medicines alongside the continued importance of sharing, caring and social skills.

Thanks again for supporting your children with their homework tasks and have a good weekend.

Thank you for all that you do at home to support your child’s learning.

Wishing you a lovely relaxing week ahead.

Mrs Carey

What a quick week, here’s a round up of what Primary 6 have been doing.

For Literacy, we have been using research skills to prepare non- chronological reports on African animals. We then made information posters for our display. Our spelling focus was words with a soft c as in city. On Tuesday we started reading our class novel ‘The Demon Headmaster’. We made predictions about the story and were introduced to the main characters.

In Numeracy, we continued to work on fractions. We learned how to simply fractions by using division. Knowing our times tables facts really helps!

On Wednesday we started a new block of French lessons. We were learning how to introduce ourselves and tell our partner how we were feeling. We were all tres bien!

For Art & Design, we used printing and collage skills to create winter landscapes. We also finished our African ndebele patterns. We all did a great job.

Our Lion King rehearsals went really well and everyone played to the best of their abilities. We split into our three groups then shared our learning at the end.

We’re all ready for a bit of a rest at the weekend.

See you on Tuesday!

Good morning and belated Happy New Year.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year. We are back and ready to learn.

Click the link for an update from P3

Primary 3 ~ Our Updates

Good morning, and belated Happy New Year.

Go to this Sway

Good morning!

This is the first blog of 2023, I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and New Year and are feeling refreshed after the break.

The past few weeks have been focused on getting back into the routine of the classroom, revising what we have already covered and looking to the term ahead and setting some goals. Here is a summary of what we’ve been up to:

In literacy, we have been continuing to practice our cursive handwriting. Lots of the pupils are making good progress and are really proud of their efforts, keep practising! We have also been reading more of our novel “The Butterfly Lion” by Michael Morpurgo. Through this novel, the pupils have been developing their vocabulary and comprehension skills as well as researching some aspects mentioned in the story. P5 have all said they have been enjoying doing the task boards in class as it allows them to choose their own tasks and work independently. For writing this term, we will be focusing on persuasive writing and on Thursday we explored the features of persuasive writing and what persuasive phrases sounded like. The pupil were then put to the test and given the challenge to find 6 topic cards hidden in the playground and try to write to persuade their readers to agree with them on a a particular topic. We had great fun and certainly have some very persuasive pupils in our class!

In maths we have been revising what we know about shape and have been investigating different types of triangles and how to draw circles of a given radius. Although using a compass was tricky, the pupils demonstrated determination and were able to improve their skills. We also began to look at 3D shapes and their properties and enjoying a carousel of activities to explore these.

In other areas, we have been discussing New Year’s Resolutions and have chosen one to focus on for this term. We made bunting and hung it up in our classroom to remind us of our goals.

As we discovered, a lot of New Year’s Resolutions focused on improving our health and this term for health and wellbeing we will be exploring the effect of substances such as nicotine and what effect they have on the body.

We are continuing our Disney rehearsals as our show date comes ever closer! Keep an eye on the school app for updates on required props, costumes and important information!

Have a lovely weekend!

-Miss Frew x