Hello and welcome to our very first blog post of the new session. Primary 4 have been very busy settling into our new classroom and our new routines. Children have been working hard to become familiarised with their class groupings, recapping previous learning and are enhancing this through our outdoor learning activities.

Literacy

Our class novel is ‘Horton Hears a Who’ and through this text, the context and the discovery of Who-Ville, pupils have explored our outdoor area, looking for ‘tiny’ living things, whilst finding natural resources to create scenes from ‘Who-Ville’. Pupils have also enjoyed some imaginative writing, describing their visit to Who-Ville with Horton and giving detailed descriptions of their time on the tiny speck of dust! Some of their ideas on how they shrunk small enough to be able to visit Who-Ville, were very exciting!

Our reading and spelling activities are now underway, and children have been working within groups to revisit previous sounds and texts, ready to use their skills and strategies to tackle new and unfamiliar spelling sounds and reading books. Our focus in writing currently is imaginative and report writing, and ideas will be developed from our class novel and mini topic!

Homework will be sent today so please check your children’s bags for a plastic wallet.  Reading books will be from our ‘Independent Readers’ section of our Bug Club Online for the first week, there after a hard copy of a banded reading book will be issued in their homework wallet. These will be issued on a Monday and should be returned to school on a Thursday.

Maths

Our focus in maths will be multiplication and division, however we will regularly revisit addition and subtraction as well as word problems to consolidate our strategies within the 4 operations of number. Children will regularly use their ‘Thinking It Through’ jotters to develop problem solving skills, applying knowledge of number to new contexts and develop strategies for any number problems. We will also encourage these skills through our daily number challenges and number target board!

Health & Wellbeing

Our Paths Pupil of the Day has now begun, and our Pupil of the Day has been receiving lots of compliments and special jobs around the classroom. All children will have the opportunity to be pupil of the day. We have been exploring emotions, comfortable and uncomfortable and how we recognise these emotions within ourselves and in others.

In P.E, our sessions will happen outside, and our focus will be on team games and small ball skills. Children will have the opportunity to partake in some fun activities which support teamwork whilst focusing on developing their racquet and small ball skills.

R.E

Our focus during R.E sessions will be on prayer, their meaning, the routines of the church and the celebration of Mass. As we will soon be beginning our preparation for Confirmation and First Communion, the Sacraments will be discussed in depth, so children fully understand each of the Sacraments and their importance in their relationship with God.

Mini-Topic

As the children chose animals as the focus of our Class Charter, their interest in the animal kingdom has developed into a new mini topic! We have been researching animal classifications, looking at the 6 different animal classes and finding out some interesting facts about each of these categories. This has led to how we can look after our environment to keep animals in our community safe. We discussed and further explored how trees are the earth’s lifeline, and   pupils have been learning about the impact of deforestation and harmful plastics that pollute our seas.

We hope this is the start of a very successful term and that the pupils are enjoying their return to school, despite the environment being a little different to how it was before we closed in March.

Take care,

Mrs Travers