Curriculum Update (Thursday 20th January 2022)
Hello and welcome to our third curricular update blog post of the session. Primary 2/3 have been very busy throughout term 2, working hard to organise and present their nativity production and complete their Christmas Enterprise topic of budgeting for and creating their Christmas crafts.
Literacy
In literacy our skills of prediction continued through links to our reading texts and class books and although this will continue to be applied in term 3, the focus will move toward sequencing and summarising the beginning, middle and end of our chapters or texts. This will also apply during topic, where pupils will scan and select relevant facts or information, summarising and note taking to create a bank of facts that will support them in creating their own pieces of writing.
As in previous terms, our reading and spelling activities are continuing at various times throughout the week. Children are using a mixture of practical, hands-on activities such as play dough, scrabble tiles, stencils and chalk boards to practice their spelling words but are also employing strategies such as ‘rainbow spell’ and ‘pyramid spell’ to reinforce their spelling knowledge at home and in class. We are using the Active Literacy phoneme stories and word building applications to help us recognise our spelling sound and words in texts we are accessing.
Our focus in writing has been descriptive writing throughout terms 1 and 2, and this will continue this term to build our vocabulary. In term 3, this will be extended to include narrative writing. Children will develop their own characters and settings, using their description skills to build their own stories whilst focusing on structure and sequencing of events to create a flow to tell a story using their own ideas.
Just a reminder that homework will continue to be sent out weekly on a Monday, so please check your children’s bags for their plastic wallet. Reading books will be attached to pupils’ accounts through our online Bug Club reading programme and all homework should be returned to school on a Friday.
Maths
Our focus in maths this term will be multiplication and division, however children will regularly revisit addition and subtraction skills to retain this knowledge. As with addition and subtraction, children will begin to make the link with multiplication and division through fact families and discussion of strategies. Place value, as always will be revisited throughout the term and applied to the new maths topics. The Circle maths group will revisit the 2, 5 and 10 times table whilst seeing the link between the 2, 4 and 8 x tables, in order to develop further the skills in multiplication developed earlier in the year. In the rectangle and triangle maths groups, the focus will be mainly the 2, 5 and 10 times tables.
In other areas of maths, time and fractions will be a focus as children build on their previous knowledge and apply this to a variety of problems. This will be a topic across all maths groups and differentiated appropriately to suit all learners. 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.
Health & Wellbeing
Our Paths Pupil of the Day is still being received well with pupils and our Pupil of the Day continues to receive lots of compliments and special jobs around the classroom. We are continuing to explore emotions, comfortable and uncomfortable and how we recognise these emotions within ourselves and in others. We are also looking at problem solving strategies through discussion, deciding what steps to take if we should experience uncomfortable emotions and prevent escalation when we are angry or frustrated. Using our traffic light system, which is displayed in the classroom, we hope to give children the tools to self-regulate these emotions or seek help to co-regulate.
In P.E, our sessions will happen inside (Tuesday) once per week, and outside (Thursday) once per week and our focus will be fitness and gymnastics. We are building on our term 2 topic of gymnastics to further develop skills as well as developing a sense of strength, speed, and stamina and how to look after our bodies through our fitness input.
R.E
Our focus during R.E sessions will be the Sacrament of Baptism whilst looking to the preparation required for our Sacrament of Reconciliation for our P3 pupils. As we do not yet have a confirmed date for this, booklets for Reconciliation will be issued to the children when a date has been decided. Thereafter, home tasks should be completed at home with children, to prepare as a family for this upcoming Sacrament. As Easter approaches, we will begin to look at the Easter Story to prepare the children for the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Topic
Our topics over the next term will be ‘The Romans’. This topic has already been well received by the children, who have already begun to look at the growth of The Roman Empire over a thousand-year period and the belief system of Roman people through research into their Roman Gods. The topic will also look at Roman soldiers, Roman society and lifestyle as well as construction of roads, buildings, bridges and mosaics. The topic will conclude with the impact of the Roman Empire in Scotland.
As always, we hope this is the start of another successful term as we begin our new topics across the curriculum.
Take care,
Mrs Travers
