Welcome back and Happy New Year! We hope you and your families had a relaxed, enjoyable holiday. 2026 already! Primary 5 are making excellent progress and establishing themselves as sensible, reliable upper school pupils. We are also glad to welcome back a familiar face to our class, Miss Grimley!
During term 3 our focus will be:
Literacy
We will be using Bug Club and Giglets as our differentiated reading resource and will be developing our fluency and comprehension skills through the use of these resources both in class and as homework. In addition, some pupils may use an independent novels, poems or books as their literacy focus to aid reading and writing skills. This term we will be focussing on the genres of ‘persuasive’ and ‘report’ writing using our reading skills and IDL topic work to inform our pieces. In reading, fluency, expression and comprehension will continue to be our priority; some groups will continue to look at inference and creation of questions. We will also look at Scottish poetry this term as a class. We will explore and extend our knowledge of plurals and apostrophes, as well as refine and develop our use of punctuation. Spelling will continue to take the form of active activities related to the ‘Active Spelling’ resource, the children will continue to experience phonemes and blends pertinent to the ability and stage.
Numeracy
Pupils will continue in their working groups focussing on 1st and 2nd level concepts. The circles and rectangles groups will be tackling multiplication and division with remainders. The squares and rectangles will also focus on these areas at their level focussing on quick recall of facts. This will include learning new multiplication and division strategies for longer multiplication.
All pupils will also look at Money with Miss Grimley, with links to addition and subtraction and will later focus on Fractions and Decimals as part of their Beyond Number topic on a Friday.
It is essential that times tables should continue to be practised at home regularly to ensure quick recall, as this will aid our learning in multiplication this term. Please also allow your children to experience ‘real’ money and chat with them about finance and budgeting appropriate to their age/stage.
Health and Well-being/ P.E
Pupils will continue to focus on our PATHS programme in class with Miss Grimley, building knowledge of our strategies relating to emotional regulation. Pupils are aware of their place within the upper school and the responsibility that goes with it. We will also look at substances that can damage our physical and emotional health, appropriate to our age and being Cyber Aware to protect ourselves online.
In P.E., we will be looking at
Tuesdays – Badminton/Tennis (Mrs McI) **Football input potentially**
Fridays – Hockey (Miss G)
RRS
We will be looking at the articles and rights involved and associated in Holocaust Memorial Day in late January, Safe Internet Day and Children’s Mental Health Week in February, and World Book Day and World Water Day in March.
R.E
This term we will look at daily life in Jesus’ time and First century Palestine. Also, we will be learning about Judaism to link in with this. During the term, we will also be preparing for Lent as we approach Easter time. Pupils will also continue to learn prayers and focus on reflection this term in class. As the term proceeds, we will prepare for and observe Lent in the approach to Easter, looking at this closer in class and assemblies.
IDL
Our IDL focus this term is ‘Continents’; pupils will use their previous skills and knowledge from our ‘Living things/ Climate change’ topic to take a closer look at individual continents. We will look at countries within continents, surrounding oceans, mapping skills, examine population, weather culture and traditions. Writing, ICT and Expressive arts lessons will also relate to this. We hope to share some of this learning with you.
As always, we are enjoying our time working with your children. Here’s to another fantastic term!
Thanks for your on-going support.
Mrs McIntyre & Miss Grimley
