Check out your child’s Learning Journals page for some photos from our recent trip to Blair Drummond.

P4 have been having a great time during their music technology inputs with Stuart from Sonappa.

We have been learning about melody and rhythm and have been using the functions of Garage Band to create our own digital compositions.

There are definitely some budding musicians in P4!

P4 had a fantastic afternoon celebrating their First Communion.
We had a delicious cake made by the very talented Ann from the kitchen, and enjoyed some party games and dancing.
We were delighted to be joined by Fr.Jim.

We are planning to go ahead with our sports day plan tomorrow and are looking forward to inviting our parents and carers in to see their children race. A few gentle reminders…

Please ensure that all children come to school dressed for sports day – they should not come dressed in school uniform and should wear sports clothing (as always – no football colours)

Please ensure that the clothes the children are wearing are weather appropriate – sensible shoes and a jacket if needed.

Please also ensure that the children have enough water for the day, they will be busy all day and have a timetable full of events.

Parents of classes are invited in as follows…

Primary 1 – 9:10

Primary 2 – 9:40

Primary 3 – 10:10

Nursery children – 11:00

Primary 4 – 11:30

Primary 5 – 12:00

Primary 6 – 1:30

Primary 7 – 2:10

We ask that when the classes have finished their races that the parents please leave swiftly to allow the next class set of parents to come in.

As always, we thank you for your support. Here’s hoping we get some sunshine!

#teammc

Primary 5 showing their competitive sides during their class bowling championships this morning

Parents and friends of Mount Carmel would like to thank you for all of your wonderful donations for our house hamper.

We still welcome any more donations this week and next and hope to raise a lot of money through our raffle tickets.

Raffle tickets can be bought through parentpay for £1 each as well as on sports day. Raffle winners to be drawn during our fun day on the 26th June.

As always, we thank you for your support

Parents and Friends of Mount Carmel 💙

We kindly ask that all children bring in their costumes ASAP as we are hoping to fit in a couple of dress rehearsals next week before our big performances. The chorus for our show are wearing white shirts, grey trousers or a skirt, white socks and black shoes.

We do really appreciate your support with this and without it we would be unable to put on such a spectacular show.

With thanks, always,

MC staff 😊

With our rehearsals well under way we wanted to share a little sneak peek with you all. I think you would agree the children are all excellent. We cannot wait to welcome you in to see our performance. Remember, get your tickets on Parentpay as we have limited numbers available.

We would like to give a great big thank you to Beth from Take A Bow who is giving up her own time to choreograph our dancers.

We have a new stage!!!

Our amazing Parents and Friends of Mount Carmel used some of their funds to buy the school a new stage, just in time for our MATILDA musical next month. The stage is built and looks amazing. We have a few very big thank yous to make. First of all, our Parents and friends of Mount Carmel. Thank you for providing the funds to buy the stage. Next we would like to give a big shout out to Stuart and Graham who travelled quite a distance to collect the stage. And finally, a big thank you to our very own Mr Leslie who spent this afternoon building the stage. It is now ready for the children to rehearse on tomorrow.

We cannot wait for you all to see our show!

#teammc

Primary 4 – 7 children have been busy rehearsing and getting every thing ready for the big show. The children have been given a letter home today with information regarding costumes. We are asking for your help with providing your son/daughter with what they need; however, if for any reason this is causing issues or you require support for this then please do not hesitate to get in contact with the school office and we will do everything we can to ensure that the children have everything they need to perform.

As always, the staff at Mount carmel would like to thank our parents for their ongoing support. Without it, we would be unable to put on these awesome shows.

Thank you!

#teammc

With less than 3 weeks to go until our opening night, rehearsals are well underway. We hope you have the popcorn ready… You are in for a treat!!

Our advertising group for Matilda paid a visit to our friends and neighbours at Crossgates yesterday to invite them along to our community performance of Matilda. The group got to meet some of the wonderful residents and staff. We can’t wait to see you at the show everyone 💕

Primary 5 have had a brilliant morning making snores and den building. We also took our reading outside to enjoy in the sunshine as well as creating some transient art with natural materials.

May is a month traditionally dedicated to Our Lady and the Rosary. Mary, the mother of God, was a loving mother and a model for us all.

During this month, all our classes are making a special effort to pray the Rosary to help us to reflect on the life of Mary and Jesus.

As the Mount Carmel Missio Champions, Primary 4 put together some ideas to help us all learn about Mary and to pray the rosary.  We distributed these to all classes.

Our Lady, Queen of Peace, pray for us.

On Wednesday, our Primary 4 and Primary 5 classes will be taking part in outdoor activities to celebrate Natural Scotland week. We were hoping to go to the Dean Park; however, due to the Mayfest the park will be closed. The classes are very excited to be den building, making smores and roasted marshmallows in the morning and then we can continue with our rehearsals for MATILDA in the afternoon.

Please ensure that the children have suitable outdoor clothing on (jogging bottoms or leggings) with school uniform on top. They should also have suitable outdoor shoes on as we will be on the grass.

Thank you for your continuing support,

Mrs McCreadie and Mrs MacKinnon

A gentle reminder that our Primary 5 class are heading to the North West Bowling Club on Monday morning. The class will be leaving at around 9:15am. Please ensure that the children have suitable clothing on (including flat shoes for the bowling green) as we will be walking there and back. The children are very excited to be taking part in this experience for the next few weeks.

That’s rehearsals underway today with the main cast having their very first read through.

Get your dates in the diary … Tuesday 11th June evening performance and Wednesday 12th June afternoon performance.  Tickets on sale soon. Keep your eyes peeled!!

Curricular Update Primary 6

Term 4 – 2024

Welcome back to Primary 6 curricular update, a busy and exciting final term. Primary 6 will prepare to transition into primary 7 and will have the opportunity to interview for captain and vice-captain house roles. Primary 6 will have the responsibility of becoming a buddy to new primary 1’s who will be starting Mount Carmel in August. The upper school summer show will be performed in June and we will be showcasing all of our hard work as we present to you …… ‘Matilda’!!

Please see below for an overview of what we will be learning this term:

Numeracy

This term we will focus on Area, Perimeter and Volume, Angles, Information Handling and Function Machines. Daily revision and rigour of decimals, percentages and fractions and the four operations will still continue throughout term 4. Children are as always encouraged to practise their multiplication tables.

Literacy

Reading – We will continue to read books appropriate to our levels and we will focus on fiction texts. We will complete daily reading to writing tasks and work on our active comprehension tasks. This term we will focus on understanding the difference between fact and opinion, the authors use of language, and inference.

Writing - This term we will be completing report writing where we will be linking it with our science topic. Further into term 4 we will complete recount writing.

Spelling - we will continue to follow the active literacy spelling programme in our appropriate groups, focusing on common words and phonemes relevant to their level and stage. Some weeks pupils will be given topic-specific vocabulary as part of their topic.  New spelling words will be introduced each week, which will coincide with homework tasks. Pupils will revise the Active Spelling strategies throughout Term 4.

HWB

In term 4 primary 6 will continue to take part in Do Be-Mindful activities, some activities will be part of homework tasks. At the start of the term P6 will complete a mini topic on Substance Misuse looking at the dangers of smoking/vaping, alcohol and drugs usage.

PE days will be Wednesday and Thursday please remember to bring full PE kit on these days. This term we will be participating in Volleyball, Athletics and Orienteering. Pupils are asked to bring FULL PE kit on these days, this includes indoor shoes.

Expressive Arts

This term we have our summer show which P6 are very excited about as there are lots of jobs available to apply for. This gives them opportunities to enjoy being creative and imaginative, express emotions, performing for different audiences and being part of audiences for others. They will be able to showcase their talents from performing, props, sound production and stage settings. Working together as un upper school team we will be learning key skills in music, art and design, dance and drama.

Religious Education

Throughout this term P6 will continue to work on their Pope Francis Faith Award, reflecting on how they use the different gifts in their wider world which will continue with them into P7. We will listen and engage with stories from the Gospel of Matthew.

Modern Languages 

This term pupils will focus on hobbies, food and drink and descriptions in French.

We will continue French with the aim to increase their confidence in reading, writing and talking in French.

IDL

This term a big part of our topic will be on enterprise and the summer show. We will all have very important roles to play in the production to make sure the show is successful. Part of our mini science topic this term, primary 6 voted to learn more around volcanoes and chemical reactions.

Thank you for your support,

Miss Maitland.

Primary 5 Curricular update – Term 4

Welcome back and I hope you all had an excellent Easter. The children have settled well back into school and are ready for the term ahead. Please find a brief overview of the learning that will take place in the term ahead as we approach summer.

IDL

The children are thoroughly enjoying their continents topic. This will continue for a short time after the holidays before we complete our final topic of P5 – A night at the movies. This is an enterprise topic in which the children must budget and plan an event in order to make a profit. My current thoughts on this are to hold a movie night for P1-4 in late May/early June. The P5 children will plan a night with popcorn, juice and show a movie at a small cost to the P1-4s. I have not discussed these plans with the children yet; therefore they might change as the term progresses.

Literacy

Throughout our grammar this term, we will be learning about pronouns, proper nouns, adverbs and metaphors. We will also be looking at onomatopoeia. These skills will be transferred across our learning in writing as well as reading.

We will continue to learn about our comprehension skills such as prior knowledge, metalinguistics, visualisation etc. We have already began to take notes when watching or listening to a piece of media. We will explore this skill so that the children can decide what style of note taking they prefer.

Primary 5 will continue to proof read and edit all writing tasks. The children find this task difficult and can often skip over their mistakes. This skill takes a lot of concentration and patience. We will be practising this for the rest of the school year.

Our writing focus for the term ahead will be on report writing and recounts. The children will continue to work on their spelling rules through active spelling activities such as diacritical marking and definition spelling.

Our listening and talking skills to be worked on this term are our ability to present to the class. The children will create a SWAY (an online power point) and then present this to the class. They will work towards achieving specific success criteria throughout this process such as good eye contact, pace of speech etc.

Numeracy

After an extremely busy term between January and March, the children are ready to begin division after Easter. Division links well with the teaching of fractions and decimals which is the reason behind them being taught together. Our beyond number topics will include data handling and measurement. The children worked very well on learning their 24 hour time. Although there is good understanding of this, we will continue to practise this skill as the majority of the class did find this topic difficult.

Our learning through number talks will continue as the children develop their ability to solve calculation mentally.

Health and Wellbeing

Our P.E. days will be on a Monday and a Wednesday. Our topics that will be covered this term are dancing (this will be completed through our summer show), tennis, athletics (in preparation for sports day) and outdoor games as we approach summer.

Primary 5 have also been lucky enough to have Bob from the North West bowling club into school to teach us how to play lawn bowls. When the new season of bowls starts up in April, Primary 5 will also be visiting the North West bowling club to play bowls on the actual green. We are very excited.

We will also continue our Do be mindful programme of work which encourages us all to be more mindful of our surroundings and provides us all with strategies to stay calm. As we progress through the term, we will be learning about substance misuse and the consequences on our health and well-being that substance misuse can cause.

We will also be looking at what it takes to be a parent/carer. The children will discuss what it means to care for someone the way their adults care for them.

Religious Education

This term will focus on how God reveals himself to us through Jesus and how we can nurture our relationship with God. We will also learn how our relationship with God can be deepened through prayer and placing our trust in him. The class will also look at the Holy Spirit and how the Holy Spirit can help guide us through life’s difficulties.

During the month of May, we celebrate the mother of God Mary. We will look at Mary’s importance in our everyday lives and how important she was in Jesus’ life.

The class will also learn about the rosary. We will look at the joyful, sorrowful, glorious and luminous mysteries of the rosary.

Technology

The children’s I.T. skills are growing every day. They can now confidently send emails with attachments in them. We have been working on creating sways of our choice. Next term, we will be using our research skills to create a SWAY about our continents topic. The children will then present this to the class.

Expressive Arts

This term’s expressive arts will be completely covered during our summer show. We will complete art, music, drama and dance through this. Staff are already busy getting ready and re looking forward to inviting you all in for the final show. Keep your eyes peeled for all the important information on the blog.

I, as always, thank you for your ongoing support. If there is anything you are concerned about please do not hesitate to get in contact.

Many thanks,

Mrs McCreadie

We hope you all had a lovely Easter break. As we head into our final term, Primary 1 are “in training” for moving up to Primary 2.  As well as pushing on with new learning, we will be working hard to consolidate the learning that has taken place throughout the year.

Literacy

Phonics – Now that we have learnt all the sounds in the alphabet and are using these to make and break words, we are going to start learning the sounds made by two or more letters such as “sh” “ch” “th” (joint phonemes).

Spelling – We will continue to practise the spelling of our tricky common words to ensure we can use these when writing sentences. We will learn some new words to add to our ever growing bank of vocabulary.

Writing – We are continuing to develop our skills in describing this term and using these skills to write reports about what we are learning in our topic.

Letter formation and hand writing will continue to be a focus to allow us to present our wonderful work as neatly as we can. Knowing how to form our letters automatically will help us to spell words with ease too.

Reading – Reading for information will be a focus this term. We will look at non-fiction texts and record the facts we learn.  We will also continue to practise our decoding skills by reading all types of text whenever we can.

Numeracy – Primary 1

The focus for Numeracy this term will be number processes, measure and time.

P1 – We will keep strengthening our addition and subtraction skills this term by exploring how the two processes link together. We will be transferring these skills into our money activities and using them to solve word problems.

Measure will also be a focus for us and will be linked to our “Plants” topic as we use the correct language to describe the size of various plants. We will measure using non-standard units such as our hand spans, feet and cubes. We will also be exploring data handling to interpret information from graphs and sort our plants into specific groups.

Health & Well-Being (HWB)

During our last term of PATHS lessons we will be introduced to some new emotions. We will explore each emotion in detail, thinking about how each emotion looks and feels and will consider whether it would be a “comfortable” or “uncomfortable” feeling.

We will also continue to reinforce our strategy of “Doing Turtle” and will use our PATHS sessions to talk through our feelings about moving into our new class at the end of the year.

We will be learning about our amazing bodies and the correct names for each body part.

During PE we will be focusing on Athletics, Striking and Fielding Games and Dance.

THANK YOU ONCE AGAIN FOR TAKING ALL EARRINGS OUT FOR GYM DAYS ON MONDAYS AND THURDAYS.

RE

During the month of May, we honour “Mary”. We will recite our special prayer of the “Hail Mary” and revisit the stories of the Nativity, Annunciation and Visitation; giving special consideration to the role of Mary in each one. We will prepare our class altar in honour of Mary.

During this term, we will link our RE with our HWB through the teaching of “God’s Loving Plan.” We will be thanking God for our amazing bodies! We will learn the names of the body parts and consider the choices we can make to help look after our bodies.

We will also talk about the needs of a new born baby; learning about the tasks and equipment required to look after a baby.

IDL (Topic)

Our topic this term will be “Plants”. We will investigate the parts of a plant and consider the things we need to do to help them grow.

During our topic we will also link with Literacy, Health and Well-being and Numeracy. There will be opportunities for reading and writing for information as well as practical activities involving measuring and comparing.

A fun and exciting summer term ahead with lots to look forward to!

Mrs Duff

A busy meeting after school today (in the sunshine)…

All cast members and roles to be announced tomorrow….

Keep your eyes peeled for updates ☺️

To all parents and carers of p4&5 children,

Myself and Mrs MacKinnon have been keeping an eye on the forecast for our trip to the Dean Park tomorrow and in true Scottish fashion, it has to be rainy and windy. We have made the decision to postpone this trip until the last term. We have made this decision based on a few reasons. First and foremost, this trip was a treat for the children and we don’t want them being cold, wet and miserable. Secondly, if it is raining heavily, we will be unable to access the park (the slide in particular) as it will not be safe for the children to access. And lastly, we had already heard from the rangers at the Dean Park to say that they were unable to accommodate our inputs of mammals and den building tomorrow due to unforseen circumstances (although they are more than willing to change the date for these). We were happy to go ahead with our trip regardless of this, however we feel that with the added restrictions due to bad weather, we would be better to go at a later date. We are very sorry to have had to make this decision, but as always, the children’s safety is paramount. I hope everyone understands and we will definitely get looking at another date for the trip in the next term.

As always, we thank you for your support,

Mrs McCreadie

What a day we had to raise money for SCIAF on Tuesday. Thank you to all of our parents and carers. We raised an amazing amount of money for SCIAF and the children (and staff) had a day full of fun activities too. 

We had a superb turn out of pupils wearing green for St. Patrick’s Day last week ☘

On Tuesday 19th March, Primary 5 are organising a SCIAF fun day for the entire school. We are asking all our children to bring in a donation to take part in this day full of activities. The money raised will go straight into the charity boxes in each class. On this day, we have our active schools co-ordinator Mark Devlin providing a golf input for every class, we have gardening with Mr Leslie, litter picking, egg decorating and much more. We are also going to have some outdoor play and with this ask that your child brings in an outdoor toy such as a bike or a scooter for this time. They must bring a helmet due to health and safety reasons.

We are also asking that children wear old clothes on their bottom half due to the nature of these activities as we may get mucky during them. School jumpers should be worn on top.

Please give a small donation to this wonderful charity.

We can’t wait!

Thank you, Primary 5

Happy New Year to you all and I hope Santa was good to you! And so we enter P7’s final year at primary!!  Good to see all the pupils back after the holidays, refreshed and ready to learn.  Here is a brief overview of our learning focus this term.

Literacy

This term we will continue to develop reading skills through a non-fiction class book.  We will also be reading texts to identify fact and opinion and discuss the reliability of sources of information.  For writing, we are concentrating on persuasive texts until the February holiday then look at discussion writing, focussing on topical debates.  For spelling, the Suns will continue to look at prefixes and how they change the meaning of words.  The Moons and Stars will continue to focus on core phonemes with their different representations.  Our grammar will be looking at using topic sentences in paragraphs and using formal language in texts.

Numeracy

The emphasis of our numeracy this term is on fractions, decimals and percentages and how they interlink.  Having completed the set Number Talk discussions, we will continue to use Number Talk strategies to develop mental strategies using all four processes.  The class are also working on skills beyond number and will be investigating data handling.

Health and Wellbeing

The PATHS focus this term is ­­­­­­­­­looking at respect and how to deal with conflicts and identifying positive steps to de-escalate situations.  We will also continue to praise and compliment children through Pupil of the Day.  We are also exploring risk taking behaviour including substance misuse and practise basic first aid procedures.

We will be first concentrating on gymnastics looking at combing our skills in to creating a short sequence of manoeuvres.  We also aim to develop our team game skills through netball where we will understand different roles within the team.

IDL

The topic this term is investigating Land Uses with emphasis on business and tourism.  Pupils will be investigating local tourist attractions and how land around us is used.  Children will also look at using the land in a sustainable way and what steps they can take to live in a more eco-friendly way.

RE

This term we will be aiming to complete our Pope Francis Faith Award journals, revising all the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and giving evidence of them being used in the school, at home and in the community or Parish.  As well as this, there will be a final reflection on how the Gifts will help support them as they develop and grow.

French

Through a range of talking, listening, reading and writing tasks, this term the focus will be on describing pets as well as their likes and dislikes.

Technologies

This term P7 will look at coding and understand its importance within society.  We will use block coding software to program small digital devices and explore various commands to create games and move characters within games.

I look forward to working with P7 in their final year and will enjoy accompanying them on their trip to Lockerbie this term.

Mr Bertoncini