Well we definitely know how to have fun at MC. Here are a few pictures from our fantastic day on Wednesday (even if the good old Scottish weather meant we couldn’t go outside). We would like to give a great big shout out and thank you to our wonderful Friends of Mount Carmel who organised our fun day. We had a blast. We would also like to say a great big thank you to Deborah Boyd who has been an amazing friend of Mount Carmel for many years. She has been a parent at our school for the last 13 years and has helped organised many fun days! We will miss you and thank you Deborah  💙

#teammc

More photographs from our wonderful senior school show ‘The Wizard of Oz’

Click on the link below

The Wizard of Oz – June 2023 

Although the costumes have been packed away, the make up and face paint has finally washed off and the set has been dismantled, the memories of our Senior Show live on.

We are delighted to share some of the photos of the wonderful cast and crew of ‘The Wizard of Oz’.

Thanks and Good Luck!

Over the past few years the children have been supported by Jason; (you may have heard your children mention him.) Jason is part of a team that provide sports activities and games for our children. He has coordinated multi sports clubs and helped facilitate health inputs and transition games. The children are so fond of him and he has an excellent way of motivating and engaging them throughout! Jason is leaving us this year to pursue his dreams of becoming a teacher! We wish him luck and believe he will be outstanding in this role when the time comes!

Thank you from all your Mount Carmel Family.

Next week Primary 6 will embark on God’s Loving Plan.

God’s Loving Plan teaches children how to develop healthy and respectful attitudes to their bodies and all aspects of God’s gift of life. ‘God’s Loving Plan’ connects the Religious Education curriculum and the Health and wellbeing curriculum.

Any parents and carers who do not wish their child to be part of these lessons please contact the school by 3pm on Friday 23rd June. 

Thank you,

Mrs. Terras

As you are aware our School Improvement Plan forms the basis of our school developments.  It is essential that parents and carers are fully involved in the creation of this plan.

Please take some time to put forward your views on the progress we have made with our plan for this year and share your views on what should happen next. This survey will remain open until Friday 12th May.

Please complete the survey below:

You will also require to review a copy of our Family School Improvement Plan.

Family SIP 2022-2023

Today we announced the cast for our production of the Wizard of Oz. Congratulations to everyone who got a part! It was lovely to see everyone cheering each other on.

Unfortunately the scripts that were handed out today have pages missing. They will need to be reissued tomorrow when they are reprinted.

Thank you,

Mrs Terras

Oak Room

The Oak Room children have continued their tasks after the holidays and we are loving the better weather! This has allowed us to participate in outdoor painting with the sun in our faces.

We are working our way through group novels including ‘Westlandia’, ‘Doodlebug Alley’ and ‘Mouse Noses on Toast.’ We love to have some calm reading time after lunch to help our minds prepare for learning.

 Pupils this term are focussing on ‘Goal Setting’; this allows them to set a realistic target around their social and emotional development and staff are able to support their achievement of this. Discussions around perseverance and making choices are linked to this. Throughout this topic we will also continue to learn how to understand and manage our feelings.

Pupils will be supported with their hopes and fears around transition into the next academic session during our tasks this term, as we understand although exciting for some, this can be a daunting  time for others.

 Children are continuing to achieve success using their ‘Pot of Gold’ target trackers and we have already had a few special treats relating to these.

A special welcome to the children who joined the group after the Easter holidays, the feedback around this has been hugely positive!

As always your support is hugely appreciated.

Mrs Crawford

Primary 5 Curriculum update Term 4

Hello everyone!

Primary 5 had an excellent term last term with lots of hard work and fun taking place. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the children for all of their hard work during this time. They really have been working their socks off and should be very proud of themselves. They even led a whole school Mass on the last week of term. This was an excellent achievement.

I would also like to thank the children’s adults for their continued support. Without you, I wouldn’t get to teach such wonderful children. It was also lovely to see some of you at our sharing the learning afternoon. We hope you enjoyed yourselves.

This term will again be really busy with everything from assessments to whole school summer trips as we complete our P5 journey. Please see below some aspects of the curriculum that we will be covering between April and June.

Literacy

We will be exploring discursive writing as our writing genre this term. Within this genre, the children will be expected to explain their thoughts and feelings regarding a particular topic whilst attempting to influence/persuade the reader. This will focus on the writer’s word choice, the use of rhetorical questions and emotive language. The children are also working on their ability to read over what they have written and then re-draft their work using Microsoft word.

The children have been working extremely hard on their grammar skills and this term will focus on alliteration, onomatopoeia and compound words.

The class will continue to develop their reading and comprehension skills through working on their ability to answer different styles of comprehension questions. This is something we have already been looking at; however up until now, this has been very structured and taken at a slow pace This term, I will be looking for a more independent approach to these questions.

Numeracy

The children worked extremely hard last term on division and fractions, as well as linking these to percentages and decimals. This term we will focus on addition and subtraction up to 4 digits. Within addition, we will look at addition with whole numbers as well as decimal numbers and within subtraction the focus will be more around exchanging through place value columns.

Our beyond number topic will be measurement with the first focus being area and perimeter before we move onto volume and mass.

Another aspect of numeracy that will be covered this term is data handling. Throughout this, we will cover bar charts and tally marks. We will also use our knowledge of fractions from last term to help us understand pie charts.

Health and Well being

Health and Well Being this term will have a focus on food health whilst looking at the key nutrient groups and food diversity we require to stay healthy.

God’s loving plan will also be covered this term which will have a focus on growth, social networking, safe use of phones and the UN charter on right of the child.

P.E this term will be tennis, hockey, athletics and outdoor games and all the skills required.

R.E

We will be exploring our relationships with God and look at how this relationship can be deepened through prayer and trust. May is the month of Mary. We will have a focus on our mother Mary and the important role she plays in the bible stories and the life of Jesus.

IDL

This term’s topic will be local politics. We will take a closer look at what are reliable sources of information. The children will learn vocabulary such as democracy and election. This will be linked into the new SNP government and cabinet. We will celebrate Scotland’s inclusivity of a variety of cultures, values and customs.

Thank you again, Mrs McCreadie

Primary 3 enjoyed a bike and scooter reward play on Friday afternoon.  I think these photos show how much fun our class had, despite the rain!

A huge well done to Primary 3 who submitted a winning rocket design to the MTTM competition as part of The Clean Green East Ayrshire initiative!  Our class design entry won 1st place in the STEM category across all of East Ayrshire with their Lego rocket!

An amazing job and a special congratulations to the winning engineer team for working on this design together.  Amazing team work! They each received their own certificate at school assembly on Friday for this huge achievement! AND they have won hundreds of MTTM S miles for our school! Go Team Primary 3!

Many of our children access the Exchange counselling service. The service helps support our young people with difficulties they may be facing. They are an excellent resource that have received positive feedback from the children who access the support.

If your child attends sessions with a member of the Exchange team, could you please take time to complete this short survey. This gives you, our parents and carers, the opportunity to have your voices heard and allows you to share your feedback for the service. Please click on the link below to complete.

Thank you!

https://forms.office.com/e/AJ212UYGGw

We wish all our Mount Carmel family a happy Easter and a lovely Spring holiday.

We look forward to seeing everyone on Monday 17th April.

Our current school app will stop being used at the end of this week.  The news school app is Safer School Scotland.  This can be downloaded via apple or android app stores.

Once downloaded scan the QRcode below or use the parent/carer code. 4099

The school will close tomorrow 31/3  at 2.30pm, bus and taxi children will be collected at 2pm.

As you will be aware we will stop using our current school app from tomorrow please find enclosed a copy of the letter which has been sent home with children today giving details of how to download the app to your mobile devices.

SaferSchools_Letter_parents_March

Has your child recently celebrated a special event outside of school? If so, please send a photograph into the school so that we can post this on our blog/app as well as display this on our Wider Achievement Celebration Display .

Please send your photographs to: eamountcarmel.ps@eastayrshire.org.uk 

If your child has received a letter home as part of the winning house prize  group could you please return this to school ASAP

Thanks

Reminder that the last week of Homework will be this week (week beginning 20th March). Homework Club, however, will still take place on Monday 27th March with other learning activities provided by staff.

Primary 5 chose to have an afternoon of fun and games in the pe hall this afternoon as their rainbow reward. As you can see, they had a ball!! Next week they have chosen to being their bikes and scooters into school for an afternoon outside. Please ensure that they bring their helmets in with their outdoor toys as they will be unable to take part without one. Thank you, Mrs McCreadie

Primary 6 invite their parents and carers to a ‘Sharing the Learning’ afternoon on Tuesday 7th February at 2pm.

This is a chance for Primary 6 parents and carers to see the wonderful work that has been taking place . The focus will be on  ‘Scots Language’.

I hope as many of you can make it as possible.

Thank you,

Mrs Terras

Primary 5 had a lovely time with Mrs Elstone on Friday when she came to visit. She taught us all about factors and how these numbers can help us in our learning.

Hi everyone. The lovely Primary 5 have asked for their rainbow reward next Friday to be junk modelling. Could you please send in any boxes, milk cartons or kitchen roll tubes for this activity. Thank you!!!

Curricular update – Primary 5 – Term 3

I hope you all had a lovely family Christmas!! The children are now back in class and the hard work for term 3 has already began. Here you will find an update on what will be coming up regarding the children’s learning over the next few months.

Literacy

In terms of reading, the children will continue to develop their skills in their tool for reading such as using their prior knowledge to help them with a text or visualisation which allows them to use their imagination when descriptions are provided. There is a need for continued learning when it comes to answering questions regarding their texts. We will continue to work on the skill of notetaking. The children will develop an understanding that notes help to organise thinking and sort information into manageable chunks. They will also learn how to take their own notes. Within their reading, we will look at the language within texts, with a particular focus on persuasive language which will then link in with our writing this term.

Term 2 focussed on report writing whilst utilising a lot of different skills taught. The children wrote excellent newspaper reports on Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder plot. This term, we will be learning all about response writing as well as discursive writing.

Due to the nature of discursive writing, our listening and talking focus will be on looking at the difference between fact and opinion. We will continue to complete listening tasks whilst working on our ability to listen for instructions.

Numeracy

I am so very proud of the entire class with regards to their learning in numeracy last term. The majority of the class used their knowledge of times tables to complete complex multiplication calculations using different number talk strategies. They worked extremely hard with Mrs MacKinnon to complete 3D shape, co-ordinates, and symmetry. They also learned about grid references. The children will continue to practise their times tables daily in order to retain these facts. This will help them when it comes to completing division tasks and fractions this term. The beyond number topics that will be taught are money and different aspects of measurement. These will be taught by Mrs MacKinnon.

Health and Well being

This term, we will have a focus on the children’s self-perception. We will look at the positive things they feel about their appearance as well as looking at what self-esteem and self-worth is. This is really important as they are the generation that are exposed to so much body image negativity in social media, it is extremely important that they understand how precious and perfect they are. As part of this, we will look at the achievements of each of the children and what areas of development they all have. There will also be a small focus on what potential careers each of the children could have and what will be required of them to achieve these goals.

Before we look at sexual health and relationships in term 4, we will first explore the meaning of the word ‘private’ and explore how important this is as we grow.

Within our P.E. lessons, we will learn about tennis, basketball and football and all of the skills and rules for each of these.

R.E.

This term, we will learn about how Jesus helps people who may have been considered as outcasts during this time. We will look at how Christians across the world are called to look after everyone, regardless of religion, race, culture and treat everyone with respect.  Jesus called his disciples to follow him. We will revisit previous learning and examine the Jewish Sabbath and rituals associated with it. Towards the end of the term, the class will begin preparation for the celebration of Lent.

Expressive Arts

Art – Last term saw us explore colour and tone with paints. This term, we will be creating collages using different kinds of materials to create contrasts within a picture. We will use these skills to create art through our topic of Floods, tsunamis and landslides.

Drama – During our drama inputs, we will be learning about using different voices and how to use tone of voice to enhance characters. We will also be looking at giving constructive feedback to our peers.

IDL (Topic)

Our topic this term will be Floods, Tsunamis and Landslides. This topic will look at these natural disasters throughout our world and how climate control and climate change is impacting on these incidents.

Science

Our science topic this term is going to be diseases within our bodies. We will also have a look at pioneers in the world of medicine, such as Joseph Lister and Alexander Fleming.

ICT

The children’s understanding of ICT and how the hardware and software can be best used. They have a good understanding of how programs such as glow and word can be used to aid their learning. This term, we will learn how to attach documents to our emails, use hyperlinks and save our work on an online platform. The class are making god progress in their ICT learning.

French

Mrs MacKinnon is very pleased with the progress in French so far this year. The class will be learning the French vocabulary for hobbies this term and how they can use this vocabulary properly within French spoken language.

This will be a busy term. Our P.E. days continue to be a Tuesday and a Thursday. Please ensure that your child has a suitable P.E kit in school on these days. (Indoor shoes – NOT their school shoes, a pair of shorts/joggers and a t shirt)

As always, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your ongoing support. If there is anything you need to discuss, please do not hesitate to contact me via the school office.

Many thanks, Mrs McCreadie

Welcome back to all families!

Pupils in the Oak Room have been very busy! The children love to come along to each session and are making great progress and great friends along the way!

This term pupils will continue to grow their social and emotional skills and will be using ‘Target Trackers’ in class to support them in this. As part of our Health and Wellbeing learning pupils will explore ‘friendship’ as a theme; we will focus on positive relationships and how we foster these and will explore issues and barriers to friendship such as bullying. Pupils will produce art work related to these themes and participate in group discussions.

The children are enjoying our group novel ‘Charlie Changes into a Chicken’, the pupils enjoy having a chapter read to them each day. This helps to regulate us and promotes conversation, attentive listening and group relationships.

Chat with your child around their attendance of the Oak Room, I am always happy to hear family feedback!

Mrs Crawford