Our Christmas fayre is fast approaching and we need your help. With only 3 weeks to go, we are looking for donations for our raffle, bottle stall and home baking stall.  We would really appreciate any donations you could make and all proceeds will go directly into the Friends of Mount Carmel fund. This fund helps to pay for different things throughout the year, for example buses for trips or Primary 7 leavers hoodies. Any donations would be greatly appreciated. We can’t wait to see you there!!

Mount Carmel Christmas Fayre

2nd December 6:30pm til 9pm

We are so looking forward to welcoming you all back for our Christmas Fayre this year. This will take place on the 2nd December. We have lots of stalls from local businesses, some home baking, raffles and of course our beautiful Christmas crafts that our children are already busy organising. The tickets for this will be £2.50 for adults and children will gain entry for free. This ticket price includes tea and coffee. There will be a performance from our excellent choir at 6:30pm with doors opening at 6:15pm.  There will be more details to follow in the next couple of weeks so keep your eyes peeled!

We cannot wait to see you all!!

Primary 5 have chosen their rainbow reward for this week. They have asked for a bike and scooter afternoon.  Can you please help your child to bring in their bikes and scooters which will be kept at the middle base before rainbow reward in the afternoon. Can you also please ensure that your child brings in their helmets on this day as they will not be able to ride their bikes and scooters without them. Many thanks. Mrs McCreadie 

Welcome back to term 2. What a great start we have had in Primary 4, the children have settled in well and there has been lots of amazing learning taking place. Here is an update of our learning for this term.

Literacy

For our reading focus this term, we will be continue to develop comprehension strategies such as visualisation and metalinguistics through a range of reading materials, including shared texts in class and our individual reading books. We will be looking at the differences between fact and fiction texts and the features of these. The children will continue to develop their skills of skimming and scanning and text and looking at note taking.

During writing in Term 2, we will continue to focus on building on our skills in creating a report using factual information and an interesting layout. We were introduced to this before the holidays and this will complement our reading for information focus.

Spelling will take the form of active spelling activities and the children will experience phonemes and blends at their working level.

Numeracy & Maths

This term we will look at strategies for solving addition and subtraction problems, this will link to the mental maths strategies that we are looking at during our daily number talks. We will use a range of these strategies to solve number and word problems.

In Beyond Number we will be focussing on 3D shape and its properties for identification. Pupils will have the opportunity to make their own 3D shapes and identify lines of symmetry and right angles.

Health and Wellbeing

We will continue with our PATHs programme, looking at the importance of making good choices, listening to others and why fair play rules are important. We will continue with our Pupil of the Day, so keep a look out for your children coming home with their compliment sheet!

PE

PE is on a Wednesday and Friday. This term we will be covering;

• Hockey (Oct/Nov)
• Rugby (Oct/Nov)
• Social Dancing (Nov/Dec)

PE kit must be brought in and left at the start of each term. Before each holiday, the kit will be sent home for washing to be freshened up and returned on the first day back.  Pupils will be asked to remove any watches or jewellery  and if unable to will not be able to take part unfortunately. If your child cannot take part for any reason, please contact the school.

French

In French,  we will build on our number skills for use in active games and look at learning everyday language in topics such as food, our home and school. We will be able to say what we like and dislike. Later in the term we will focus on Christmas in France and learn some French Christmas songs/hymns.

IDL

P4 will be continuing to learn about the Vikings. We will be looking at the Vikings in Scotland and life at the time. Writing, ICT and expressive arts lessons will link to our Vikings topic.

Science

P4 will investigate the forces exerted by magnets on other magnets and magnetic materials, we will look at how magnets are used in everyday life and demonstrate how magnets work through various practical activities.

Religious Education

This term we will be reflecting the life of the saints and how they listened to God’s word and responded to it and, how we can look to their example. As we move into the season of Advent we will reflect on our own Advent journey and will focus on the place of the Magi in the Christmas narrative.

Homework will be distributed on a Monday to be completed, signed and returned by Friday. Keep an eye on the class blog for regular updates to what is happening in class, recent learning and relevant upcoming events.

Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to a fabulous term with P4!

Mrs McIntyre and Mrs MacKinnon

Curricular update – Primary 5 – Term 2

Primary 5 have worked so hard in term 1. With term 2 about to begin I would like to give you an update. I will be back in the classroom for the most of the week with Mrs MacKinnon taking on other teaching duties throughout the school. I am excited for the term ahead on the run up to Santa coming!

Literacy

The children will continue to develop their word attack strategies through different questioning techniques and comprehension strategies. These strategies will include using their prior knowledge, visualisation and metalinguistics. The children already have experience of using these strategies however will now explore them through different genres of text. We will look at the main purpose of a text as well as what the difference is between fact and opinion. We will also explore persuasive language and how this can be linked to writing persuasive texts. In terms of talking and listening, the children will be asked to prepare a short talk which will have a link to their Victorians topic which they will present to their class.

Numeracy

The class have already made excellent progress in terms of their numeracy. They already have excellent knowledge of the number talks strategies taught. We will continue to look at our multiples of 10 and 100 whilst looking at doubling and halving. (an example of this would be 2×740 = 740+740). We will also focus on the associated language of these calculations such as ‘find the product of’. Our number focus this term will be on multiplication and division with a major focus on times tables. One area of numeracy that children find difficult is the use of word problems. The class will continue to keep this as a focus whilst identifying the appropriate calculations based on the mathematical language of the 4 operations. Whilst learning about multiplication and division, the children will be introduced to decimals and whole numbers as well as negative numbers and why we need these. In terms of beyond number topics, last term saw the children expand their knowledge of time and begin their 3D shape topic. This will continue this term as well as money and how the coronation of our new monarch will change our money.

Health and Wellbeing

The children have a good understanding of what a healthy relationship is. We will continue to expand on this throughout term 2 with a focus on how a healthy relationship has respect and why it should be reciprocated. This term will also have a focus on substance misuse and what the children should do if they found themselves in an emergency.

Within our P.E. curriculum, the main focus will be on gymnastics with social dancing being introduced as we near Christmas. Although many of the children bring their P.E. kits into school, there is still around half of the class that consistently forget their kits of P.E. days. Although I have been fairly lenient with this so far, gymnastics is such a practical sport in terms of the movements involved, that it is essential for the children to be wearing their full P.E. kit to ensure their safety. Please ensure that your child has their kit in school on P.E. days. They are invited to leave these kits in school at all times.

Religious Education

This term is a very important period in our liturgical calendar with celebrations like All Saints Day and advent. As well as learning about these celebrations, we will be exploring our relationships with God.

Expressive Arts

Art – We will look at the colours that we can use to create mood, atmosphere and emotion. We will learn about artists such as Van Gogh and Piet Mondrian which will help us to enhance our observational skills.

Dance – Linked with P.E. for social dancing at Christmas.

Drama – During our drama sessions, we will look at characterisation as well as looking at how costumes can help us get into character. (We will link our drama to our topic)

IDL/Topic

Our topic this term will focus on the Victorians. This topic will have literacy, ICT, Art, R.E and numeracy tasks throughout it as we explore the world during Victorian times. We will compare our lives today to the lives of children during this time as well as having a particular focus on Queen Victoria as the monarch.

Technology

The children have a good understanding of how sway works and this has helped them develop their research skills. This term will focus on the functionality of GLOW. The children are already able to send emails to each other, but now they will learn how to attach files and create hyperlinks to access websites.

We have a very busy term ahead and lots of fun and learning too. I thoroughly enjoyed my time as Acting Depute Head Teacher but feel I am more than ready to get back into class with my children. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support.

Mrs McCreadie x

Primary 2 Curricular Update – Term 2

Hello and welcome back to the Primary 2 blog! I hope you all had a relaxing October break and are ready for the upcoming Halloween and festive celebrations in what will be another hardworking and exciting term for primary 2.

Term 2 curricular update:

Literacy

Phonics- We will continue to learn our joined phonemes and grow our confidence in reading and writing these. Spelling will continue to be a focus as we learn new common words which will help develop our independent writing skills.

Writing – This term our writing will continue to develop our writing skills focusing on description, this will be supported with individual description bubbles. We will also continue to focus on our writing targets of capital letters, finger spaces and full stops.

Reading – We will be developing our understanding of texts by using literal questions and we will focus on our word attack strategies as we develop our reading and writing. In class we are working our way through bug club texts which are appropriate to our stage of learning, these are also assigned for homework which you can access online. We will continue to work on our comprehension and decoding skills within our reading groups

Numeracy and Mathematics

This term we will be continuing with our counting on and back from any number, this will help with mental addition and subtraction. We will be looking at addition and subtraction calculations and how these are linked which create ‘fact families’. Within addition we will think about the mental strategies we can use to answer calculations such as doubles, near doubles and counting on. During this term we will explore pattern including shapes and numbers to 100, this will link in with our frozen IDL topic perfectly! Towards the end of the term, we will begin to develop some aspects of time, each morning we complete our daily calendar looking at dates and seasons, we will also start to tell the time using digital and analogue clocks as the topic progresses.

Health and Wellbeing

In term 2 we will continue our whole school PATHS programme to build on our social and emotional skills. We will learn ‘how to do turtle’ to manage emotions and Twiggle the turtle will help us with this. Our ‘pupil of the day’ will still run during this term which allows children to gift and receive compliments from others. We continue to complete our emotion check in each day and we still have a focus on friendships.

P.E.

During this term we will develop our small ball skills which consist of bouncing, throwing, rolling and catching. We will then work on our jumping, rolling and travelling skills during our first block of gymnastics. Towards the end of the term children will be learning social dancing.

.P.E. days will be Tuesday and Thursday.  (please remember to remove any earrings on gym days)

Religious Education

We will be learning about the importance of the Bible during our RE time and reading the story of creation. Throughout the month of November, we will look at our theme on remembrance. For the month of December, we will celebrate advent and the birth of Jesus by learning the nativity and exploring various other activities during this exciting time.

Inter-disciplinary Learning (Topic)

Our topic for term 2 is frozen. The main area we will be learning about is the processes of the planet by investigating how water can change from one form to another and relating this to everyday experiences. We will be describing changes of water, looking at freezing, melting points and temperatures. We will be experimenting with the use of materials and their properties to develop our understanding of which materials would be practical for certain situations. We will consider ways in which materials would increase/decrease the melting process and temperatures.

Our topic will make several cross curricular links which will include science, expressive arts, technologies, literacy and numeracy.

Expressive Arts

Our art, music and drama learning and work this term will be centred around the Christmas Nativity.

Thank you for visiting our Primary 2 blog on what we have been learning this term!

Miss Maitland

Please complete the form below with your preferred date for your child’s parent/carer appointment.

This form will close on Friday 28th October.

Hi everyone. The children have asked if they could have a movie and pyjama afternoon for their rainbow reward. Could you please send the children into school with their pyjamas to change into in the afternoon. They should not come into school wearing them.

Many thanks, Mrs McCreadie

Please complete the form below for each child you have at Mount Carmel Primary providing photographic consent for Academic Session 2022/23.

Thankyou

Please complete the form below with your preferred date for your child’s parent/carer appointment.

This form will close on Friday 28th October.

Our Halloween raffle tickets are available to buy on Parent Pay. The lucky ticket will be drawn on Friday 28th October (Killieween) during our school assembly. The hampers include lots of goodies from sweeties to wind up eye balls. Good luck everyone!!

It’s the end of our school term, and we would kindly ask that parents/carers routinely check their child/children’s hair for any unwanted “visitors” during the holidays.

Thank you for your co-operation.

We would like to say a great big THANKYOU to our friends at Atrium homes who very kindly donated £500 to the school for our breakfast club. 

!!HALLOWEEN RAFFLE!!

Our Halloween raffle is coming soon. Pay for your tickets on Parent Pay for a chance to win this goodie bag. It is full of sweeties, eyeballs and creepy crawlies.  Keep an eye out for a chance to win!

GOOD LUCK!

Hello and a very warm welcome to the primary 2 blog! We have had a lovely start to term 1 getting to know one another and establishing our class charter together. It has been a delight learning about each individual and seeing their personalities shine. The boys and girls have embraced primary 2 with open arms and are all keen to learn and have fun!

Primary 2 – Term 1

Literacy

Phonics – We are developing the letter sounds that we were taught during primary 1 while introducing new sounds. During this term we will be introduced to other joined phonemes (2 letter sounds) which include ‘ee’ ‘oo’ ‘ph’ and ‘ck’.

Reading – We have started reading our class text “The Owl Who Was Afraid of The Dark” and we have already completed prediction and description tasks associated with the characters. We will continue to work on our skills, focusing on decoding and comprehension as we re-start our bug club texts.

Writing – This term our writing will focus on descriptive writing which will tie in with our class text “The Owl Who Was Afraid of The Dark” as we describe the characters and the different settings within the book. We will continue to use our writing targets of capital letters, finger spaces and full stops.

Numeracy and Mathematics

During this term children will be expanding their number processes we have learned so far. We will be reinforcing our addition skills, counting in 2’s,5’s and 10’s. We will also be focusing on the sequencing of numbers, thinking about the numbers before, in-between and after as we count forwards or backwards. For beyond number in primary 2 we will be focusing on shape and patterns with Mrs McGregor.

Health and Wellbeing

Primary 2 will continue to develop their social and emotional skills through our whole school PATHS program. The Characters have returned to Primary 2 and the children continue to enjoy engaging with them and love when they come out in the classroom. Primary 2 also gift and receive compliments for ‘pupil of the day’ which they are all amazing at doing. In the morning the children love to do their colour monster check in which relates to the different emotions and how they are feeling. We have also focused on friendships and kindness within our class through our PATHS program and highlighted the qualities that make a good friend and how we show kindness to one another. We created our own class charter linking it to the book called ‘Our Class is a Family’ and our rights.

P.E.

Within P.E. we have been doing developmental games. During this term we will also be developing our football skills and large ball skills by participating in volleyball. P.E. days will be Tuesday and Thursday.

Religious Education

This term we remind ourselves of God’s love for us all. We continue to thank God for all our family, loved ones and friends. We also thank God for making every one of us unique.

IDL

Primary 2’s first topic this year is “All About Me”, they will learn more about their likes and dislikes as well as share information about their lovely families and have the chance to create self-portraits through Art and Design.

Our topics “The Owl Who Was Afraid of The Dark” and “All About Me” will make several cross curricular links which will include expressive arts, literacy, health and wellbeing, technologies and social studies.

Thank you for visiting our Primary 2 blog on what we have been learning this term!

Miss Maitland

Primary 5 – Term 1

Hi everyone. This is the first term’s update on Primary 5 learning. It is a quick snapshot of what will be covered in the term ahead. The class have Mrs McCreadie on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday until lunchtime and then they have Mrs MacKinnon from Wednesday lunchtime, Thursday and Friday. There is lots to cover this term and we are sure that there will be lots of fun along the way.

IDL

Our interdisciplinary topic this term is the Victorians. We have already started this and the children are enjoying  learning about what happened during this time.

Literacy

The class can now confidently distinguish between fiction and non fiction texts and are accessing both types through their personal reading time. We will continue to use bug club for homework and will also be accessing this throughout the school week. The main focus within comprehension this term will be their metalinguistic skills (understanding of unfamiliar or difficult words), their visualisation (create an image to form  an understanding of a text) and prior knowledge (use what they know already to help them understand their text).  Our class novel ‘The iron man@ has already began and the children are already enjoying the disciplinary approach to learning within the novel.

Within grammar, we will revisit some of the concepts covered in Primary 4 to ensure retention. Some of these are verbs, nouns, proper nouns and adjectives. We will also be introduced to similies, metaphors, alliterations whilst using and identifying a range of punctuation.

 Writing this term will concentrate on using descriptive language as well as report writing. Much of this will be taught through their IDL topic on the Victorians which will also look at note taking when researching different aspects of life in the Victorian era. Our tools for writing focus this term will be continue to develop our use of capital letters and full stops, commas, speech marks and we will also be learning how different conjunctions can be used to up level our writing.

Our listening and talking focus will be to listen to and follow instructions from our adults. This is something that the class need reminded of. We will also look at what ‘good’ body language is when conducting a conversation or discussion with another person.

The class will complete handwriting every week within class and we would ask that this is promoted at home in terms of homework also.

Numeracy

The entire class will continue to work on their times tables throughout the year.  We have already began working on our understanding of place value and what value each digit holds within the columns. Depending on what group the children are in for their numeracy, they will be working on place value using units, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands and hundred thousands.

We will also be looking at rounding to the nearest ten, hundred and thousand. This will enable the children to develop their skill of estimating so they can then find approximate answers to calculations and problems.

In terms of beyond number, the class will begin their primary 5 year by learning about time.  This will be looking at time using 12 hour format as well as the 24 hour format.  The class will be learning how timetables can be used as well as looking at time durations.

The children will develop their knowledge of shape. Some of the things that the class will be investigating through shapes are describing triangles by their sides and defining what kind of triangle it is, for example, equilateral, isosceles and scalene. The class will investigate the symmetrical values of each shape, looking for a line of symmetry, and will learn how to make patterns and designs using these symmetrical properties.

Our whole school will concentrate on number talks throughout the year. These lessons allow children to solve calculations using different strategies. This allows children to have ownership of their own learning by using the strategies that suit their learning style best.

Health and Wellbeing

Our P.E. days are currently a Tuesday and a Thursday. We are currently learning about our fitness and how we can develop our stamina, agility, accuracy, balance and co-ordination. We will then be moving onto ball skills.

The class already have an excellent understanding on how to keep their bodies and minds healthy. We will have a focus on kindness and how we should treat others within our classroom. We will also be looking at respect, bullying and peer pressure this term developing an understanding of what each of these concepts mean.

Primary 5 already participate in mindfulness every day, this is something that the entire class benefit from and have been doing this since the beginning of Primary 4.  The children are all trained in the massage in schools programme, which means we will be able to start this straight away this term also. This mindful program allows children to tap into different strategies to deal with the stress of their day to day lives.

Our PATHS programme will help the children to develop positive relationships within the class and school.  Delving into the emotions that the children feel will help them to understand why they are feeling this way as well as giving them the tools to cope with these emotions.

R.E.

In order to link our R.E. with our health and wellbeing, we will be learning about friendship through bible stories. The class will earn some of the miracle stories that allowed Jesus to show that he was the son of God. We will continue to pray to God and ask for forgiveness when we need it and say thank you for things we are grateful for.  In preparation for mass throughout the year, the children will be learning new hymns and prayers.

Expressive arts

This term, the class will be focussing on music within the expressive arts. They will be looking at types of music genres and rhythm and beat.

ICT

Our understanding of the internet and the use of the ICT equipment has developed so much in the past year, as has our independence when using it. This terms focus will be on saving documents, using shared platforms and online safety.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support so far this term and look forward to everything that is to come.

Take care,

Mrs McCreadie and Mrs MacKinnon

The Exchange Counselling service within East Ayrshire is an excellent service that support our children and families within Mount Carmel.  Please take a look at their August newsletter by clicking the link below. 

East Ayrshire School Counselling & Psychological Wellbeing Supports Newsletter

Hi and a huge welcome back after what I hope has been a long and relaxing summer for you all. In this newsletter we want to ensure you are all familiar with our fab team of counsellors and…

Go to this Sway

Please click the link below to see our most recent School Improvement Plans.

“We show pride in our school community and we set high expectation to achieve success”

MCPS School Improvement Plans

It’s the start of a new school term, and we would kindly ask that parents/carers routinely check their child/children’s hair for any unwanted “visitors”.

Thank you for your co-operation.

Further to our post regarding our Meet  the Teacher Session please note that all sessions will begin at 2.00pm

Our friends at Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish would like to invite you to come along to the church on a Monday night between half past 7 and quarter past 8 to access their food bank.  Everyone is welcome and our friends are eager to help everyone in our community. 

Mr Kane (Head Teacher) and Miss Cathie (Principal Teacher of Pastoral Care) of St Joseph’s Academy would like to invite all of our Primary 7 parents  to their first transition information evening on the 25th August. This information evening will begin at 6:30pm. The information given by Mr Kane and Miss Cathie will be regarding your child starting St Joseph’s next academic session. 

Our fabulous Primary 1 team have had a wonderful day with our brand new Primary 1 pupils. Mrs Duff, Mrs Strachan and Mrs Taylor have been busy playing, painting and getting to know all of our new little faces.

The Mount Carmel family would like to say a great big thank you to the lovely Mrs McLaughlin for the donation of our beautiful balloon arch. 

#teammc

We are so excited to welcome our children back to school tomorrow.  A few gentle reminders for the beginning of the school year…

All children should be in full school uniform every day. We have our uniform exchange available throughout the school year and everyone is welcome to access it whenever it is required.

All children should bring in a P.E. kit that can be left in the school building. This should be a bag that contains indoor shoes, shorts and a t-shirt. P.E. kits will be sent home at the end of each term for washing. 

Please make sure that all items of clothing (uniform and P.E. kits) have your child’s name on them. This will stop anything being lost and enables us to return any item that is misplaced to the correct child. 

We are a nut free school. Please do not send in any snacks that contain nuts (for example snickers or nutella). 

We are a health promoting school and therefore ensure that the children have access to water whenever they require it throughout the day. That being said, we would like to reiterate that it is only water that should be sent in as a drink for the classroom – not diluting juice. This is a whole school approach to ensure the best dental health for our children. 

The staff are in school today getting ready for the children to return tomorrow and we are all extremely excited to see them and welcome them back. Here’s to a brilliant 2022-2023 school year.

#teammc

We are now asking that children bring a P.E. kit into school in order to change before each P.E. lesson.  We ask that the P.E. kit be brought into school in a bag that can be left in school to ensure your child has their P.E. kit for each P.E lesson. Each child should have a pair of indoor shoes ( please make sure these shoes are for indoor use only), a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.

Please ensure that all items of P.E. kit have your child’s name on it as this ensures that no kit is lost.

Thank you so  much for your continuing support.

We are so excited to welcome our brand new Primary 1 children into school on Thursday 18th August.  Mrs Duff will welcome the children into school for their very first day as their class teacher Monday to Thursday along with Mrs Strachan who will be their teacher every Friday in Primary 1. Both of the ladies are super excited to get to know all of your lovely children. 

In addition to the uniform exchange being open next Wednesday, you are also welcome to come into school tomorrow and Friday (11th and 12th August) between 9 and 12. Please come and help yourself. See you all soon 😊

#teammc‌