Welcome back to a new school year! As our learners settle back in, we are excited to start the new school year. This term is all about building upon the foundation laid in Primary 1 while also introducing new challenges. Our first two weeks have been about getting to know each other, building friendships and routines and revisiting our learning from Primary 1 so we are ready to start developing new knowledge and skills.

Literacy

Within literacy this term we are continuing to develop our knowledge of phonics, introducing a new sound every week along with two new “common words”. This in turn helps us with our reading and writing. For reading we are focusing on our tools for reading and prediction. This involves reading for enjoyment, looking at the front cover, title and illustrations of a book to help our understanding. As well as this we will continue with our weekly new books to practice reading aloud and improving our fluency as we come across new words. For writing, we are focusing on descriptive writing and ensuring we can read our writing by using full stops and capital letters.

Numeracy

This term for numeracy we will be focusing on Place Value with Miss Livingston, and Shape with Mrs Strachan. For place value we will look at estimating, recognising and ordering numbers 1-20, before moving on to look at numbers 1-100. Within shape, we will be looking at identifying, naming and describing 2D and 3D shapes

Health and Wellbeing

Primary 2 have been looking at understanding and identifying our emotions and feelings. We have done this through our PATHS, which is a whole school programme. Lessons will include feelings, actions and problem solving. Each child will also get the opportunity to be “Pupil of the Day”. They will receive compliments from peers on this day and get special responsibilities.  We have also developed our understanding of emotions and feelings through looking at the story, “The Colour Monster”. Throughout the day pupils have their “How are they feeling” check in station where they can put into practice identifying their emotions.

Within PE, we started focusing on developmental games which allowed us to expand on our friendships and team building skills. We will now be looking to move on to develop our balls skills and start a block of Football. Just a reminder that our PE days are a Tuesday and a Thursday. Please ensure a full PE kit is brought into school and pupil names are on items. This can be left on their peg during the week.

UNCRC

As we begin Primary 2 we have explored the UNCRC Rights of the Child. Together, we created a class Charter with the theme of Superheroes, the idea of “Protecting our Rights”. This class charter is a classroom promise to be considering our rights, needs and wants while also thinking about our school values of kindness, faith and responsibility.

Religious Education

In Primary 2 pupils will be learning about being made in the image of God and that we are all unique. Pupils will also be developing our understanding of prayer and celebration of Mass through our celebrations at Mass on the first Friday of the month and liturgical celebrations.

Topic

Our topic to start the year will be “Grandparents”. We will be exploring the past to understand how our Grandparents lived and compare their lives to our own. This will involve looking at our family trees, creating a timeline of key events in the past as well as looking at a range of media such as music, radio, and films.

We are looking forward to an exciting new school year filled with new friendships, fun and learning opportunities!

Miss Livingston and Mrs Strachan

Welcome back everyone and welcome to the P6 blog! I trust you all had an enjoyable holiday/staycation and I am delighted to welcome back the pupils of P6 who have settled well into the routine of school.

Here’s an overview of our learning that will take place in our first term (Aug-Oct).

Literacy

For writing, we are concentrating on descriptive pieces before moving onto discursive writing.   We will be using a variety of figurative language such as similes, alliteration, and onomatopoeia to interest the reader and will begin to look at more challenging aspects such as personification and metaphors.  Thereafter, our focus will look at using appropriate connectives and openers, structure and balancing opinions in discussion pieces.

The class will be completing a variety of comprehension reading tasks such as metalinguistics, prior knowledge, visualisation and inference through Bug Club texts.

Spelling groups will continue to use Active Spelling strategies and follow on from previous work.

Numeracy

All groups this term have begun by working on place value before moving onto addition and subtraction.  The class will continue to develop their mental Number Talk strategies on a daily basis.  The class are will also be working on estimating and rounding skills and will be developing their knowledge of data handling.

Health and Wellbeing

This year we will continue to use the PATHS programme to shape our HWB learning.  P6 have already started ‘pupil of the day’ and participated in discussions around feelings and how we manage our emotions.  We are also focussing on food health this term and pupils will be able to identify different diets, create healthy eating plans and investigate how the media influences consumers.

Our PE days are Monday and Thursday.  Appropriate clothes must be brought in on those days to participate.  I have spoken to the class about personal hygiene and some pupils may wish to bring in deodorant or a roll-on on these days.

IDL

Our IDL for this term will be the Titanic, where we will be creating a timeline of significant events, investigating passengers and the class system and research factors that lead to the fate of the ship.  We will also be conducting science experiments related to floating and sinking.

RE

During the first term, P6 will be identifying their God given talents and how these can be used to help others in the Parish and the community.  We will also be learning how to find Bible references and read from the Gospels.  We will be reading about why Jesus was not well liked by many at the time.

Languages

P6 will be concentrating on vocabulary associated with objects and colours and learning numbers to 100.

Technologies

This term P6 will access Chromebooks on a frequent basis and use ICT across the curriculum.  However, there will be a main focus on accessing and using basic Glow applications, sending and receiving emails and using the bookmarks bar on web browsers.

UNCRC

Together the class have created their class charter and looked at the rights they are entitled to.  As rights holders, the pupils have discussed the responsibilities they have to maintain in order to protect these rights.  As class rules, the class have chosen 4 Articles to focus on:  The right to an education; the right to rest, relax and play; the right to be healthy; and the right to be heard.

I look forward to working with P6 in the coming year and hope to have lots of enjoyable experiences that will make learning fun and memorable.

Mr Bertoncini

Welcome back! This term in Primary 5 we have not only moved up a school year, but ‘up’ in the school literally as we have relocated upstairs which will be an exciting new experience. The school week will consist of myself in class, Mrs McIntyre (Mon->Thurs) and Mrs McCreadie (Fridays). We are looking forward to engaging in more challenging learning this year within our class, and of course, we hope to share this with you throughout the year. This first blog post will overview the learning covered in the P5 class from August until October. So far, we have already established our class community, routines, expectations and  had our welcome meeting with parents.

IDL– ‘Knights and Castles’

Our focus this term is ‘Knights and Castles’. Pupils will use their developing research and note-taking skills to look at historical events in the Middle Ages. This will include the history of castles, the evolution of castle design, the feudal system and role of Knights, including the ‘Code of Chivalry’ and society at this time. We will be using various curricular areas within this topic to help, such as, ICT, Art, Literacy, STEM and problem-solving skills.

Literacy –

This term we will be reading ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ as a class novel study to loosely link with ‘Knights and Castles’ .

Through our study pupils will be able to

• Read using strategies, make notes and engage in dialogue with peers to discuss themes in the class text.
• Build skills on our 6 key Active Literacy Comprehension strategies.
• Writing Focus – Recount, Imaginative and Information Report (Newspaper Article).

The pupils will complete various reading and writing tasks related to this appropriate to their level. This novel study will also link to other areas of the curriculum.

We will continue to use Bug Club as our differentiated reading        resource and will be developing our fluency and comprehension skills using this resource, both in class and as homework.

Spelling

Spelling will 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. Please support your child by asking about their spelling words weekly.

Writing

P5 will focus on descriptive/ narrative writing this term. The class will learn the focus of their writing early in the week which will allow time to discuss ideas together in class, and at home,  to help with planning. This will be their ‘Talk Homework.’ In class, groups will look at planning their piece, punctuation, effective use of vocabulary and paragraphing to meet personal success criteria.

Numeracy & Maths –

• Place Value – looking at larger whole numbers. This will range per group from TTh/Th /H/ T/ U.
• Using our knowledge of place value to develop Addition and Addition strategies for all groups dealing with larger numbers, such as using friendly numbers, formal notation and partitioning.
• Estimation/Probability.
• Daily Mental Maths covering the 4 processes (+ – x /) and revision of strategies.

P5 will work on Beyond Number topics with Mrs McCreadie on a Friday. This will include subject areas such as shape, measure, data handling, time and money. This term the children will be looking at ‘Shape’.

At home, children will benefit from times tables revision and experience of telling the time in everyday situations.

Health and Wellbeing –

The class have worked brilliantly as a team in P4 and have been an integral part of our MC family. To ensure that our class strengthens these skills as we move into Primary 5, we will refresh, revisit and complete our class charter, to ensure to uphold the UNRC/ RRS rights we have selected as our focus. P5 pupils understand the responsibilities and expectations that will be placed upon them this year.

We are continuing to use our whole school ‘PATHS’ resource this year, which allows children to grow emotionally and channel their thoughts and behaviours in a calm and proactive way. Children are familiar with this programme and can name and identify their feelings. We will continue to provide them with scenarios and situations that will require their knowledge of ‘self’ to grow. We will focus on our unique talents and nurturing friendships as well as celebrating our ‘Pupil of the Day.’  Pupils will discuss aligned themes at assemblies and in class with Mrs McCreadie to link with this.

P.E

In P.E. we will cover the following in term 1,

• Team Games
• Netball

This will be on Tuesdays (Mrs McI) and Fridays (Mrs McC).

A gentle reminder, can you please ensure your child comes prepared weekly with a full PE kit (the office have limited spares available if you need and you can contact the school office to enquire), also we would be grateful if your child does not wear jewellery on these days preferably or can remove earrings etc. by themselves. Thank you for your support in this.

Religious Education –

August/ September/ October –

In class, we will introduce the Gospel of Mark, our P5 focus gospel. We will discuss our talents and skills, and this will form the basis of our class charter. We will look at Bible stories aligning with our learning about friendship focus and our faith community. We also will learn new prayers in P5 and look forward to attending mass as a whole school. In early October we will look at the Creation and St Francis of Assisi.

Important Primary 5 info… 

Homework distributed on Mondays to be completed, signed and returned by Friday.

P.E days are on Tuesday & Friday.

**Keep an eye on the school blog daily for regular updates to what is happening in class, photos and any information about relevant upcoming dates, also, learner Journals posts throughout the term. **

Thank you for your co-operation and we look forward to an exciting year ahead,

Mrs McIntyre and Mrs McCreadie