Earlier this month Gerard from Missio visited the school . We had a “Wear Bright Colours” day and also a Missio Raffle which helped us raise £120 for the charity. The lucky winner of the raffle was Gosia in P4. Congratulations Gosia, we hope you enjoy your prize!
Young Carers
Please find attached a link to information regarding St. Joseph’s carers:
P7 St. Joseph’s Visit- 31.10.23
Our Primary 7’s will be visiting St. Joseph’s Academy next Tuesday, 31st October. They will be walking there and back, so please ensure your child has a jacket with them for the journey. Pupils will be leaving Mount Carmel Primary shortly after 9am.
Thank you
Kilmarnock Standard Primary 1 Photographs
Kilmarnock Standard will be in school on Tuesday 31st October photographing our new P1s at 9.30am
Thankyou
Primary 4 -Sacramental Preparation Parent Meeting
Primary 4 parent/carers only
There will be a Sacramental Preparation Parent Meeting tomorrow evening (24/10/23) at 7pm in St. Joseph’s church hall.
October Half Term
Gentle reminder that school will close at 3pm on Friday 13th October and reopen to children on Tuesday 24th October at 9am.
We hope you have a great October half-term break
Team MC
Wider Achievements – Term 1
Wider Achievements
At Mount Carmel Primary School we want to showcase and recognise all of our achievements. This includes items that they take part outside of school such as dancing, football, gymnastics, swimming – the list is endless. Please take some time to detail some of the activities your child takes part in out of school and any special awards they might have received recently as part of this. If you have any photographs that you would like to share please email these to eamountcarmel.ps@eastayrshire.org.uk
Calling All Performers…………..
CALLING ALL SCHOOL PERFORMING GROUPSCould you perform at Kilmarnock Christmas Festival?
Kilmarnock Town Centre-Sunday 26th November
Closing Date For Entries Friday 20th October
Calling all local singers, dancers and musicians! We are on the lookout for the very best local talent to be part of our entertainment programme at the Kilmarnock Christmas Festival.
If you would like to be considered for the event, please submit a short video of you performing (no longer than a 1 minute) by Friday 20th October. Videos can be uploaded via this link. Please read the FAQ’s before submitting your video. If chosen, you will be given a 15 minute slot to perform on one of the event stages at the main event.
Good Luck Everyone!
Halloween Costumes
With Halloween fast approaching, we know this can be an expensive time of year with the added pressure of buying costumes etc. We keep a supply of children’s costumes in school for borrowing. These will be available from next week in the foyer. Please feel free to come and have a look. Similarly, if you have any children’s costumes you no longer use/need please hand them into the school and we will add them to our collection.
Thank you
Winning House Prize
Earth House!!!
Could all children who are in the winning house and going to Jungle Madness on Wednesday 11th October please wear comfortable clothes that day.
Halloween Disco
Our Halloween Disco will take place on Thursday 26th October.
There will be two separate discos for lower school and upper school:
Primary 1-3 will take place from 6pm until 7pm
Primary 4-7 will take place between 7.15pm and 8.30pm
There will be a small charge payable on the night and this will include DJ, snack and prizes for the best costumes. Children will be given a flyer nearer the time with more information.
If you can help out at any of the discos please get in touch here
Active Schools Blocks
Breakfast Blethers
Breakfast Blethers will now start at 9am instead of 9.15am
October Break
A reminder that the school closes at 3pm on Friday 13th October for the October break. We will reopen for pupils on Tuesday 24th October.
Monday 23rd is an in-service day for staff.
Homework
Homework finishes on Friday 6th October.
Reminder that the school will be closed for the September holiday weekend on Friday 22/9 until Monday 25/9.
School will reopen on Tuesday 26/9 at 9am.
We hope you have a lovely break.
TeamMC
September Raffle
Our September raffle is now up and running on Parentpay!
To be in with a chance of winning our fantastic prize all you need to do is buy your tickets via Parentpay.
Tickets are £1 per strip of 5.
The closing date for purchasing tickets is Wednesday 27th September and the Raffle will be drawn on Friday 30th.
P5 Leaders in Play
Primary 5 are working hard alongside our active schools co-ordinator, Mark Devlin. We are learning how we can support the children in our school with play.
Breakfast Blethers Reminder
Begins this Thursday 21st September 9.15am-10.15am
School Improvement Plan 23-24
Please find attached our School Improvement Plan for 23-24:
Rag Bag Collection September 2023
We will once again be accepting any unwanted items of clothing for our Rag Bag collection. Previously, Rag Bag pre-printed bags were distributed to schools for donations, however, this is no longer the case. Please hand any donations into the school in a carrier bag or bin bag by 9am on Monday 18th September.
Thank You.
Annual Data check & Local Visit Forms
If you have not already done so could you please complete and return the forms that were issued to all children at the start of term by Tuesday 19th September.
If you require any new forms to be issued please contact the school office where we can arrange for duplicate forms to be printed and sent home in your childs school bag.
Thankyou
Important Information
We are a nut free school. Please do not send in any snacks or lunch products that contain nuts (for example snickers, Nutella or Kinder Bueno).
Thankyou
P7 Term 1 Update
Welcome back everyone and welcome to the P7 blog! I hope you all had an enjoyable holiday. I am delighted to welcome back the pupils of P7 who have settled well into the school routine and are enjoying being the top of the school!
Here’s an overview of our learning that will take place in our first term (Aug-Oct).
Literacy
This term we will be focussing on a novel study, The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips by Michael Morpurgo. As well as reading the book together, the class will participate in activities that relate to other areas of the curriculum including Art, Social Studies and Technology. We will also continue to develop our comprehension skills through our use of all ALP reading strategies with a particular focus on summarising and identifying the main idea
For writing, we are concentrating on descriptive writing: Giving detailed descriptions using similes, alliteration, the senses and metaphors to interest the reader.
Spelling groups will continue to use Active Spelling strategies and follow on from previous work.
Numeracy
All groups this term have begun by looking at place value. We will soon be moving into addition and subtraction. The class will continue to take part in daily mental activities such as number talks where they aim to use a variety of mental strategies to achieve the solution. The class are also working on skills beyond number with Mrs McIntyre and are currently developing their knowledge of angles.
Health and Wellbeing
This year we will continue to use the PATHS programme to shape our HWB learning. P7 have already started ‘pupil of the day’ and participated in discussions around feelings and how we manage our emotions. We will continue to revise the steps of the Problem Solving guide and aim to apply it in situations independently. We are also investigating the different diets people have due to allergies, intolerances and religious reasons.
For PE, we have participated in team games concentrating on how important communication and teamwork is in order to be successful. P7 will shortly begin our block of badminton aiming to develop their racquet skills, learn the rules and take part in small competitive games.
IDL
Our topic this term is World War 2. This ties in closely with our novel study. We will investigate how the war began, key events in the war (D Day, The Battle of Britain and The Blitz) and how people helped the war effort. We will be using other curricular areas, such as literacy and technology, to help us understand and research this topic. P7 have also been watching news clips, information bulletins and listening to music from the 1940s to get into the mind set of Brits during the war.
Technologies
This term P7 will access and use more features of Glow, attach files to emails, save work to cloud locations and retrieve files using search functions. We will also have an input from East Ayrshire IT department on how to use and access Chromebooks.
RE
P7 will continue to complete their journal for the Pope Francis Faith Award as well as reading from the New Testament. We will be looking at the life of Jesus and how he associated with those who were marginalised in society.
I look forward to working with P7 in the coming year and hope to have lots of enjoyable experiences that will make learning fun and memorable.
Mr Bertoncini
Parent Council Annual General Meeting Reminder
Vincent De Paul Support
The Society of Vincent De Paul meets on Monday evenings between 7.30 and 8.15pm. They can offer support in many different ways to families.
Please view the flyer below for more information:
The flyer will also been handed out to all families, so please chck your child’s schoolbag.
Thank you
Learning Journals
This year, we will be continuing our use of the Learning Journals platform to allow us to share some of your child’s learning with you.
Click on the link below for some further information on the use of Learning Journals.
Thank you.
Primary 4 Term 1 Update
Welcome back! We hope you have all had an enjoyable summer. It has been fantastic to see P4 settle into their new classroom and routines.
We have had a great start to the term and look forward to a fun-filled term with lots of fabulous learning taking place.
Here is an update on the upcoming term.
Literacy
For our reading focus this term, we will be developing our comprehension strategies such as visualisation and metalinguistics through our class novel ‘The Iron Man’. The children will be introduced to similes and onomatopoeia; some children can use these in their writing.
During writing, we will start by continuing to develop our sentence structure and use of description bubbles for various descriptive pieces, we then then continue to work on our characterisation through descriptive skills and language narrative writing.
Spelling will take the form of active spelling activities and the children will experience phonemes and blends at their working level.
P4 will also be given revision lessons on alphabetical order, sentence structure and dictionary skills.
Numeracy & Maths
P4 have already looked at how Maths impacts the world around us and where we use Maths in our day to day lives. We have started learning how to round 2 and 3 digits to the nearest 10 and the nearest 100.
The class will review Place Value knowledge and use it to build on their sense of number. We will look at 4-digit numbers and read, write order and recite these numbers. Through our place value work, we will be able to identify the value of each digit.
We will then progress to looking at our addition strategies. The class will participate in a daily number talk, to develop mental maths strategies.
In Beyond Number, the class will start with shaping, look at the properties of a range of 2D and 3D shapes and create tiling patterns. We will then move on to investigate the use of mathematical language to describe and record directions.
Health and Wellbeing
At the start of the term, P4 discussed and identified their right as a child. As a class, we agreed on a Class Charter to allow our class to be fun, safe, hardworking and respectful.
This term we will begin our PATHS programme for P4. Lessons will include setting up our class rules, looking at individual emotions, building friendships and community within the school, Self-Control and Anger Management. We will also start the Do Be Mindful programme which will allow us, using a range of strategies, to look at ways we can take a mindful moment each day.
PE
PE is on a Thursday and Friday. This term we will be covering;
- Team Games
- Football
- Badminton
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. Please make sure your child is not wearing jewellery on these days as they will be unable to participate in the lesson for health and safety reasons. If your child cannot take part for any reason, please contact the school.
French
We will be revising the alphabet, basic French phrases and numbers this term through, songs, activities and games.
IDL
P4 will be learning to carry out a comparison study on the rainforest and the Arctic. We will link this with our literacy through our descriptive writing and will develop mapping skills.
Expressive Arts
In Music, we will be using ‘Charanga’ to appraise and learn a song. P4 will have the opportunity to use our new school glockenspiels to accompany the song, learning about rhythm, pace and beat.
During Drama lessons, the pupils will take part in drama activities to support teamwork and improve confidence. We will also ‘act out’ parts of our class novel.
As we move on to our IDL topic, we will use various mediums to create some beautiful artwork to depict the rainforest and Arctic, looking at the idea of hot and cold colours.
Religious Education
This term we will be reflecting on our uniqueness and thinking about our God-given talents. We will reflect on the importance of friendship and link this with various stories from the Bible. The children will take part in class prayers and School Masses, and we will continue to build on our knowledge of common prayers and Mass responses.
Homework will be distributed on a Monday to be completed and returned by Friday.
Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to a fabulous term with P4!
St. Joseph’s P7 Meet and Greet
A reminder that the Parent/carer meet and greet session at St. Joseph’s takes place tomorrow evening (12th September) at 6.30pm.
Primary 2 Term 1 Update
Primary 2 Blog Post
Hello and welcome to our very first blog post of the new session. Primary 2 have been very busy settling into our new classroom and our new routines. Children have been working hard to consolidate previous learning and are enhancing these skills through our novel study and outdoor learning.
Literacy
Our class novel is ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’ and through this text, pupils will explore our outdoor area and write about why dark is fun! Pupils will create some descriptive writing pieces, describing our main character, Plop, and using adjectives to describe the people he meets and the things he sees.
Our reading and spelling activities are now underway, and children have been working within groups to revisit previous sounds and texts, ready to use their skills and strategies to tackle new and unfamiliar spelling sounds and reading books. Our focus in writing currently is descriptive writing and these written pieces will come from our class novel and topic of Houses and Homes.
Homework will be sent out week beginning Monday 4th September. Please check your child’s homework bag, weekly, for the homework to be completed that week. Reading books will be attached to pupils’ accounts through our online Bug Club reading programme. I will issue Bug Club login details when the first homework tasks are sent home. Homework will consist of spelling, reading and maths, both mental and worksheet/jotter jobs too. These will be issued on a Monday and should be returned to school on a Friday.
Maths
Our focus in maths will be place value, with children working on 2-digit numbers, initially to 20 and then to 99. Children will be able to partition these numbers and discuss this in terms of tens (T) and units (u), whilst building on their understanding of number and number patterns. Addition to 10 or 20 will also be a focus as well as word problems to consolidate our strategies within this operation of number. Children will begin use their ‘Busy Bee’ jotters as the term progresses to develop problem solving skills, applying knowledge of number to new contexts and develop strategies for number problems.
Health & Wellbeing
Our Paths Pupil of the Day has now begun, and our Pupil of the Day has been receiving lots of compliments. All children will have the opportunity to be pupil of the day. We will begin exploring emotions, comfortable and uncomfortable and how we recognise these emotions within ourselves and in others.
In P.E, our sessions will happen on a Tuesday and a Wednesday and our focus in term 1 will be on football and basketball. Children will have the opportunity to partake in some fun activities which support teamwork whilst focusing on developing their listening skills and awareness of space.
R.E
Our focus during R.E sessions will be on prayer, their meaning, the routines of the church and the celebration of Mass. We will also spend some time reading and discussing bible stories relating to friendship and love, whilst considering how each of us are unique and have our own God given talents.
Topic
As the class novel is The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, we will be doing a mini topic which focuses on exciting things that happen in the dark, developing children’s imaginations and ideas in fictional texts. We will also look at woodland animals as these are a feature in the class novel and will tie in nicely with out term 1 science topic about houses and homes, comparing houses in the countryside to those we find in the towns and cities. Children will explore and develop an understanding of how houses have changed in the last 100 years, comparing it to life as we know it now.
We hope this is the start of a very successful term and that the pupils are enjoying their return to school and seeing their friends and teachers.
Take care,
Mrs Travers