Curriculum Update (Thursday 20^th January 2022)

Hello and welcome to our third curricular update blog post of the session.  Primary 2/3 have been very busy throughout term 2, working hard to organise and present their nativity production and complete their Christmas Enterprise topic of budgeting for and creating their Christmas crafts.

Literacy

In literacy our skills of prediction continued through links to our reading texts and class books and although this will continue to be applied in term 3, the focus will move toward sequencing and summarising the beginning, middle and end of our chapters or texts.  This will also apply during topic, where pupils will scan and select relevant facts or information, summarising and note taking to create a bank of facts that will support them in creating their own pieces of writing.

As in previous terms, our reading and spelling activities are continuing at various times throughout the week. Children are using a mixture of practical, hands-on activities such as play dough, scrabble tiles, stencils and chalk boards to practice their spelling words but are also employing strategies such as ‘rainbow spell’ and ‘pyramid spell’ to reinforce their spelling knowledge at home and in class. We are using the Active Literacy phoneme stories and word building applications to help us recognise our spelling sound and words in texts we are accessing.

Our focus in writing has been descriptive writing throughout terms 1 and 2, and this will continue this term to build our vocabulary.  In term 3, this will be extended to include narrative writing. Children will develop their own characters and settings, using their description skills to build their own stories whilst focusing on structure and sequencing of events to create a flow to tell a story using their own ideas.

Just a reminder that homework will continue to be sent out weekly on a Monday, so please check your children’s bags for their plastic wallet.  Reading books will be attached to pupils’ accounts through our online Bug Club reading programme and all homework should be returned to school on a Friday.

Maths

Our focus in maths this term will be multiplication and division, however children will regularly revisit addition and subtraction skills to retain this knowledge.  As with addition and subtraction, children will begin to make the link with multiplication and division through fact families and discussion of strategies.  Place value, as always will be revisited throughout the term and applied to the new maths topics. The Circle maths group will revisit the 2, 5 and 10 times table whilst seeing the link between the 2, 4 and 8 x tables, in order to develop further the skills in multiplication developed earlier in the year.  In the rectangle and triangle maths groups, the focus will be mainly the 2, 5 and 10 times tables.

In other areas of maths, time and fractions will be a focus as children build on their previous knowledge and apply this to a variety of problems. This will be a topic across all maths groups and differentiated appropriately to suit all learners.  Children will regularly use their ‘Thinking It Through’ jotters to develop problem solving skills, applying knowledge of number to new contexts and develop strategies for any number problems.

Health & Wellbeing

Our Paths Pupil of the Day is still being received well with pupils and our Pupil of the Day continues to receive lots of compliments and special jobs around the classroom.  We are continuing to explore emotions, comfortable and uncomfortable and how we recognise these emotions within ourselves and in others.  We are also looking at problem solving strategies through discussion, deciding what steps to take if we should experience uncomfortable emotions and prevent escalation when we are angry or frustrated.  Using our traffic light system, which is displayed in the classroom, we hope to give children the tools to self-regulate these emotions or seek help to co-regulate.

In P.E, our sessions will happen inside (Tuesday) once per week, and outside (Thursday) once per week and our focus will be fitness and gymnastics. We are building on our term 2 topic of gymnastics to further develop skills as well as developing a sense of strength, speed, and stamina and how to look after our bodies through our fitness input.

R.E

Our focus during R.E sessions will be the Sacrament of Baptism whilst looking to the preparation required for our Sacrament of Reconciliation for our P3 pupils.  As we do not yet have a confirmed date for this, booklets for Reconciliation will be issued to the children when a date has been decided. Thereafter, home tasks should be completed at home with children, to prepare as a family for this upcoming Sacrament. As Easter approaches, we will begin to look at the Easter Story to prepare the children for the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Topic

Our topics over the next term will be ‘The Romans’.  This topic has already been well received by the children, who have already begun to look at the growth of The Roman Empire over a thousand-year period and the belief system of Roman people through research into their Roman Gods.  The topic will also look at Roman soldiers, Roman society and lifestyle as well as construction of roads, buildings, bridges and mosaics. The topic will conclude with the impact of the Roman Empire in Scotland.

As always, we hope this is the start of another successful term as we begin our new topics across the curriculum.

Take care,

Mrs Travers

Welcome back!  We hope you and your families had a relaxed, enjoyable holiday.  2022 already!

Primary 5 are making excellent progress and establishing themselves as sensible, reliable upper school pupils.

During term 3 our focus will be:

Literacy

We will continue to use Bug Club as our differentiated reading resource and will be developing our fluency and comprehension skills through the use of this resource both in class and as homework. In addition, pupils will also use ‘Giglets’ as a central resource to aid our reading and writing skills.  This term we will be focussing on the genre ‘explanation’ as a writing focus, using our reading skills and topic work to inform our pieces. In reading, fluency, expression and comprehension will continue to be our priority; some groups will continue to look at inference and creation of questions. We will also explore and extend our knowledge of plurals, metaphors, alliteration and onomatopoeia as well as refine and develop our use of punctuation. 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.

Numeracy

Pupils will continue in their working groups focussing on 1^st and 2^nd level concepts. The circles and rectangles groups will complete subtraction before tackling multiplication and division with remainders. The squares and rectangles will also focus on these areas at their level focussing on quick recall of facts. All pupils will also look at money, with links to addition and subtraction and will later focus on 2D and 3D shape recognition and properties as part of their Beyond Number topic.

It is essential that times tables should continue to be practised at home regularly to ensure quick recall, as this will aid our learning in multiplication this term. Please also allow your children to experience ‘real’ money and chat with them about finance and budgeting appropriate to their age/stage.

Health and Well-being

The PATHS visiting specialist has been very impressed with our class and their knowledge of our strategies relating to emotional regulation. Pupils are aware of their place within the upper school and the responsibility that goes with it. We will also look at substances that can damage our physical and emotional health, appropriate to our age.

R.E

This term we will look at Judaism, daily life in Jesus’ time and First century Palestine. We will also be preparing for Lent as we approach Easter time. Pupils will also continue to learn prayers and focus on reflection this term in class.

IDL

Our topic this term is ‘Continents’; pupils will use their previous skills and knowledge from our ‘Living things/ Climate change’ topic to take a closer look at individual continents. We will examine population, weather, countries within continents, surrounding oceans and culture and traditions. Writing, ICT and expressive arts lessons will relate to this.

As always we are enjoying our time working with your children. Happy New Year!

Thanks for your on-going support.

Mrs Crawford & Mrs McIntyre.

Happy New Year to you all! I hope you had a very enjoyable festive break with your families.

In Primary 1/2 we are ready for a new year of learning!! Please have a look at the information below to see what we will be focusing on in each subject.

Literacy – Primary 2

Phonics – we will continue to follow our Active Literacy framework, learning new joint phonemes and using these to make and break words.

Spelling – spelling common words as we learn them is always a challenge. This term we are going to be trying to spell these correctly while using them in sentences.

Writing – Using the skills we have acquired in using our Description bubbles throughout the previous terms, we are going to be writing about characters and settings.

Hand writing will also be a focus this term, ensuring we are correctly forming our letters and taking care with their size and position on our lined pages.

Reading – Our focus in reading will be to develop our comprehension skills by answering inferential questions; using the clues in the story and our own knowledge to help us. We will be discussing and sequencing the main events of stories and will continue to read our Bug Club texts too.

Literacy – Primary 1

Phonics – We will learn the remaining letter sounds of the alphabet this term while improving our word building skills.

Spelling – Now that we can read and write our sounds, we will be writing as many words as we can!! Some of our common words cannot be sounded out so we have to practise the spelling of these in lots of different ways to help us remember the letter order!!

Writing – We are continuing to develop our skills in describing this term as well as having a go at writing some words and sentences by ourselves.

Letter formation and hand writing will continue to be a focus to allow us to showcase our spelling skills with ease.

Reading – Now that we are using worded texts, we will be developing our word attack skills, remembering to use our letter sounds to help us with unfamiliar words, while looking for our common words too.

We will also be developing our comprehension skills by answering questions about or texts.

Numeracy – Primary 1 and 2

As a class, we have been working on our strategies for adding and subtracting mentally, these will help us continue with our addition and subtraction facts to 10 and 20.

P2 – We will be transferring our addition and subtraction skills into the topic of “Money” later this term. Initially we will consider the various methods we can use to pay for things before identifying the coins up to £2. Once we are familiar with the various coins, we will combine these to create exact amounts to 20p. Some children will be expected to give change and use the “p” and “£” sign correctly.

P1 – We will continue to focus on our addition skills, partitioning the quantities to 10 and learning the different ways to make each number. We will also be learning about the doubling and halving of quantities.

We will also be looking at Money, initially brainstorming our ideas about when and how we use it. We will be introduced to all the coins up to £2, ensuring we can correctly identify these and as our addition skills develop, we will combine these coins to “pay” for goods in our class shop.

As a class, we will continue to look at time this term in more detail, linking in with our topic of “Sun, Moon & Stars”.

As part of our topic, we will also be looking at measure. Initially, the focus will be on using the comparative language of measure such as longer, shorter, thinner, wider etc but we will move on to using non-standard units of measure, eg: hand spans, feet, cubes.

Health & Well-Being (HWB)

Now that we have learned how to “Do Turtle” when things are becoming stressful, we are going to be problem solving for Twiggle and his friends by helping them overcome difficult friendship scenarios. We are confident we have the necessary knowledge and strategies to help them!

In other areas of HWB, we are considering the impact of physical activity on our bodies and identifying the physical changes we feel after a period of exercise.

We will also be discussing the importance of personal hygiene; reinforcing our tooth brushing and handwashing techniques.

Keeping ourselves safe will also be a focus this term as we think about our road safety techniques and how to react in an emergency situation.

During our PE sessions we will be completing our second block of gymnastics, reinforcing the skills from last term while incorporating these into sequenced movements.

We will then introduce racquet skills, looking at how we hold and use a racquet before introducing ball control.

Fun fitness will be our final topic, developing each child’s personal level of speed, agility, stamina and strength through fun activities and exercises.

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

RE

The first half of the term will focus on the Holy Family and how life would have been for Jesus as He grew up in Nazareth with Mary and Joseph. We will also discuss how He would have gone to the local Synagogue to worship and compare this to the church where we go to pray. We will also discuss our Baptism and compare this to the Naming Ceremony which represents the Jewish tradition.

As we move towards Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent, we will talk about the meaning of this special time. During Lent we will take part in special prayer and reflection times to prepare ourselves for the special celebration of Easter.

IDL (Topic)

Our first topic this term will be “Grandparents”. We will be asking our grandparents LOTS of questions to help us learn about life in the past!!! We will compare their childhood toys/games/music to ours and see if there has been many changes!!

Sun, Moon and Stars will be our second topic this term.  Our main focus will be to understand the rotation of the Earth and how we have night time and day time. We will also explore how the Earth orbits the sun, giving us the seasons of the year. We will investigate the planets of our Solar System and have lots of fun exploring and measuring shadows.

Expressive Arts

Our art, music and drama will be linked in with our topics once again this term. Art and music will have an appreciation element with the children giving their responses to specific artwork and pieces of music.

Within music the children will be identifying various percussion instruments and using these to keep a steady beat.

We cannot wait to get started!

Mrs Duff.

Happy New Year everyone and hopefully you had an enjoyable Christmas break and Santa was good to you!  Here is a brief outline of our learning this term.

Literacy 

Our focus this term is narrative writing.  We will be looking at plot within stories and how they are constructed as well as how dialogue moves the story forward.  There will also be input on how stories can be started effectively to grasp the readers attention.   All reading groups will continue to develop use of Active Literacy strategies through Bug Club reading books.  The Blue reading group will explore their comprehension through Literature Circles.  For Talking and Listening we will be looking to use gestures and notes to assist our presentation.

Numeracy

Mental strategies will continue to be explored through our daily Number Talks, with the Circles accessing the Daily Rigour Newspaper.  Focus will continue to remain on the relationship between fractions, decimals and percentages before moving on to number patterns, expressions and equations.  For Beyond Number, the class will be investigating coordinates and data handling.

HWB

In PATHS this term we will look at respect and how it can be demonstrated in all situations: at home, in school and in the community.  P7 have been discussing this recently in relation to their playground behaviour.  We will look at different cultures to explore how people all over the world live and discuss our differences with respect.

Our PE unit for this term will be fitness and netball.  In fitness, we will learn about different muscle groups and various exercises to work them.  For netball, we will explore working as a team as well as reflecting on their individual role within the game.

IDL 

Our topic for this term will look at land use and sustainability.  Specifically, we will focus on the 5 R’s (refuse, reduce, reuse, repurpose, recycle) and discover ways we can reduce our carbon footprint.   We will also investigate some global goals that the government has set out in order to make the country more sustainable.  Children will also investigate the debate between developing land and conservation using real life case studies.

Mr Bertoncini

We have a selection of brand new surplus uniform  to buy.

Click the link below to see what is available:

New Uniform price list

Please let the office know if you are interested in any items and we will add it to Parentpay for you to make payment

On Wednesday there will be sticky toffee pudding and custard on the menu.

Primaries 4 – 7 will be  taking part in Rugby this Friday. This will be outside so can pupils please come to school wearing appropriate outdoor clothing for this.

Thanks

New National Entitlement Card – Parents Communication

Dear Parent/Carer,

As you will know, your child is due to transfer from primary to secondary education at the beginning of the new school session (August 2022).

Please complete the online P7 transfer application at http://eastayrshi.re/p7transfer no later than Wednesday 26 January 2022.

Your secondary school will already be in communication with your child via primary school to provide information and hand books are available at: www.eac.eu/secondaryschoolhandbooks.

We very much hope that visits and events may be possible later in the year to allow you and your child to visit their new school.

Use the links below to access information on free bus travel:

Young Persons’ Free Bus Travel Scheme (transport.gov.scot)

getyournec.scot

The type of National Entitlement Card you apply for and whether you need approval from a parent or guardian depends on your age.

Homework will restart for pupils as of next week .

Dear Parents/ Carers

Happy New Year to all of our Mount Carmel family past and present. I hope you had a restful Christmas despite the challenges. We are delighted to welcome all our children back and are looking forward to a term of fun and learning.

Mrs Carole McConville

Head Teacher

Lots of fun was had at their last Primary Christmas Party.  Prizes, laughs, groovy moves and stuffing faces with cake.  And of course, good old Scottish Country dancing!

Wishing all our Staff, pupils and families a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from everyone at Mount Carmel Primary !

Yesterday classes from Mount Carmel visited Crossgates Nursing Home to bring the residents some festive cheer! They had made lots of beautiful posters for the visit.

• Primary 1 – Carter 
• Primary 1/2 – Lochlin 
• Primary 2/3 – Emily
• Primary 4 – Lucas
• Primary 5 – Aria
• Primary 6 – Chloe
• Primary 7 – Lucy

And our overall winner of our Star Prizes is: Rachel in P7 

Just a friendly reminder that our Primary 7 hoodies are still available to buy through Parentpay at a cost of £10 each. 

Did you spot who was hiding behind our Christmas tree?

It’s our Star Prize – Santa and his friend Harley the Huskey!

We raised an amazing £253 for the FOMC Christmas Raffle this year !  Thank you to everyone who bought tickets and helped us to reach this fantastic amount!

The draw takes place today at 2pm!

Please find attached the most recent letter to parents from the Head of Education, Linda McAulay-Griffiths.

Letter to parents final 20.12.21

We are delighted to announce that Mount Carmel Primary has been awarded a Bronze- Rights Committed award 

Just a reminder that the school will close at:

2.30pm on Wednesday 22nd December  (Taxis at 2pm)

Pupils and staff return on:

Thursday 6th January 2022 @ 9am

There will be a change to the lunch menu on Wednesday:

Pizza and chips will be the only option available that day.

The boys and girls in P1, P1/2 and P2/3 were given a wonderful surprise today………….Santa came to visit! Even though he is super busy, he made time to travel  all the way from the North Pole to come and see us!!

We told Santa what we would like for Christmas and then we sang “Jingle Bells” to thank him for his visit.