We loved our weekly visits to Pollok Park in Term 4. We  watched closely for changes at the Forest School site brought by the arrival of spring. We noticed the arrival of spring flowers, blossom, new leaves and wild garlic.

We picked some wild garlic and made it into delicious garlic butter. We made bread and cooked it on the fire to make garlic bread.

We picked spring leaves and flowers and used the ancient Japanese art form of hapa zome to create symmetrical leaf prints.

Mariam and Khadija have learned how to put up a hammock almost entirely by themselves!

The hammocks and swings are still a firm favourite with everyone during our Forest School sessions!

In our last few weeks of Forest School we invited our parents to join us for a picnic. What a fabulous feast we had and lots of fun!

Our school hosted their annual art exhibition in January. The focus was 50 years in recognition of the school’s birthday celebrations this year. 

As part of the development process for our art installation, Class 3  spent time learning about what was life 50 years ago when St. Albert’s first opened including…

…what music people were listening and dancing to.

(We chose our favourite songs that came out in the early 1970s!)

…the books children were reading. We shared The Giant Jam Sandwich, a popular children’s story published in 1972.

…the food people were eating. We made the 1970’s children’s party classic: The Hedgehog!

This became the inspiration for our artwork!

We used cheese and fruit snacks popular with children today to create a modern take on ‘The Hedgehog’.

When we opened the snacks, we realised there was a lot of rubbish. MUCH more than when we made the original hedgehog snacks. This was because of all the packaging.

When we sorted through the packaging, it was mostly made of plastic which cannot be recycled…

Unlike the original hedgehogs.

We learned plastic packaging often ends up in our environment. Almost all of the litter in the playground was plastic packaging!

Plastic is our environment  is not good for animals. They often it it or get trapped…and they might die. 

Our artwork highlighted the over-packaging of food sold in our supermarkets, especially snacks aimed at children.

Here we are talking to the judges about our artwork!

Term 2 started with some spooky fun – pumpkin carving and a Halloween party with P6/5. 👻🎃

We also started fortnightly Forest School sessions at Pollok Park. The first one was rather wet…

…but we had some glorious autumn sunshine in our last session!


Term 2 welcomed the arrival of three student teachers from Oman who have been leading our science learning with various investigations into the properties of water and other substances.

Also with P6/5, we’ve been developing our badminton skills this term. Some of us are getting quite good at hitting the shuttlecock!

Class 3 kicked off St. Albert’s 50th Birthday celebrations with a fabulous party! 

When asked about what we could do to help with the school’s 50th anniversary, Class 3 responded with a resounding, “Let’s have a party!” So, our focus for Term 1 has been planning and hosting a party for staff, family and friends, as well as a very special guest, Joanna…an ex-St. Albert’s pupil, who started at the school in 1973!

The first step was to work out a date so we looked at a calendar and decided the second last week of term would give us enough time to prepare and would not be too busy with end-of-term activities. Next, we had to work out who to invite, so everyone wrote their own guest list. We jointly constructed an invitation that the children filled in and decorated. The children hand delivered their invitations, and we posted one to Mrs Creevy. 

Our next step was to work out what decorations and things we needed to make for the party, so we wrote another list. We decided it was important to make a special birthday banner, cards, presents and party hats. 

So, we got to work! 

In the end, we designed and made badges as gifts for our guests and, I’m sure you’ll agree, our party hats are pretty cool! 

The week before our party, everyone chose some music to be on our party playlist and we agreed on games to play including musical statues and musical chairs – Mariam felt it was very important we had prizes to give out to the winners!

 The final week was a busy one. Working out what food to make and serve to our guests, meant writing a shopping list and trip to the shops as well as lots…

and lots…

…and lots of baking!

Fortunately, we were able to save on ingredients by picking apples grown in the school Eco garden to make some delicious apple and ginger muffins.  

When the day finally came for our party, we blew up balloons and decorated the classroom. We laid out the food and decorated the birthday cake.

We welcomed our guests amid much excitement, handing out badges and party hats. We played our games, had prizes and shared the fabulous food we had made.

In the end, we welcomed two special guests – Mrs Hanif (who celebrated her 50th birthday the day before) and Joanna (Ex-pupil) – who we presented with our specially made birthday cake.  

We finished our party by asking Joanna questions about what St. Albert’s was like when it first opened and how the school has changed. She said the building had not changed much at all in 50 years!

Everyone agreed it was a wonderful party and a great way to kick off St. Albert’s year of 50th birthday celebrations! 🥳🎂💜

This term, Class 3 are learning about ‘Growth and Change’.  

Searching for signs of new growth and changes linked to spring on our first visit to Pollok Park, we photographed bluebells, daffodils, blossoms, new buds…

…and, most exciting of all, we met some new calves!

We didn’t find any frogspawn or tadpoles but fortunately Mrs Chapman discovered some tadpoles in her garden pond and brought them in!

We found out on Youtube what tadpoles need to survive and set up a tadpole habitat in our classroom. Since then, we have been learning about the growth and changes that happen during the life cycle of a frog by observing our tadpoles, reading books and singing songs about the different stages of development. 

For the past two weeks at Pollok Park, we have been loving visiting the big duck pond and finally found some tadpoles! They were much smaller than the ones in our classroom.

As part of our ‘Growth and Change’ investigation, we will learn about the life cycles of other animals, including humans!  

This year, St Albert’s celebrates its 50th birthday, so we also want to find out about how the school has ’grown’ and changed since it opened. Class 1, 2 and 3 will be focusing our birthday celebrations on the 10 important years since the ALN Provision was first set up at St. Albert’s.  

Happy 10th birthday to us! 

Class 3 kicked off Term 3 with some fun outdoor learning activities with Primary 5. Inspired by the Big Bird Watch, which some of us took part in, we have been thinking about how we can increase the numbers of birds visiting our playground and how we can help birds to survive the winter months. We have been working with our friends in P5 to make bird feeders, bird houses and create our own ‘human’ nests. 

We have also enjoyed regular outdoor learning activities with Mr Corrigan, including orienteering.

On Burns Night/Day, we joined Primary 5 for orienteering with a Robert Burns theme. Here is Ivo reading out his line from the Burn’s poem. 

Also, in celebration of our famous Scottish poet, Class 3 danced to some traditional Scottish music and joined Primary 5 for our own version of a Burn’s Supper with shortbread, oatcakes and Irn Bru followed by a ceilidh. Not everyone was keen on the Irn Bru, but we loved the dancing!! 

This term, Class 3 is investigating the different groups of People Who Help Us in our community. The visit from Polmadie Fire Service was very exciting, especially as they came straight to see us from a real fire!

The fire fighters told us about their special uniform and equipment, including how they use their hose to put out a fire. When they put the siren on it made lots of different noises and was very, very loud!!

More recently, we had an interesting visit from two police officers.
We loved trying on different bits of their uniform and testing the walkie talkie, but the best bit was sitting in the police car, pressing the horn, and turning on the flashing lights and siren!

We now know more about what an important work the fire and police service do to help keep us safe.

Finally, this term we warmly welcome a new teacher to Class 3 on a Thursday and Friday. Mr Ul Hassan is super nice, and we are so lucky he joined us! Here he is trying out a police hat.  

Class 3 Term 3 Planning Map 2021-22

Class 3 have had a very creative term, starting with the development and creation of our art installation for COP26.

Following on from our investigation into the properties of materials in Term 1, we used the plastic bottle lids we’d collected to create a powerful message about plastic pollution.

The children were concerned about the negative impact of single-use plastics on ocean life and depicted this beautifully in their artwork.

Following discussions about the problem of plastic in our oceans, Kareem said he was ‘sad for the animals and angry about plastic’ and this led to the title of our artwork – ‘Angry About Plastic’.

We spent time sketching sea creatures and then made mock-ups of our chosen sea creatures with lids before gluing the lids to the wall.

Sorley and a friend from Primary 5 came up with the tag line of Reduce, Reuse Recycle – Stop plastic pollution! As well as the clever idea of enveloping COP26 inside a recycling symbol.

Class 3 joined children from all across Glasgow and the rest of the world in marching for Climate Justice on Friday 5^th November. We banged and chanted to do our bit to make the grown-ups stop and listen to our concerns about the future of our planet. We made so much noise as we marched up the Old Bowling Green, the COP delegates were sure to have heard us!

Since the end of COP, we have gradually been getting into the Christmas spirit, starting with the rehearsal of Christmas carols with the rest of the Middle School as our contribution to the school nativity. Also for the nativity, we got filmed delivering a handmade card to St Albert’s Parish Church and gave lucky passers-by an impromptu rendition of Silent Night!

Ivo delivered our card to our local parish priest’s house.

Our next Christmas spirited creative activities have involved the making of tree decorations to sell at the school Christmas Fayre.

We have now turned our attention to the decorating our own classroom!

We certainly are a creative bunch in Class 3!

Merry Christmas from us all! 🎄🎅🎁

We love dressing up and celebrating Halloween in Class 3!

We enjoyed making spooky Halloween potions with lots of yucky ingredients.

We carved pumpkins…

…and had lots of fun dookin’ for apples and eating donuts off a string at our Halloween party!

Here we are having our Halloween Feast! 🎃 🧙‍♀️ 🕷 🕸

Welcome to the first post in our Class 3 blog!

We have had such a busy and fun first term this year. We have particularly enjoyed being able to mix more with other classes, which we missed out on for  much of last year. Here is are some highlights from our Term 1…

Exploring our fabulous outdoor space!

Inspired by the upcoming COP26, our learning context for this term has been about materials and recycling. We started the term learning about the properties of materials and explored the concept of human-made and nature-made materials in our playground and classroom environment.

We then focused our attention on sorting materials into recyclable  and non-recyclable and we learned which recycling bin to use for different materials.

We even recycled old boxes to make a fabulous Enormous Crocodile for Roald Dahl Story Day!

We have a tailor-made English programmes in Class 3, with everyone getting down to their individualised or group literacy tasks each morning after we’ve had our Morning Circle.

Class 3 are a musical bunch and joining Primary 5 for Samba drumming each Wednesday afternoon has been a highlight of our week this term…click on video link to take a look!

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Recently, we enjoyed recording a song entitled ‘I am the Earth’ with the rest of the Middle School, which will form part of the COP26 opening ceremony. Parents can check out the video recording on our Class 3 Team.

Primary 4 and 5 have been our main buddy classes this term and we have shared lots of fun outdoor learning experiences and mini-excursions with them. We have also enjoyed weekly visits to Class 2.

This term we have focused on developing our Mathematics skills and vocabulary in various areas of numeracy, Information Handling, 2D Shape and Patterns.

Making our geoboards with Primary 4/5 and exploring different 2D shapes was a lot of fun!

As was making autumn inspired repeating patterns with Class 2.

During Maths week, we did a litter pick with Class 2 and graphed the results of the materials we found. We discovered that most of the litter was made from plastic.

Next term will continued to explore how we can reuse, reduce and recycle everyday materials and explore why plastic has become a big pollution problem for our planet…

…watch this space for the next instalment of our learning journey!