Category: Primary 4/3

Overall attendance and late coming statics at Camstradden Primary are not where we would like them to be.

Every child has a right to an education and it the expectation that every child will attend school each day on time. Being late for school impacts on many things including pupils attainment as well as their social and emotional development.

We have identified poor attendance as being our biggest barrier to learning. Almost all class teachers have shared that if the children who are regularly absent from school were in school on time each day, their attainment would improve significantly. As such a relentless focus for us this term will be on improving attendance and reducing late coming. This focus is supported by the HMI Inspectors who visited us in December which will be highlighted in their upcoming report.  We have provided further information within this months newsletter in relation to late coming and attendance.

Each month we will share with families the average late coming and attendance rates for each class. We hope that this, alongside our Improving Attendance Action Plan, will help to improve attendance at Camstradden Primary and significantly reduce late coming. This in turn will allow all of our pupils to achieve their full potential and access the learning that they are entitled to.

Numeracy and mathematics

This term the class have been focusing on the operations multiplication and addition. They have learned how to use a wide range of strategies: Grid method, repeated addition, arrays and to complete a variety of number sentences and problem-solving questions successfully. The class are now ready to explore the other operations division and subtraction. As part of mathematics, the class have also been exploring different unit of measurements and engaged in plentiful opportunities to engage in active learning measuring different objects, e.g., using scales to measure ingredients to bake.

Literacy

This term the children have focused on the aspect of setting, exploring different exciting settings and have worked in pairs and groups to brainstorm a wide range of interesting adjectives and verbs to describe these. The class then used such language to write their own setting descriptions successfully. The class have now progressed to explore another genre of writing, recount. The class have grasped the features of recount and can identify these successfully. In addition, they have planned and wrote their own recounts. These recounts feature all elements explored as well as adjectives and verbs, demonstrating they are successfully applying previous learning.

Social Subjects and Expressive Arts

This term the class have been learning about business enterprises, specifically exploring what the different roles involved in running a successful enterprise business. The class have applied this knowledge into the running of their own business enterprise which involves observing and capturing details from oceanic life and creating patterns which will be printed on to tote bags. They have applied their numeracy knowledge of the four operations to budget and purchase resources for this. The class are now at the final stage of completing the product which will be sold at the school Christmas fair, they are very excited to adopt the various roles in the selling of the product also. As part of P.E, the class are learning different Scottish Country Dances, they have currently learned two dances and are practicing demonstrating high levels of effort to master the routines. They are excited to showcase their performance of these dances at their upcoming mini school ceilidh.

Science

This term the class have been exploring the skeleton and successfully have learned the names of ten different bones and can identify where these are on a diagram! They have also created their own mini skeletons with the correct positioning of the bones with corresponding labels. The class are now currently learning about the roles of the joints and the muscles and have begun to learn their role , function and positioning.