Term 4

What a fantastic final term we have had in Primary 6.  We have had a term full of new opportunities for growth and lots of fun along the way! 

Literacy

In Literacy this term we have been focusing on the genre of adventure.  Our class novel ‘Dead man’s cove’ supports this and has engaged the children beautifully in the exciting adventures of its budding detective Main character.  Using Talk for Writing methods the children have been innovating on the short story ‘Kidnapped’ by Pie Corbett creating their own characters with a particular focus on exciting sentence starters helping to engage our readers. Accelerated Reader has been ongoing as an independent activity with most children working hard to read books and then complete a test.

Numeracy

During this term primary 6 have been working on fractions, time and solidifying their knowledge of multiplication.  Primary 6 have enjoyed some maths themed play and are now confident in the four operations within whole numbers and fractions. Throughout the term we have also been revising our times table knowledge through active maths activities and games and Primary 6 now have a strong and clear understanding of fact families and multiplication with three digit numbers.

Health and Wellbeing 

In PE primary 6 always work extremely hard. We have enjoyed learning to play Cricket with some of the children going off to take part in an inter schools cricket tournament. As always it is important that we continue to work on being part of a team and primary 6 have done this well through the medium of basketball.

 

Primary 6 have had a wonderful year, full of fantastic learning experiences. It has been a pleasure being their teacher this year. I hope you all have an enjoyable and restful summer. 

 

P7 term 4

It has been a really busy term in Primary 7!  It’s hard to believe your young people are now at the end of their learning journey with us here at Pilmuir and are getting ready to continue this journey after the holidays at the academy.

The children have done an amazing job organising and running our potted sports day and coffee morning, and worked really hard to prepare for our performance at the Pilmuir Picnic.  We have also had lots of transition events to prepare for the move to secondary school.

Literacy

We have worked on two Talk for Writing units this term, one on adventure stories and one on instructions.  We have continued to follow the Wraparound Spelling programme in our spelling groups.  In reading, our focus this term has been on making predictions.  There have been lots of opportunities for talking and listening across the curriculum, from formal presentations to a big audience at assemblies and the welcome and closing speeches at sports day, to relaxed class discussions about transition to the academy.

         

Numeracy and maths

This term we’ve looked at 2D and 3D shape, angles, and data handling.  We also spent some time working on fractions and percentages.  We’ve enjoyed lots of active maths learning activities, like making nets of 3D shapes using different resources and collecting and sharing data from our own surveys and questionnaires.  After staff were retrained in using Numicon resources, the children have had time to explore all the new maths resources we now have in school linked to this.

Health and Wellbeing

We have had lots of visitors from the Academy to talk to us about various aspects of the transition to the academy.  The children have also had the chance to talk about their hopes, worries, and expectations about what being a high school pupil will be like in class.  The transition days went really well.

For PE we have been enjoying the better weather this term and getting outside for weekly rounders and football lessons.  A team of children represented Pilmuir at the Forres Academy ASG football competition.  We also had so much fun designing our activities for potted sports day and then encouraging the other classes to participate on the day.

     

Expressive Arts

Primary 7 have really enjoyed their Wednesday morning arts and crafts lessons with Mrs Hogg.  They made lots of lovely things to sell at our fundraising coffee morning.

We have also had a big focus on music and dance this term as we have been preparing our class and whole school performances for the Pilmuir Picnic.

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Coffee Morning

The Primary 7’s spent a lot of time planning and preparing for our fundraising coffee morning.  Mrs Lyon and Mrs Liney helped the children to make lots of delicious home baking, and the class made posters to advertise the event.  We had a wide selection of crafts made by the class to sell, including tea lights, woven decorations, cards, bookmarks, and bracelets.  The children had a range of different roles on the day of the coffee morning, from greeting visitors at the gate, to serving home baking and juice, collecting entry money, collecting and clearing dirty dishes, and organising games for the young children who came along.  We raised just over £200 which paid for Moray Flying Circus to deliver a workshop for us as an end of term treat.  Special thanks goes to Tesco for donating some baking ingredients, biscuits, refreshments and prizes for this event through their Community Champion scheme. The Forres Store team were very helpful. Thank you to all the family, friends and members of the community who came to show support, including the residents and staff at a local care home.  It was lovely to have you all join us.

 

Library Digital Literacy Workshop

Diane and Mags from Elgin Library came to deliver a digital technology/STEM workshop.  The children really enjoyed exploring augmented reality books, tattoos, stickers, playing with the Sphero robots which are controlled by apps, and trying the Lego Spike coding resources. Thanks to Diane and Mags for leading this workshop and providing lots of fun opportunities for us to learn using all these exciting gadgets.  We hope they will visit the school again next year.

   

Pilmuir Picnic

The children worked hard to learn the songs and dances for the Pilmuir Picnic which we think you will agree was a big success.  Three members of the class worked hard to learn separate lines for a solo/ group part for their class song.  The class really gave their very best effort for the performance, even when they were feeling nervous and uncomfortable.  It shows that sometimes this is needed to make us even better and to challenge ourselves to learn even more.  They made beautiful props as well for our performance.

   

Primary 7 treats

The children had a fantastic circus skills workshop on the penultimate week of term.  They got to play lots of fun games and have a go at learning how to use lots of different circus equipment, including juggling scarves, hoops, poi, spinning plates, and pedalos (a training tool for learning how to cycle a unicycle!). Thank you to Emma from Moray Flying Circus for all her encouragement and support leading this session.

Outfit Moray spent the morning with us on Friday.  The children had a fantastic time completing the obstacle course and braving the ramps.  They did exceptionally well challenging themselves to develop and perfect their cycling skills and manage their own risk taking.  Some of the ramps looked pretty scary and challenging as a bystander but all pupils tried them all at least once. Thank you to Michelle from Outfit Moray for all her help, support and words of encouragement for the children.

We then enjoyed some pizza in the afternoon to finish off another leavers treat day. Thank you to Pizza Pan Forres for opening early to fulfil our order and deliver it to us.

 

We wish all of our P7s a restful summer holiday and lots of good luck wishes for their future schooling at Forres Academy.  We hope you’ll come back to let us know how you are getting on once you settle into the new term.

Good luck to Mrs Young who is leaving us to go off on maternity leave this week.  We look forward to hearing the exciting news very soon about the latest addition to her family and hope to see them next term for a visit (and some baby cuddles!).

Good luck P7,

Mrs Young and Mrs Lyon.

 

 

P2/3 Term 4 Update

Welcome to our last blog post for P2/3!

As we head towards the summer holidays it’s good to look back over the learning this term.

Maths & Numeracy

We started the term learning about the symbols used for expressions and equations. We had to apply our prior knowledge of number to compare amounts and start to use the symbols for ‘greater than’, ‘less than’ and ‘equal to’.

We then moved on to a block focusing on data and analysis. The children enjoyed asking their friends questions and collecting tally marks to show the class’s favourite fruits, animals and games. They went on to draw bar graphs to display the information and showed these at their class assembly.

Over the second half of the term, P2/3 have been learning about measure. They have used non-standard and standard units to estimate and measure length, height, mass and capacity.

Literacy

We really enjoyed showing off our ‘Higher Order Reading’ skills during our sharing the learning event. The children have been using strategies such as predicting, visualising, questioning, connecting and determining importance to help with reading comprehension.

In ‘Talk for Writing’, the children have been learning how to plan a story using the five main parts – The opening, the build up, creating a problem, finding a resolution and the ending. It is great to see so many pupils with the confidence to stand up and tell their stories from the maps they have drawn.

Health & Wellbeing

This term, P2/3 have been learning tennis skills. They have demonstrated how to control a tennis ball with a racket and built up their skill to be able to perform a tennis serve and return a ball played to them by their partner.

Over the term, we have also learned new hula hooping skills and the steps to the Jerusalema dance!

Next Steps

All the children have worked so hard this year and we are really proud of the progress they have made. I would like to wish them all the best as they move on to P3/4, and for those that are joining me again – I can’t wait to see you in August! Have a lovely summer 🙂

 

P1 at the picnic and the P1 water fight

We have had a number of special events this term, such as The Pilmuir Picnic and The P1 Water Fight.  Here are some photos.

We worked hard to learn the “Jerusalema Dance” and the songs,  “You’ve got a friend in me” and “Reach for the stars”.  It was a special afternoon, the children enjoying having their families there to share the experience.



Here is a Sway of  photos and clips.

Go to this Sway

These are some photos of the water fight, the Sway has more.

 

Go to this Sway

 

 

P1 visit to the Tolbooth

On Friday 9th June Primary 1 visited the Tolbooth, or the Town Clock, as lots of people know it.  Some parents also came with us. We enjoyed it very much.  We toured around the building, seeing the cells and Courtroom.  The cells were quite scary.

K said, “I liked the torture room.  It had no bed and no light. ”

K2 said, “I liked the creepy bucket.”

P said, “I liked the jail.”

We also had the chance to go outside and walk along the outdoor viewing platform.  It is so high up!   One group stood right under a clock face as it chimed for 2 o’clock. Thankfully, it wasn’t too loud.

Many thanks to Mr Alexander and the other volunteers  of Forres Heritage Trust https://forresheritage.co.uk/ for making our visit so interesting and enjoyable.  A big thank you to the parents who came along with us.

Here are some photos.

You’ll  need your child’s glow login details to view the Sway showing the visit.

Go to this Sway

Term 4

It is always a time for reflection, as we reach the end of the school year.  Primary 3/4 have a achieved so much. They should all be proud of their hard work. Everyone is looking forward now to next year, with new classes and teachers.

Literacy

This term we have focused on our Talk For Writing topic – change. The class has worked hard to write their own similes, and develop alliteration skills. Everyone has enjoyed learning the Story of Pirate Tom. Independent writing skills develop, as we continue to focus on using consistent punctuation, in all of our work. in reading, each group has made progress as we explore using more expression, when reading to each other.

Numeracy

We have all worked hard, to develop our skills in several areas this term. This has included symmetry, money, shape pattern and chance. In pattern, we are all keen to identify the rule and then continue the sequence. Some children are able to make complex patterns with rules that got us all thinking. Money is another area where lots of progress has occurred.  Everyone can identify coins and give change.  It is hard to budget for the things that we need, but the children have tried hard to achieve this. Working alone and with partners has enhanced this learning.

Health and Wellbeing

The highlight of this term was Potted Sports Day ( You can catch up on photos on this website) . Primary 7 worked really hard, with their teachers, to make this a fabulous occasion for everyone. The children enjoyed all of the different activities and working as a team, with friends from different classes. In PE, P3/4 have enjoyed building skills through circuit work and hula hooping. Everyone has some amazing moves.

Other Curricular Areas

Another highlight of the term was our Pbuzz assembly, where we were able to play some songs for the whole school. We have been learning to play this amazing musical instrument with Mr Gray for the last two terms. All of that practise paid off, when we were able to demonstrate our progress.  We have also continued to work hard on our Play Projects, with May being based on swimming. You can follow our progress on our sway. (look on Google Classroom) Everyone loves to share their learning with the rest of the class.

Thank you to all of our families for supporting our learning this year. We hope that you enjoyed the Play Project Sways and also our Focus Pupil Sways, which will give parents lots of information about their child.

We now look forward to our end of term activities including The Pilmuir Picnic, where everyone will have a chance to hear us play our Pbuzzs.

Have a great summer!