May has been a very special month in primary 4 as we had our First Communion for many of our pupils. After months of learning all about the Sacrament and weeks in church preparing, we made our whole school community extremely proud. It was lovely for us in Holy Family school to share in this special day and we hope that you can all now share this with your church community.

In Literacy , we have been continuing with our  spelling work as usual. We will keep doing spelling homework for a few more weeks, but look out for it in our diaries, rather than on the website. Mrs Gilfedder has been very pleased with the Friday tests, which show how hard we have been learning for the rest of the week. We have been  writing instructions, for example. reporting on our Mummification experiment. We have been doing some reading comprehension work altogether, as we have had a lot of disruptions due to school show and testing. We will finish our novels in June.

We have had an exciting month so are now getting back into good routines of listening well in class and answering out without shouting out.  We have been revising many aspects of grammar, such as punctuation, adjectives and adverbs.

Numeracy

After successful work on Division, we have returned to Subtraction. This has been the most tricky out of Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division so extra practise will help us all before we move on to primary 5 work.  A few strategies that have worked well for us are

• Using a number line to count back or forward
• Taking away 10’s first, then units
• Laying the sum out as a chimney sum.

We have been working on Money with Mrs Gilfedder. We have been working on recognising coins and notes up to £20. We have also been working how how much things cost and giving proper change.

Health and Well being

We are coming to the end of Roots of Empathy. We have a better understanding of how babies communicate and this has helped us to think about how we communicate with each other. We have also discussed safety for babies and children aged 8 and 9.

We have been continuing with Athletics, so that we are ready for Sports Day.

Spanish

We are delighted to be doing Spanish with Mrs Gilfedder and we have shown real enthusiasm for it. We are working on creating a learning wall to support our work.

The Egyptians

We are continuing to learn about the Egyptians. Some of us have begun making canopic jars  which were found in the tombs. We have been doing art of death masks and  Egyptian jewellery. We enjoyed our Mummification experiment using fruit!

And finally, many of us have been sharing our talents in the school show! What an amazing experience for a primary 4 pupil. We wish them all luck on the night!