Well done to the children in P6/7 who attended the after school Netball Club. We attended a tournament yesterday competing against 5 other NLC Schools and played so well against very talented teams.  Holy Family were delighted to be awarded First Place Winners!   Huge thanks to Miss Fagan for helping coach the team.

Holy Family Parish and Primary School

Confirmation Enrolment Mass

Sunday 14^th September 2025     11am Mass

• All children should attend Mass in full school uniform.
• Children should sit with their family in the main section of the Church near the centre aisles if possible.
• Father will invite children to come to the Altar where he will welcome them.
• Children will return to their seat with their families.
• Parents and Children will be invited to stand (at their seats) by Father.
• Father will ask parents to confirm support to children, response will be “We do” and then children will confirm their commitment, response will be “We do” and “Amen” (handouts will be available)
• Children will be invited to present their scrolls with their signed declaration. At this point Father will invite children to come forward to the Altar where scrolls will be placed in a basket. Children should proceed to the Altar in the same way as they would for Communion, one behind the other.

Face Painting Ideas

Well,  what a busy time we have had over the last few weeks in Primary 7. We have had our first transition visit to Cardinal Newman High School, where we got to work with teachers from the English department which we loved. We are due to visit again on the 15 December so can’t wait to get another visit.

In other areas some of our Primary 6 and 7 boys and girls represented our school at a football festival where both teams did very well and gave the children a fantastic opportunity to compete against other local schools. Recently many children represented our class in the Cross Country trials and I am pleased to say many will be selected again to run in the final. Well done to all involved and for all the parents who came along to support on these occasions.

Literacy

We are well underway with our Active Literacy Spelling Programme and some of the words being taught to the children are very tricky. We discuss the meaning and the root of these as well as how to spell them accurately. I will not always set specific spelling tasks for homework each week as the children can chose which way they would like to learn these words – I will spelling suggestions to the files section on our class team.

Reading – we have just completed a block of Non – Fiction Reading in which the children developed their reading, writing, listening and talking skills through the exploration of non-fiction sources. This was linked to Climate Change, Sustainable and Renewable Energy and the children worked co operatively over the course of the week to read, watch and listen to a variety of sources such as texts, AI generated pieces, documentaries, podcasts and online sources linked to the themes above. They had debates and discussions and shared their learning with each other over the week. They had the opportunity to plan and research and then produced an extended piece of writing each week, showcasing their knowledge within their writing skills. The children really enjoyed this method of learning. In addition to this the children had to read a personal reader at home and prepare a detailed book review which they will present to the class. This gives us the opportunity to developing our listening and talking skills and we are engaging in Peer evaluation so that we all have a shared understanding of what is expected of us in this area. So far, the presentations have been excellent, and I have a list of books that I now really want to read. We will get through the rest of these this week hopefully.

Over the next few weeks we will be embarking on a Christmas Media Study where we will explore and develop our reading comprehension skills via this media. We also hope to look at poetry and perhaps Song.

Maths and Numeracy

We have working hard on developing our Number and Number Processes. We have been looking at multiplication and division, decimal fractions, negative numbers, multiples factors and primes and BODMAS which the children really enjoyed. I am seeing the confidence increase in many of them as they are experiencing success. I would continue to encourage them to always read and consider each problem carefully. Quite often errors occur due to a lack of concentration, mis counting or wrong multiplication facts. It is important at this stage that the children are focused in class. I would also encourage children to continue to take pride in their jotter presentation. This week children are undertaking the Standardised assessments for P7 which will enable us to identify areas for development and focus for next term.

HWB/PE

We have been working with the Cardinal Newman High School sports leaders in PE. They have been teaching us a range of different games and skills and are helping us to work together as a team. We are going to learn how we can be leaders in our own school by being Junior Sports Leaders for the younger children in our school.

We are also about to embark on our favourite time of the year in the school calendar – Social Dancing. This is in preparation for our class party and to teach us lifelong skills as we never know when we might need to dance the night away at a Ceilidh.

We also recently learned and performed a modern Scottish Song in honour of St Andrew’s day. We really enjoyed singing ‘Home’ by Nathan Evans and our performance is on our school Twitter if you would like to listen to our wonderful singing.

Uniform

Please can the children remember to bring PE uniform to change on Tuesdays and Thursdays, if there is any item needed, please access our Uniform Swap and Shop where you may find what you need. Can I also remind the children to wear their school tie each day as again this sets a good example from Primary 7 to the rest of the children.

Finally thank you to you all for your ongoing support with the children.

Mrs Preston and Primary 7.

Primary 7 present – Movie and Non Uniform Day!

Friday 11th October 2024.

Cinema Ticket £1.00 donation available from Monday.

Win a VIP Goodie Box  or the chance to sit on the teacher’s spinny chair to watch the movie. 

Raffle tickets 20 p each.  On sale from Monday.

Welcome to Primary 7’s first update of their final year at primary school. It has been lovely to welcome the children back into class after the summer holiday and great to see them smiling, enthusiastic and excited for all that is planned in the year ahead.

One of the first responsibilities the children had was to ensure that they helped their Primary 1 buddy to adjust to their very first days in school. This involved meeting them at the gate, helping them in the lunch hall and of course playing and looking after them in the school yard. I am very proud of how they all showed their nurturing and caring side when embarking on this role.

In order to ensure that we start the year as we mean to go on, we have spent lots of time settling back in to school and reflecting on our Schools Vision and Values and class rules. We are very aware that as Primary 7 we are role models to the younger children and want to set a good example of how we demonstrate, happiness, kindness, faith, mutual respect, and growth in learning. We know that with all the additional responsibilities we have and the busy, dynamic pace of primary 7 we need to work hard and focus on our learning in class.

Literacy

We have been reading the novel ‘Wonder’ by RJ Palacio, which tells the story of Auggie Pullman, a ten-year-old boy with a severe facial difference that makes him stand out. The children have really enjoyed this novel and we have explored themes of kindness, acceptance, bullying, and the challenges of living with a disability. The novel strongly emphasizes the power of kindness and the importance of empathy. The children have developed understanding through the six main reading strategies, prior knowledge, visualisation, metalinguistics, main ideas, inference and summarising. Through listening, talking and exploring the themes the children have developed a deeper understanding of the importance and impact of decisions and choices they make.

The class have also been working through the North Lanarkshire Active Literacy Spelling programme which is a 5 week programme where the children focus on the following

Week 1/2 – Building Vocabulary – focus is on Affixes and Homophones and Confusions

Week 3/4 – Common Words – Spelling Strategies and Rules for Common and Tricky Words

Week 5 – Consolidation and Assessment

Writing – Our focus has been on our Core Targets and Persuasive and Information Genre. The children completed applications, wrote letters, speeches and designed posters for our House Captain campaign. The children will focus on non – fiction features of writing through their IDL and Science topics.

Maths and Numeracy

The children have been working on Estimating and Rounding, Place Value up to 7 digits and 3 decimal places.

The children are learning that there is a variety of ways to problem solve and approach calculations, they are learning the relevance of rounding and estimating and when it would be useful to use this skill. They are learning to apply Maths and Numeracy to their everyday lives. Children are continuing to use Number Talks Strategies to explain and justify their answers and children are becoming more confident in this. We are continuing to work on pace and accuracy of our mental agility and should continue to learn multiplication and division facts and how to quickly multiply and divide by 10, 100 and 1000.

HWB/PE

We have been working on our fitness levels and recording our progress over a 4-week period – we are able to see how this has increased with frequency of application. We are now developing our skills in Badminton and on Thursday’s we are lucky to have sports leaders from Cardinal Newman working with us.

We have explored our rights and learned about the UNCRC and have agreed on and set up our Class Charter. We have explored how manage risks, and to keep ourselves safe when participating in sports and activities – we demonstrated our leadership skills when we taught our buddies how to play games safely in the yard.

RE

We have been learning all about the Liturgical Seasons and Colours, the Assumption, and the importance of including God in our lives throughout the year. We have had a few visits from Fr Kristoff and it has been really interesting to learn all the important things he teaches us about the Church and prayer. We celebrated our First Friday Mass to welcome everyone back to school and are now learning all about how we can be like Jesus in our own lives. We are learning about the Saints and the Holy Spirit in preparation for some of us receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation.

Homework

Unfortunately, I have been having some technical issues with the Primary 7 Homework tab. It does not always enable me access to post the homework but there does not appear to be any known cause for this, so I have therefore been posting on the Class Team when this has been unavailable. I have explained this to the children and they too have experienced some difficulty with the website and logging on to Glow and Teams. Going forward I will endeavour to post to the website and to Teams. Should you not see homework available on one, please check the other. This week passed, during ICT all children checked that they were able to access GLOW and our Class Team using their passwords. They may need to download Teams or access it via the GLOW launch pad on their own devices and they may need to re-enter their username and password. It is important that children become familiar using Teams for communication as this is often the preferred method of communication used at Secondary School.

In Other Areas

I would just like to say well done to our new Captains of Milnwood, Muirmadkin, Orbiston and Mossend. All of the children that participated in this should be very proud of themselves as they were all very worthy winners and it was certainly a tough choice for the children in the school.

Uniform

Please can the children remember to bring PE uniform to change on Tuesdays and Thursdays, if there is any item needed, please access our Uniform Swap and Shop where you may find what you need. Can I also remind the children to wear their school tie each day as again this sets a good example from Primary 7 to the rest of the children.

Finally thank you to you all for your ongoing support with the children and I look forward to meeting with you on Parents Evening.

Mrs Preston and Primary 7.