Primary 1 have been so busy this month and have achieved lots of their learning targets.

In Literacy we have continued to learn lots of new initial alphabet sounds and common words. We have been learning the strategies that we can use to help us to learn tricky words such as using our phonetic knowledge or spotting words hiding inside our words (e.g. his has is hiding inside). We have now learned 14 new sounds and are beginning to use our knowledge of these sounds to build words independently on our magnetic boards. Please test us on some words that contain our sounds each week whilst we do our homework. This will help us to read and write!

We have also been trying very hard to begin to write simple sentences all by ourselves on our whiteboards. Mrs Cook came into our class to visit us and she saw how well we wrote a sentence all about the cheeky pancake from our reading book. Charlie Checker helps us to remember our core writing targets such as finger spaces, big Captain Capital letters, and full stops at the end of our sentences. We have also been learning about instructions within our writing in primary 1. We made our own jam sandwiches then put instructions into the correct order so we could help others to make them too.

In Maths we have been working on numbers to 10. We have been ordering the numbers, finding missing numbers and learning the names of the numbers to 10. We have also been learning about shape. We know lots of 2d shapes and can discuss their properties. Also, we have learned the names of lots of 3d objects such as cube, cuboid, cone, cylinder and sphere.

We have been developing our emotional literacy this month by investigating a range of emotions that we feel each day. We made our own Mood Monsters for our class. We like to have regular check-ins each day to say how we feel and why.

This has been a busy month within R.M.E. We have been learning that November is a very special month for remembering all the people who have died. We prayed for the people we know who have gone to Heaven. We also remembered the soldiers who died in war during Remembrance Day.

As our Nativity is quicky approaching we spent time learning about the story of the very first Christmas. We love the story so much and have enjoyed passing our Travelling Nativity Story around each of our houses. This represents the long journey that Mary and Joseph made as they travelled from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

This month we celebrated St.Andrew’s Day in school. Primary 1 learned the song ‘Three Craws’ and performed it in front of an audience at our school assembly. We did so well. We loved watching the older children perform too! This was great practice for our upcoming Nativity show.

This month we are looking forward to so many things. We have a class Elf called Snowball who we can’t wait to find each morning. We have our Nativity show next week and we are so excited to show off our amazing acting, singing and dancing. Please remember to buy your tickets while they are still available. In December we also have our Christmas party and our Christmas lunch. Remember to check X for lots of photos of our important events.

We have had a very busy September in primary 1. We are becoming more independent at the same time as learning lots of new skills. We are learning more about the our class routines and rules and are trying hard to follow these. We helped Mrs Simpson to create our class charter and we try so hard to follow these four important rules:

• Work hard
• Gentle hands
• Keep our classroom tidy
• Listen to adults when they are speaking

We love the praise and rewards that we receive if we follow these rules. We especially love Class Dojo, Star of the Week and when we receive head teacher certificates and stickers.

In literacy we have been continuing our active literacy programme and already know how to read and write s  a  t  p  i  and n. We have been listening to jolly phonics songs to help us to learn our sounds. You can access these on YouTube by searching for ‘jolly phonics songs in order’. We can now build lots of words using our new sounds, and we practise this on the magnetic board in school. Our grown ups could help us practise reading and writing lots of simple words at home too (e.g. sat, pan, tip, sit, pit).

We have now learned 10 new common words. Mrs Simpson sends these common words home every week in our homework pack. We should keep all our words in a little tub at home and practise them every single day. This will help us learn them well and enable us to read and write them easily.

We have already begun to develop our writing skills in primary 1. We know that Charlie Checker is always there to make sure that we are meeting our core writing targets;

• Capital letters
• Full stops
• Finger spaces
• Writing on the line

We have been working hard on overwriting and underwriting. Mrs Simpson is so proud and has picked Star Writers each week.

In maths we have been learning numbers to 6. We are beginning to show that we understand that numbers represent quantities. We are learning to put numbers into the correct order and to find missing numbers. We love subitising. This is when we can recognise the number of objects in a group without counting. We love watching Jack Hartmann on Youtube. Please ask us to show you how well we can subitise at home. We are working hard on number formation. We try to remember to make our numbers point in the correct direction and not visit Back to Front Land.

Our class topic is Julia Donaldson. Julia Donaldson is a famous children’s book author who has written lots of super stories including The Gruffalo, The Smartest Giant in Town, Monkey Puzzle and A Squash and a Squeeze. We focus on one book per week and lots of our learning is related each story. We recently made our own fairground horses based on the book Sugarlump and the Unicorn.  We also completed a range of Gruffalo themed challenges including creating a new home for the Gruffalo.  As Halloween approaches we will look at the story Room on the Broom and complete lots of spooky activities.

In R.M.E we have been learning about belonging. We know that we belong to our families, and we enjoyed learning about all the other ways we belong. We made a Tree of Belonging for our class display and we thought about all the people in our school who make us feel like we belong. We made our primary 7 buddies thank you cards for making us feel so safe and loved in our new school. We know that we belong to God and that we should all look after each other. We try to show our friends kindness and love so that they feel like they belong.

We are looking forward to another exciting month in Primary 1. We are so excited to be entering into October because we know this is an Autumn month and ends with Halloween. We can’t wait for our school disco and all the Halloween related learning that we will experience.

Please keep checking X for regular updates from primary 1.

Primary 2 have worked very hard in February and achieved lots of amazing things.

In Maths we have continued to work very hard on addition to 20. We have been learning lots of strategies to help us with this, such as doubles, near doubles and bridging. The boys and girls have been playing lots of fun games and doing lots of work with partners and in groups to help them with this.

We have also been working hard on Time, Fractions and  Money. We have been learning about 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1 and £2 coins and have been working hard to decide which coins we should use to pay for things. Mrs Simpson says everyone should try very hard to use money in shops to develop their coin recognition skills. We can also now recognise both o’clock and half past times on both analogue and digital clocks. Please help us to consolidate this learning at home by asking us to tell the time as often as possible.

We have been learning about instructions this month, and can describe what instructions are. We learned about the Scottish artist Steven Brown and made our own McCoo pictures. We then had fun writing our own instructions about how to make a McCoo picture. Mrs Simpson said our instructions were fantastic.

To help us to develop our listening skills we have been listening while our teacher reads a class novel to us. We have just finished ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’ and we are now reading ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’. We love to discuss the events in the story and to make predictions about what might happen next.

We also began to learn about other world religions this month. We learned that many people have different beliefs, but that we are all equally special. We enjoyed learning about Islam, the qur’an and the Mosque.

We began our Lenten journey on Ash Wednesday. We learned about the three traditions of Lent; fasting, prayer and almsgiving. We created our own Lenten promise and wrote our own special Lenten prayers. We understand that Lent is a time to say sorry for all the mistakes we have made. We studied the parable ‘The Lost Sheep’ and we understand Every sheep is important to the shepherd. Even if only one is lost he will search everywhere to find it. In the same way, people are important to God. He does not want anyone to be lost either.

This month we celebrated Pancake Tuesday slightly early due to the February break. We learned about Pancake Tuesday then enjoyed pancakes in our class with some tasty toppings. Some of us had even more at home too!!

In HWB we learned about being safe online through our story of Buddy the Dog. We learned a song which helps to keep us safe, and we thought of ways to keep ourselves safe when we are playing with mobile phones, tablets etc.

We are really enjoying our topic about Scotland. We have been so busy learning lots about our beautiful country. We learned about Charles Rennie MacIntosh and created our own MacIntosh rose love hearts.

We are looking forward to the better weather in March and beginning our Spring/Easter preparations. In school we will participate in Science Week and World Book Day. Keep an eye on our website for lots more adventures from primary 2.

Welcome back!

In January we came back to school after our Winter break, and we were so excited to see our friends and catch up with all our news. We celebrated the new year by learning all about Hogmanay and we made some amazing new year’s resolutions. We enjoyed discussing all our targets for the year ahead, learned about how the new year is celebrated around the world and we even danced to Auld Lang Syne.

We have now settled back into our class routine and reminded ourselves of our class rules. We love our new Beat the Teacher chart and have been trying our best to behave well and work hard in order to win Beat the Teacher points. We try so hard to follow our Golden Rules when we sit on the floor during teaching time. Our Golden Rules are:

Eyes Looking

Ears Listening

Good Sitting

Brainboxes Switched On

Hands Up/No Shouting Out

Within Maths we have continued to work hard on number. We have learned lots of new strategies to help us add within 20 such as doubles, near doubles and friendly numbers. We enjoy learning through play, and we have participated in active learning to explore number bonds for numbers up to 20. We like to try to solve problems mentally and help each other lots by discussing ways that may help others. We began working on Chilli Challenges this month and we love to solve problems and share how we get our answers. We have also been learning about Time in January. We have been doing lots of activities in order to learn about the days of the week and months of the year. We are now able to recognise both o’clock and half past on both analogue and digital clocks. Please ask us to tell the time as often as possible so we can practise our new skill. We will work on Subtraction and Fractions in February.

Within Literacy we have continued to work on our weekly sounds and common words. We completed an assessment and will bring home a list of sounds/words that we should spend time working on with an adult, to help us to become successful learners.

In Writing we began learning about writing instructions. We thought about where we have seen instructions, and why we need them. Linking to our Scotland topic, we learned the Skyscraper Wean song and we made jam sandwiches then created instructions on how to make a ‘Jeely Piece’.

We have also been learning about writing persuasively. We learned about Nessie and wrote a lovely letter asking her to visit Holy Family. We also wrote a letter to Mrs Harley to ask if we could have a longer lunch break. We thought of lots of interesting ways to persuade her. We hope she considers these requests!

We try very hard to remember our core writing targets both within our weekly taught writing lesson and within our class daily writing but sometimes this can be a bit tricky for us. Please try hard to practise writing words that include our new sounds, our weekly common words and simple sentences with us. This would really help us to write more independently.

We have been working hard on our talking and listening skills this month and trying to remember not to interrupt when others are speaking. We have been practising how to be good listeners by working in pairs and groups to complete tasks. We have also been super listeners as we explore books related to our new topic.

In P.E we have been learning about Gymnastics. We have discovered lots of new body shapes and ways to move our bodies. We have enjoyed working with the mats in our gym hall and have begun to link actions and skills together in a routine.

In R.E. we have studied the topic ‘My Uniqueness’. We have been learning that God created us all as special and unique. We have been embracing our differences and the unique gifts that God gave us. We have also learned that many people have different beliefs but that we should be kind to everyone. We will now begin to explore other world religions and will begin by developing our knowledge and understanding of Islam.

Our new topic is Scotland. We have looked at pictures of Scotland on the map and spoke about some big cities in our country. We learned about Loch Ness and the story of Nessie. We made our own pictures of Nessie to hang in our classroom. We learned about Heilan Coos (highland cows) and plan to make our own mini highland cows in February.  Last week we celebrated Burns Day at school. We learned so much about the Scottish poet Robert Burns and we also tasted shortbread and some yummy Irn Bru. We made beautiful portraits of Rabbie Burns and they are displayed in our class. Mrs Simpson thought we were brilliant, and we earned a ‘Beat the Teacher’ point for our hard work.

Miss Cairney has been teaching us all about Space. We can now name the planets in our solar system and have learned that we live on Earth. We can’t wait to explore this topic further.

We can’t wait for February and all the exciting learning opportunities we will have. We will learn about internet safety next month and we will soon celebrate Global Play Day when we can bring a toy to school to play with our friends. We will also begin our Easter preparations and learn about Ash Wednesday and Lent.

Just a reminder that our P.E. days are Wednesdays and Thursdays. We should wear yellow t shirts, black shorts or tracksuit bottoms and appropriate footwear. We should bring a water bottle to school as we often feel thirsty when exercising.

Homework is given out each Monday and should be handed in on Thursday. Homework helps us to consolidate all the learning we have done in class. It also allows our grown ups to see what we need extra help with. Please try to complete this every week and speak to Mrs Simpson if you find this difficult. Reading our reading book every night will also help us to develop important reading skills which will help us lots.  We should try hard to remember to bring our reading book to school each day as we need to use these for reading and associated tasks.

Primary 2 have had a very busy month.

In Literacy we have been learning more new sounds. We love to use our new sounds to create words using our magnetic boards. We have also been working lots on sentence writing using our common words and words that contain our focus sound.

This month we learned about writing recounts. We wrote a fantastic recount of our trip to see the ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ pantomime. We have also been trying hard to write more independently and to check our writing to make sure that it makes sense.

We have been continuing with our reading, making sure that we use good expression  and fluency. We must remember to read our reading books every night at home and to practise our common words and sounds so that we can continue to develop our reading skills.

In Maths we have been continuing to focus on numbers to 100. We have been estimating numbers using a blank number line and we have been rounding to the nearest 10. We have also been learning about Area within our topic on Measure. We have begun our topic on Addition and have been revising our number bonds to 10 to prepare us for adding to 20.

As it was November, we spent time this month learning about the month of the holy souls. We thought about those who have died and we remembered them in our prayers. We also paid tribute to those who had lost their lives in war on Remembrance Day. We made beautiful poppy pictures to decorate our classroom door and we observed a minute silence to show respect. P5 also organised a fun filled day to raise money for people affected by war. We had lots of fun and lots of money was raised for a good cause. Thank you to everyone who made a kind donation. This month we also produced beautiful pictures for the ‘Keep Christ in Christmas’ art competition. Hopefully we will have a winner in our class.

This month we have been really busy with practising for our Nativity show ‘It’s a Baby’, which we will perform on Tuesday 5^th and Wednesday 6^th December. We are so excited to be the narrators. We have been working hard on learning our lines and songs. You will love the show!

We celebrated St. Andrew’s Day with a fun school assembly this week. Each class learned and performed a Scottish song. Primary 2 learned the song ‘Three Craws’. Mrs Simpson said she was so proud of us. We also learned all about St. Andrew, made a St. Andrew stained glass window picture, listened to Scottish stories and tasted some delicious shortbread.

Next month we are looking forward to lots of new learning, our Nativity show and Christmas party. Please keep checking Twitter for photos of our adventures.

Primary 2 have had a very busy, but fun, September.

In Maths we have been working very hard on our numbers to 100. We have been thinking about place value, ordering and solving lots of missing number problems.  We have been playing lots of fun games and doing lots of work with partners and in groups to help us with this. We have also been learning about shape. We learned about lots of 3D shapes and enjoyed playing shape games. We also learned to make shape patterns.

In Literacy we have continued to work on more sounds and common words. We are getting very good at following Charlie Checker’s targets and have been trying hard to do our neatest writing this month. This includes forming all our letters properly, fingers spaces and writing on the lines. Each of our reading groups have been working very hard on partner and group reading and our reading skills are constantly improving. Within Writing, we have been using our topic as a stimulus for our narrative and recount work. Our favourite piece of writing has been our story about what we did when we got to be the teacher for a day.

In September we finished off our R.E. topic ‘Beginning of the Year’ and we began our topic ‘Jesus’ Family and Ours’. Within this topic, we thought about the birth of Jesus, and his life when he was young. We have been sharing stories about our own family life also. In addition to these topics, we have been learning about a variety of bible stories. We enjoyed learning about the lost sheep and the prodigal son. We understand that sometimes we, like the sheep, get a bit lost and we make silly choices, but God is happy when we return, and we try to be like Jesus.

In HWB we learned about keeping our bodies clean this month. We learned about how germs spread and we made amazing posters to encourage others to wash their hands.

We love learning about our new topic; People Who Help Us. This month we have learned about doctors and we made our own doctor’s bags. We also learned about the important work that police officers do. We made our own police cars. Finally, we learned about firefighters and how to keep ourselves safe in the event of a fire. We know how to call for help if we ever spot a fire.

Next month we are looking forward to carrying out our solo talks about someone we know who helps people in their job. Mrs Simpson can’t wait to hear all the fabulous information that we have found out. We will also be getting ready for Halloween and having lots of spooky learning.

Welcome back to Holy Family. We are so excited to get back to our school routine and to see all our friends again.

We have settled well into our new class and have been spending lots of time getting to know our new teacher; Mrs Simpson. We have created our own class rules and have been working hard to follow these rules. We have also been learning where to put our belongings, and how to find things in our brand new classroom.

In literacy, we have been showing off what we already know. Mrs Simpson is very impressed already! We have been put into our new groups for spelling and reading and have already started working on our new sounds and words.

In maths we have started working on numbers to 100. This is a big jump for us and we should try hard to practise these big numbers every day at home too.

We have begun to work on our new class topic on ‘People Who Help Us’. We have started our topic by thinking of all sorts of people who help and the things they do. We can’t wait to do all sorts of exciting learning about this.

We will start to get homework from next week. This will be given out on a Monday and will be collected on a Thursday. This is very important as it allows our grown ups to see what we have been learning, and gives us the opportunity to consolidate what we have covered in class.

Our P.E days are Wednesday and Thursday. We should wear our full school uniform coming to school as we have plenty time to change for P.E. in class.

On Friday we have our First Friday Mass. We have already started practising our singing and prayers. Mrs Simpson is very proud.

Please check our school Twitter page for regular photos and updates. We really enjoy showing off our amazing achievements to our grown-ups.

As we approach the end of another month in Primary 2, we have another monthly update for you.

In literacy we have been reading our next class novel ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’. We are so excited to hear all about the magnificent plan that Mr. Fox has created. We now realise that we don’t need lots of colourful illustrations in our books. We know that we can put on our imagination caps to help us create a picture in our own heads. We enjoy making predictions about what will happen next and discussing the meaning of tricky words.

We have also continued to learn lots of new sounds and words in May. This month we have been showing super teamwork by helping our literacy partners to be great learners. We have been participating in dictation where we say a sentence and our partner tries their best to write it. This is a super way to practise sentences that contain our focus sounds and words.

In maths we have had a busy month indeed. We have worked on division problems by sharing and grouping items. We have also used our Minibeasts topic as a stimulus for learning about data handling. First, we counted minibeasts on our minibeast hunt by using tally marks. Then we discovered how to create and interpret bar charts. Finally, we learned how to read and create our own carroll diagrams. This was a bit tricky, but we worked so hard!  This month we have also learned all about halves and quarters in our fractions topic. We loved the story ‘Give me Half’ and we divided a variety of shapes into halves and quarters.

In R.E our focus for this month has been ‘The Month of Mary’. We dedicated our class altar to Mary and made our own paper flowers as we know that Mary loves them. We thought about the words that the angel said to Mary when he told her she was going to have a baby, and compared that to the Hail Mary prayer. We then learned about the holy Rosary, we made our own Rosary beads and tried to say a mini Rosary every day. We know that this is Mary’s special prayer. We used it to pray for our friends and family. We even made a special journey to the Church grounds to say a mini Rosary to Our Lady. We blew her lots of lovely kisses too!

We will soon be leading our school in the next first Friday Mass in Holy Family Church. Our readers, offertory children and all others are getting ready to lead the Mass beautifully. Please come to support us as this is a very important event in our calendar.

In Health and Wellbeing, we have been practising for our sports day. Our current topic is athletics and we have used our time to prepare. We are so excited about participating in all the races next month.

We have also been learning about safety within our Health and Wellbeing lessons. We have covered fire, sun, road and internet safety. During fire safety, we learned lots of important things about keeping safe around fire. Our teacher said we all deserved the title of Junior Fire Officer. We made Fire Officer badges for ourselves and wore them with pride.

This month we celebrated the King’s coronation in primary 2. We made beautiful crowns and learned about the life and work of our new king. We also learned about Fairtrade. This is very important as it ensures that farmers get paid fairly for the things they produce. We played a super Fairtrade game with our friends.

We also got to support the nursery children during their sports day. We were super supporters who motivated the younger children to perform well. We were delighted when we got to participate in one of the races.

We can’t wait for our last month as primary two children. We are looking forward to lots more learning and hopefully lots of time outdoors. Please keep an eye on Twitter for lots more photographs of our achievements.

Primary 2 have had a very exciting month. We have been working very hard and celebrated lots and lots of successes in April.

In maths we have been learning about multiplication and division. We began by making sets of items. We then learned about the multiplication sign and what it means. We are able to solve lots of multiplication problems now. We have also been sharing things equally when learning about division. We enjoyed using concrete materials in class to help us to learn more effectively. We will now move on to grouping within division. Our next topics in maths will be money, fractions and data handling.

In literacy, we are still working hard on all our sounds and common words. We have been doing lots of work with Mrs Simpson on writing sentences independently. We are getting so good at this. We have been reading lots more reading books and completing lots of activities based on our books. We must remember to read our books every night at home as this will help us lots in school. To help us become amazing listeners, we have been working hard on developing essential skills through our class novel ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’.  We love making predictions to guess what will happen next in the book. We have realised that we don’t always need bright, colourful illustrations to look at because we can just use our amazing imaginations when Mrs Simpson reads to us.

Our new topic in primary 2 is Minibeasts. We have been reading super stories about different minibeast characters and then using these stories to help us to create our own. We have really enjoyed ‘The Cautious Caterpillar’ and ‘Superworm’. We try so hard to remember our core writing targets when we write and our favourite part of the week is when we find out who our Star Writers are. We have also learned all about the life cycle of a caterpillar and can describe this cycle to others.

In April, we learned about Islam, and we investigated what happens during Ramadan and Eid. We looked at different styles of mosque and, through purposeful play challenges, we designed our own mosques in a variety of different ways. We were so proud of some of our friends in primary 1 and 2 who told us all about their prayers, traditions and described what happens when they attend mosque.

In Health and Wellbeing, we have been learning ball skills. We have learned lots of amazing new skills such as catching, throwing, bouncing and kicking. We have also looked at road safety this month. We know this is so important because it keeps us safe outside of school.

We are looking forward to our next month in primary 2 and the adventures we will experience. We can’t wait for lots more fun and learning. Please keep an eye on Twitter for regular updates from our class.

Primary 2 were very busy in February. We worked so hard and achieved lots of great things.

In Literacy we have been very busy indeed. We have worked hard on all our previously taught common words and sounds, as well as learning lots of new ones too. We enjoy working with our literacy partners and playing Pot Luck. This is something that we can show our grown ups at home so they can help us practise too.

We have been learning even more about instructions this month, and can describe what instructions are. We made lovely Valentine’s Day Love Bugs for someone that we love and then had fun writing our own instructions about how to make them. Mrs Simpson said our instructions were fantastic.

To help us to develop our listening skills we have been listening while our teacher reads a class novel to us. We have just finished ‘The Twits’ and are currently reading George’s Marvellous Medicine. We love to discuss the events in the story and to make predictions about what might happen next.

In Maths we have continued to work on subtraction within 20. We have been learning strategies to help us to subtract from teens numbers. We enjoy practical Maths lessons and always have fun whilst we learn.

We have also completed our topic on Measure this month. We enjoyed learning about how to measure length and weight using non-standard units. To measure the length of objects we used a variety of resources such as pencils and paperclips. We also learned that parts of our bodies can help us to measure length. We were so surprised to find out that feet and hands can be used. We learned about estimating the height, length and weight of objects,  and soon realised that it is ok for our guesses to be wrong. Within our Area topic we learned about surface area. We designed a variety of shapes which covered different surface areas, and learned super ways of measuring them.

Our new topic is Spain and we have been very busy working on this during February. We learned about Flamenco and designed outfits for Flamenco dancers. We can describe a variety of Flamenco techniques and enjoyed watching Flamenco dancers perform.  We learned about bullfighting through watching the movie Ferdinand. We know how to talk about the weather in Spanish and made lots of props to help us to remember the new Spanish phrases we learned.

We began our Lenten journey on Ash Wednesday. We learned all about this special day and participated in Ash Wednesday Mass in our church. We understand that Lent is a special time when we think about how Jesus made lots of sacrifices during his time in the desert. We have a secure understanding of the three traditions of Lent; prayer, almsgiving and fasting, and we made our own Lenten promises.

This month we celebrated Pancake Tuesday. We designed our own pancake pictures then enjoyed pancakes in our class with lots of tasty toppings. Some of us had even more at home too!!

In February we celebrated Mental Health Awareness Week. During this special week we spent lots of time discussing our emotions and the things we could do to help us when we feel particular emotions. We made our own Worry Monster cups where we can store the worries that we have. We also decorated our own mood stones. We ended our week with a joint dance-along with P1 as being active helps us to maintain positive mental wellbeing.