Primary 3/4 have had another busy month in class with lots of fun learning activities. We have had Pancake Day and World Book Day as well as an exciting day spent carrying out Science experiments. This month we have been lucky to have student teacher Miss Bradley joining us each Thursday, she will be working with us over the next few weeks and is delighted to work with the children who have welcomed her warmly.

Maths and Numeracy

It has been all about the Money in Maths. Children are able to recognise and identify all coins and notes to £20 an can record these in pounds and pence. They are able to calculate the total cost of items and work out change. They have had lots of fun in class using the cash register and solving money related problems.

As always it is great for them to get some practical experience of using money and paying for items in store, alternatively get them to look at receipts and detail amounts and totals.

Please try to encourage children to spend 15 minutes each day on Sumdog, unfortunately I have noticed that only a few of the children are accessing this so would like to take this opportunity to remind you that this is used as homework to reinforce and consolidate what the children are learning in class.

We are currently looking at 2D shapes and 3D objects and will then be moving on to Fractions.

Literacy

The Green Group have now finished reading Horrid Henry and have enjoyed reading all about Henry and the Bogey Babysitter.  We are looking forward to starting our new novel. The children in this group are reading fluently and with expression and are developing their comprehension skills and demonstrating this in their writing. You can help them with this by asking them to answer in full sentences when discussing their homework.

The Red Group are making good progress and are enjoying the range of novels that they are reading.

Children have completed some excellent writing this month; they wrote a narrative piece where their fictional character encountered a storm, or extreme weather force. The children really enjoyed writing these and used some good adjectives to enhance their writing.  The boys and girls also carried out research and note taking to apply to the genre of explanation writing. Pupils chose whether to explain the cause of a Tsunami, an Earthquake or a Volcano. Ask them to explain to you! I am certain you will be impressed!

Religious Education

This month started with our class leading First Friday mass on the 4^th February, the children prepared carefully and did themselves proud in their readings and participation of the prayers and hymns. The children are making good progress with their Sacramental preparation and I thank you for your support in working with the children to complete the Home Sessions. The children who are involved in Sacraments will attend a retreat in the Church Hall to help in the very special preparations for Reconciliation and Communion. All children will be learning about forgiveness and have been listening to parables and bible stories. We attended Mass for Ash Wednesday and are learning about Lent and the Easter Story.

OTHER CURRICULAR AREAS

We have spent the last few weeks learning all about the layers of the Earth, Extreme Weather and Natural Disasters.

We created Tsunami’s in a bottle, which showed us the impact of a Tsunami on the coastline.

We moulded Volcanoes from clay and used a chemical reaction to watch them erupt.

We built model towns in trays and used card to act as tectonic plates to show us what causes Earthquakes.

This visual representation in each activity allowed the children to develop a deeper understanding of their learning.

We cannot wait to learn about Hurricanes and Tornadoes.

HOMEWORK

We have decided as a class that we are going to use our ICT skills and access our homework from Teams each week. This will be posted on a Monday under the Primary 3 / 4 Team and on our class tab on the school website.

Please remember to sign homework diaries to confirm completion each week.

Thank you once again for the support provided and please do not hesitate to contact me should you need to discuss anything.

Welcome back everyone and I hope that you all had an enjoyable and restful period over the holidays.

The boys and girls have settled back well and have enjoyed seeing their friends and classmates. We have shared our holiday experiences and have discussed our hopes, wishes and targets for this coming Term.

Maths and Numeracy

Since we returned to school, we have been learning all about Division of 2 and 3 digit numbers by a single digit. We have been sharing, grouping and using concrete materials to help us with this, we can see how important it is to learn our Times Tables and will keep practising them all year.

We have now moved on to Measurement and have been measuring the length of various objects in our class. We even measured our own heads, necks, wrists and ankles using measuring tapes. We can describe what we would measure in mm, cm, m and km. We are looking forward to measuring weight in g and kg and capacity in ml and l. Later this month we will be learning to use and solve problems using money so maybe we can help when out shopping or at the supermarket. Practical experiences will really help us to gain a better understanding of what we are learning in class.

Homework for Maths as always is set via Sumdog; this corresponds and reinforces what we are learning in class so please try to spend 15 minutes each day online.

Literacy

We are busy working through our spelling programme and continue to learn new phonemes and common words each week, it is a busy programme and schedule so it is important that we make sure we are practising our words and reading our books at home each week.

The Green Group are delighted to be reading Horrid Henry and have given themselves new names to tie in with the theme, ask them about them. Their names suit their personality like ‘Perfect Peter’ and ‘Moody Margaret’. The other groups are reading small chapter books and should receive one or two books home each week, please continue to support the children by listening to them reading aloud and asking them questions about the characters, the settings and the main ideas/plot in the story. This will help the when they are using what they are reading in their writing.

Health and Wellbeing

Our focus in Health and Wellbeing is on being active and we have chosen to learn and develop our skills in football. We have named our own football teams and are competing in a class tournament. We are very competitive! We are also learning how to be good teammates and opponents, to be ambitious and try hard but also to be gracious in winning and losing.

Religious Education

Some of us have some special Sacraments that we are preparing for. Primary 3 children are beginning preparation for the Sacrament of Reconciliation and will be bringing our special workbooks home to share our journey with you. Primary 4 children have already started their workbooks and have been learning all about being part of a community and how in making their First Holy Communion they become an important member of our Church Community with God.

OTHER CURRICULAR AREAS

We recently celebrated Burns Day by listening to some poems by our national bard Robert Burns, we wrote our own poems about love, made tartan bags and kilts and explored the Scots language. Do you know any? Ask us and see if we can translate?

Primary 3/4 have decided that this Term they would like to learn all about Natural Disasters. We have started looking at Tsunami’s and the children have used their research skills during ICT to find out some information about them. We are excited to learn about Volcanoes and Hurricanes and Earthquakes and look forward to creating some experiments and extending our knowledge on each of these.

Finally, thank you for your support in preparing the children for school each day. We look forward to a busy month of fun learning opportunities and hard work with pupils striving to become successful learners, responsible citizens, effective contributors and confident individuals.

Primary 3/4 returned to the school after the Christmas holidays very excited to start their new topic Antarctica. At the start some of the children got confused with the North and South Pole including Penguins and Polar Bears, but we got there in the end.

During maths Primary 3/4 remembered a lot about 2D and 3D shapes. We are still working on Money and playing with fake money and shops have really helped reinforce the importance and value of money.

All the children enjoyed listening to the story of ‘The Epiphany’ and discussed this special feast day of The Three Kings bearing gifts. The Primary 3/4 have started work on their booklets and preparation for Fist Holy Communion and Reconciliation. The children are very excited to be making these sacraments.

In science we have been working with Mrs Le Blond on global warming. This has been very exciting as we carried out an experiment looking at ice melting and the raise in water. We only have one plant and we really need to start looking after it.

February will start with our first Friday mass which we have been working really hard on.

Wow what a busy October we have had in Primary 3/4. In maths we have continued to work on subtraction and working on a variety of different tasks to help us. We are also looking at multiplication with Miss McCluskey. We are already really good with our 2, 5 and 10 times table.

In literacy we have been busy doing lots of reading. We loved our visit to our local library. We have been working hard on story writing from reports, recount, and even Halloween acrostic poems.

Within PE we are still working with Greig in musical theatre, for Halloween he taught us a scary dance. We have been given the wonderful opportunity to work with Hazel, who is not just a GB champion but she’s a World champion for Taekwondo. She has been showing us moves and helping us learn all about it. We are loving learning from an expert.

This month we have loved going out on our Autum walks, making Autum Wreaths with the leaves we had collected. We have also been busy craving our own pumpkins.  With the other pumpkins we decided to make pumpkin soup. The Halloween disco was so much fun, we got to dance and play games.

We now can’t wait till Christmas but for now we must work on our Nativity, and all the other exciting things that Miss Verrecchia has planned.

In Primary 3/4 we have been very busy this September. We have been learning lots and been having lots of fun.

In maths we have been learning lots more about addition and now subtraction. Active maths has helped with the sums we find a little bit more difficult.

We all have successfully completed our first report writing piece. It was very ingesting to learn about report writing. We have all created our own report on Mummification, which we hope you will enjoy reading during parents night.

In PE we are coming to the end of Gymnastics, however we are loving musical theatre with Greig. We are in the middle of a dance routine to the Lion King which looks amazing already.

We have now started Roots of Empathy in our class. During this we have a real baby come to visit us with Mrs Le Blond, we get to learn so much from the baby.

October will be another very busy month for us all and Miss Verrecchia has a lot planned with Halloween art etc.

Thank you  for reading.

From Primary 3/4

We have all settled into Primary 3/4 really well and are now getting used to our new routines.

We are all very excited about our new topic this term, The Ancient Egyptians. Already we have been researching the pyramids and even built our own 3D pyramid. We loved recreating and designing our own death masks which are displayed on our topic wall.

In literacy we have been revising our phonemes and common words. The reading tent and blow up doughnut has been so much fun, it helps us with our reading.

In maths we have been working hard on revision with place value and addition. The line up game is really helping reinforce this, plus we get to win prizes.

We are all working really hard and excited for what this year is going to bring as Miss Verrecchia has a lot of things planned for us all.

Our special creations are complete and they have their very own unique qualities!

Primary 3/4 have been thinking about their unique qualities and are creating their own special model with a focus on the unique qualities they are creating.

High achievers in Primary3/4!