In February, Primary 4 welcomed back Mrs Cooney. The children have all worked so hard learning all about Shape and Tessellation in maths. They had some hands-on investigation as discovered that squares, rectangles, triangles and hexagons tile really well with each other as you can see in these stamper pictures: 

They also looked at tiling with more than one shape and came up with some beautiful patterns that all the teachers would love to have in their bathrooms for sure! Some are here:

It is now Lent so we do something a bit different every Friday in the lead up to Easter to raise food and money for the food bank and our Lenten charities. Recently we had Odd Sock day and wore our most unusual socks:

It hasn’t all been silly socks, though. The children have been working very hard on Writing and concentrating on the Recount genre. We planned a piece together all about a typical week in Primary 4 and here you can see the plan and then a link to the finished piece. Top contributors earned Star Writer status – well done!

P4 group recount

Our First Holy Communicants are preparing to make their Sacrament very soon. Mrs Daisley is helping to guide them in this as are their parents at home and for this we are very grateful. Thank you to all parents who are helping with homework and extra research projects as part of our topic on Scottish Inventors, too.

Even though it’s been a short month with a holiday, we’ve been working hard in Primary 4.

Literacy

We have been continuing with our daily spelling which is supported by our weekly homework tasks. This month we have been getting more confident using spelling strategies and Mrs Daisley was surprised at how good we were at Mnemonics. This is where we use each letter to make a little saying that helps us to remember how to spell words.

big

elephants

can

always

understand

small

elephants

This is helpful to remind us how to spell because. Mrs Daisley had to admit that the children did this better than she could manage!

In reading, we have been continuing to work on our group reading activities. We have to remember to take our reading work home and to bring it back. It’s very tricky to look up words or find clues if we don’t have our books in class. We are working on making sure that we do our best written tasks by talking about what makes our work good. Some of us a working on Summaries, for example, and we know that a good Summary shouldn’t be too long and should mention the Main Ideas from our novel. Others are working on answering question in full sentences with good punctuation.

Mrs Cooney has been reading a novel called Orion Lost to us in class.

We have had great reading materials about Space to read independently in class. We got some from our school library. We are very proud of our hard work restoring the school library with Mrs Cooney. The other classes are delighted to get a turn using it now.

In writing, we have learned the features of explanation pieces of writing, written about Chinese New Year and identified key vocabulary around our topic on space, so that we could write a report on that too. We watched Authors Live to listen how a real author plans his stories and we have started planning a very special narrative piece for someone we love.

We continue to work on talking, through class discussions and through our reading work. Listening to follow instructions is ongoing in class.

Numeracy

We have been working on Subtraction in class. Some of us are working up to 50 and others are now working with 3 digit numbers. All of our good work on Addition has helped us to progress with this, as we can use strategies like adding on for this work.

We continue to work on Times Tables. This month, we have concentrated on the 3 and 6. We know that the 6 Times Table is double the 3 Times Table.

We also continue with Time and we worked on Fractions as we could see patterns in Time.

This month, we started to work on stations-we go round different stations such as practical activities. We enjoyed this and we will do more in the future, now we can share resources more.

Health and Well-Being

We continue to work on Gymnastics and are delighted to be able to work inside using the equipment, such as the wall bars.

We are spending a lot of time discussing our friendships and ways to keep them strong. It is normal  for our age to have some difficulties in dealing with friends. With the help not our teachers and family, we can get stronger at dealing calmly with tricky situations.

Here are some issues that we face

• feeling left out
• feeling hurt by someone’s words or actions
• feeling lonely in the playground
• getting carried away with play fighting
• not knowing how to calm ourselves down after a disagreement.

In class, we get best results when we discuss our problems once we have managed to calm down. We can then see both sides and we are getting good at finding a solution. We are also stopping to think how we would feel if we were the one left out, for example. The best way you can help at home, is to talk calmly with us and help us to find a way to deal with it ourselves.

Topic

We have enjoyed learning about Space. We are impressed to learn about the careers of astronauts, such as Tim Peake and Neil Armstrong. We are real scientists as we have had to do the same experiment over again to see what works best. Our rockets didn’t go straight up into the air , so we discussed what we will do next time. Real scientists don’t give up!

RE

We all learned about Jewish Passover this month and why this celebration is important.

The First Communion children are getting through their workbook and we will be finished in March. You can help by making sure that the home sections are finished by the time we finish Unit 7. We will do Unit 8 after the First Communion itself.

We have been very busy in Primary 4. We are pleased to be back sitting in groups, where it is easier for us to work with partners. We have enjoyed taking part in upper school assemblies for the first time since Covid.

Literacy

We have 2 Spelling groups who have been working hard on Phonemes and Common Words. One group has also been working on Spelling Rules , which can be tricky. We get our new words on a Monday and then spend the week doing activities including Dictation ( with a partner or a teacher), Phoneme or Common Word Stories and whiteboard work. Ask us about Diacritical Marking- we are getting really good at it.

Sometimes , for fun, we play games  like Spelling Tennis or Beat The Teacher. We are surprised when our teacher makes mistakes! Oops!

This month, we began some work on non-fiction. We have been learning about the features of a non-fiction book , such as Contents Page, Glossary or Index. We read Incredible Insects where we were shocked about what insects live in our homes. We started working on note-taking. We used bullet points so we didn’t need to write in full sentences.

During Anti- Bullying week, we explored how to be a good friend and wrote information reports about this. We’ve been trying to fit more conjunctions into our writing pieces.

We’ve also been working on letter to tell our families about some ways that we can be more eco-conscious at home and at school. Some of these changes may be too big to try ( such as getting an electric car) but even small changes make a big difference.

We tried blackout poetry on Remembrance Day, working with In Flanders Field, whilst remembering everyone we know who has been affected by war.

Numeracy

We have been working hard on Addition. We have been doing a variety of different activities to support our learning. We do Number Talks, Daily 10 and Textbook work swell as playing games, doing board work and worksheets.

Every day in class, we talk about time. Here are some examples of the types of questions we answer.

• How long is it till lunchtime?
• When will it be 3 o’clock?
• You have 10 minutes to finish, When will the be?
• How many seconds are left in a minute, if we have gone through 30 seconds?

This will all help us to be more confident using Time. We have started talking more about minutes to, which is a bit tricky. Please help us with this at home.

We keep up with out Tables by playing games. We know that the 4x Table is double the 2x Table. Some of us have realised that this can help us with the 8xTable. We will do the same with the 3x Table and the 6x Table.

RE

We have learned a lot about Saints during this month. We were very disappointed that our display on the Apostles was ruined by a leak from upstairs. We learned about St Margaret of Scotland on her feast day.We are now concentrating on St Andrew. We had a Remembrance Tree to remember everyone that we have loved and lost.

We often watch Being Catholic where we can see Sunday’s Gospel. We watch parts of the Mass to help us with our Mass responses. This is a big year for some of our children who will be making their First Communion. We want to be ready for that special day.

Social Studies

As part of our RE work on Remembrance Day, We read a novel called War Game. It had a very sad ending and was based on the author’s real family. We new able to do some lovely artwork for Remembrance Day.

Health and Well -Being

We have worked hard on anti bullying lessons and we will continue to talk about how to be a good friend.

We have continued to work on ball skills. We have followed warm ups on YouTube which help us to keep our bodies safe. We are working with partners and in groups.

We have lots of pictures over on Twitter so please go over to see what we are up to!

These are are our high achievers in Primary 4!

Primary 3 and Primary 4 have been working together to learn how to write instructions.

High achievers in Primary 4!

For our Enterprise topic we have been making candy sleighs.

Primary 4 have been expressing their emotions through their artwork.

They have been drawing happy and sad faces.

Primary 4 are working on their Technology skills.

We are high achievers!

Primary 4 love maths strategies

Primary 4 are achieving great things this term!