Can we please ensure homework is getting completed each week and pupils have brought in their reading novels with them each day to help them with their read to write tasks.  Homework is uploaded each week, both on the website as well as our Primary 7/6 Teams Page. Any issues gaining access to the homework, please do let me know 🙂

Numeracy:

In numeracy, we explored all things time, looking both into converting 12 and 24 hour time as well other practical aspects such as looking at timetables, which will serve Primary 7 well as they enter secondary school. Primary 7/6 also worked on their division skills and looked at different strategies to solve division problems such as the written method, proportional reasoning and the grid method. The pupils have became more confident with their division skills and can see the relationship this operation has with multiplication.

Literacy:

Primary 7 completed their block of reading Dividing City where they explored themes of friendship and sectarianism. This booked tied in well with their partnership work with Mossend Primary School and the charity Nil by Mouth where the pupils got the opportunity to participate in workshops exploring these themes. They will now be moving onto their new novel, Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider: Stormbreaker. Similarly Primary 6 have completed their block of reading The Borrowers where they have further developed their reading comprehension strategies. They will now be moving onto The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Q. Raúf where they will explore themes of friendship and adventure.

Primary 7/6 are focusing on discursive essays this term. In February, the pupils produced an excellent discursive essay linking in with their sectarianism work where we had three star writers! Following this essay, the pupils were given the opportunity to select their own topic idea. This was a great opportunity for the pupils to take more ownership over their work and produced a range of interesting and topical discursive essays. Examples of these essays were the purpose of VAR in professional football matches, the opportunities and consequences of children using technology and the possibility of alien life form.

IDL:

We have completed our Circular Economy Challenge topic where the pupils collaboratively worked in groups to generate a sustainable business idea. The groups brain stormed ideas, conducted market research and created sales pitches. One group, Refillable Ink, was shortlisted to compete against a group from Primary 6 to go through to the Dragon’s Den style showcase in March. Our group, Refillable Ink were lucky enough to have been selected to go through to represent our school this month.

RE:

In religious education, we explored prayer & decision making where we analysed prayers and their meanings behind these. The pupils also reflected on times of prayer such as when seeking God’s advice or guidance.

Other Curricular Area:

Congratulations to the netball team from Primary 7 and 6 who competed at North Lanarkshire’s Active School’s Netball Tournament last month. The team performed extremely well together!  Well done team!

Primary 5 February Update 

Primary 5 have had another busy month in class with lots of fun learning activities.  As a nice treat for all their hard work in class they celebrated Pancake Day and Valentine’s Day with a pancake and hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows. Below describes just some of the learning they have experience over the last month. 

Maths and Numeracy 

The children have been continuing to work on their mental agility and have been putting this to practise by competing in a variety of mental maths games. They really enjoy this, and it encourages them to quickly apply many of the strategies that they have been learning through Number Talks. They have also been learning how to measure, length, mass and capacity and are able to calculate perimeter and area. They measured the length of the corridor and various items within school. Having explored weights of varying grams and kilograms, they could combine a variety of sizes to make various amounts. They are learning to convert between various units of measurement. In addition to measurement, with Miss Cairney the children have been learning to gather and analyse data. They put their skills to use by surveying every class in the school in order to gather information to use in their Enterprise initiative.  

Literacy 

The Blue Group have now finished reading The Worst Witch and have used a variety of reading strategies to help them understand the story. They are looking forward to starting a new novel ‘The Queen’s Nose.’  Please provide time for children to read this aloud at home as this will help with their fluency. It is also a great idea to have the children summarise verbally (in their own words) what they have read as this helps to clarify their understanding. 

The children in the Red Group are reading The Demon Headmaster and most are reading fluently and with expression. They are developing their comprehension skills and demonstrating this in their writing. You can help them with this by asking them to make sure they answer in full sentences when discussing their homework. 

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

Children have produced some excellent writing this month, they have been exploring the genres of Instructions and Persuasive. They have utilised the knowledge and skills gained by completing a series of science experiments such as The Gummy Bear Experiment, the Lava Lamp and the Walking Water Experiment. They have explored the genre features specific to each and they’re able to write instructions that would help others to carry out these experiments. The children also wrote persuasive letters to Mrs Harley and our local supermarkets looking for their support for our upcoming Enterprise project. Needless to say, the persuasive language used was enough to convince our target audience to comply with our requests and Morrisons kindly donated a supply of diluting juice. 

Religious Education 

This month our class focus has been on Lent and reminding ourselves of ways that we can get closer to God through, prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Many of the children have attended mass during Lent. The children have also been learning about Blessed Mother Theresa and her work with the poor and dying. They have also begun to learn the Stations of the Cross and the responses to this. 

OTHER CURRICULAR AREAS 

Enterprise – our topic has been learning about our skills and qualities and considering what we would like to do as we grow up. We had a workshop delivered by Social Schools Enterprise that encouraged us to think about the ways that we can use our knowledge, skills and experience to make a difference in our world. We learned all about ‘social’ enterprise and giving back to our community. As a class we considered many enterprising projects that we could deliver to raise money for our chosen charity, and we look forward to managing and implementing our business idea after Easter. 

Science/STEM – the children all expressed that they were looking forward to doing lots of science and STEM this term so we have been completing a variety of experiments which the children have been enjoying. They have been exploring Osmosis, Capillary Action and Density and are now learning about Newtons Laws of Motion. We look forward to sharing some of this learning when you visit during Science Week. 

PE/HWB – We have now concluded our hockey sessions in PE and I was extremely impressed with the skills and progress made by many of the children. They were able to demonstrate safe use of the equipment, can hold the hockey stick correctly and can pass and stop the ball accurately. We have now moved on to Gymnastics and the children are learning how to move, balance and perform a variety of shapes safely on various apparatus. In HWB we continue to talk about Respect for ourselves and others and how we should consider or words and actions and the impact they can have. We will continue to explore this as we look at Emotions and behaviours, triggers, and responses. 

Primary 1 February Update

Welcome to our February update. We have been very lucky to have Miss Morrisey working with our class this month. She has planned lots of exciting learning opportunities for us and we have enjoyed getting to know her. We also enjoyed a lovely long weekend and were able to recharge and rest, ready for our next challenges at school. Here are some of our learning highlights:

Literacy

It has been very exciting for our boys and girls this month as we have been learning all about phoneme sounds (sh,ch,th). This is when 2 letters join to make a different sound. We have become text detectives and can find our phoneme sounds in stories. Now that we know all of our alphabet sounds we are able to read words containing vowels and consonants, we call these our CVC words. We sound out each letter sound then blend them together. Our reading skills are improving every day! Well done Primary 1! We should continue to work on learning our common words at home and in the classroom to help us to use these words in our sentences and stories.

This month we have created our own stories about the Loch Ness Monster and Harry the Highland Coo. We have been learning about when, who, what and how in our stories and are gaining confidence in creating wonderful imaginative stories independently. We like to use our word mats/word walls to help support us with spelling and we love to have a go at tricky words we are not sure about. In our daily writing we are sharing our news with our teachers and friends. We can create sentences about what we are doing at home in the evenings and can try to use a capital letter, finger spaces and a full stop.

Numeracy

In Primary 1 we are continuing to learn more about numbers to 20. This month our focus has been on learning how to read, write, count, build 11-20. We have been using active learning and stations to help improve our understanding of number and we like to work in this fun way in Primary 1. Our favourite station has been using the large dominos to make numbers and using 10 frames to add and subtract. We have been learning more about subtraction and have been taking away from 10/20. It has been fun learning about + and – and challenging ourselves during our number work.

We have really enjoyed learning how to tell the time and can read o’clock and half past time on an analogue clock. Ask us to read time at home and we will become even more confident in telling the time.

In the coming weeks we will be learning more about coins and how to count money. If you have a piggy bank at home this will help to become familiar with the British coins that we will be learning about.

Interdisciplinary Learning

We have continued to learn more about Scotland this month and have learned so many new things. We really enjoyed learning about the Scottish Inventors; Alexander Graham Bell and John Logie Baird. It was interesting to find out about the telephones and TVs of the past. We even got to make our own telephones from paper cups and string. Next, we made our own TV’s and designed our own favourite programmes/films to watch. We also learned about Charles Rennie Mackintosh and created excellent works of art.

This month was the start of Lent. We have set up a Lenten altar in the classroom and have made our Lenten promises. Some of our boys and girls have been attending morning mass with Father Brown in Holy Family Parish.

We are looking forward to learning all about Spring in the month of March and continuing on our journey to Easter.

Please click on the link below to view our diary for this week.

HF Diary 04032024

Please click on the link below to view our March 2024 newsletter.

HF Newsletter March 2024

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.

Click on the link below to view our diary for w.b. 19th Feb 2024.

HF Diary 19022024

Primary 3 January Update

It was so lovely to see the children again after the Christmas Holidays! They were excited to share all of the stories of their time spent at home with family and friends.

In  Literacy this term, we are continuing to develop our reading skills, remembering to change the tone of our voices so that we keep the listener interested.  We have been learning to stop at full stops in our reading and read smoothly, trying to sound out unfamiliar words using our spelling skills such as :

• look for a phoneme
• syllabification (break word into parts eg, win/dow)
• blending the letter sounds together

In listening, we are focussing on turn taking in conversations as we sometimes get very excited to share our news and answers that we end up speaking over one another.

In writing, we continue to focus on using our Core Targets which is helping our writing make sense and be neatly presented. We are very proud of the progress we are making and can’t wait to show our hard work on Parent’s Night!

Numeracy and Maths 

Throughout the last few weeks the children have been working on division, they have used a variety of concrete and pictorial materials to help explore this and are able to use a variety of strategies to help. They are recognising that secure knowledge of multiplication facts can help them. They have also been exploring the properties of 2d and 3d shape with Miss Cairney.

Literacy

The pupils are enjoying their new novels and are further developing their reading strategies through these. They have been taking notes as they read and then  and writing summaries to express their understanding . They have been also been writing Instructions, using our Science Experiments as a stimulus. This has really helped the children and they have have produced some really good writing.

HWB

The children have been learning about how important it is to ensure they keep their bodies and minds active. In PE we have been developing new skills in Hockey  and are currently competing in a class tournament. They are really enjoying this and are able to identify the rules of the game, use specific terminology associated with the game and recognise and describe how to keep themselves and others safe in the game.

OTHER AREAS

Primary 5 are busy learning  about the skills and qualities that they will need both now and in their future. They have considered future employment and what this may look like for them and have researched various jobs and what was required to work in that field. They had an interesting workshop delivered by the Social Enterprise Academy which taught them about ‘Social Enterprise’ and how we can use our skills to bring about positive change. The children are very excited and they are working hard on their business plans; watch this space Our Primary 5 Entrepreneurs have some fantastic ideas.

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.