Hello and welcome to Primary 7’s Reflective Friday Blog Post.

This month the children have written the post themselves.

Literacy by Michael and Ushna 

In Primary 7 we have been reading Mosi’s War and Wonder. We have now finished both books and we have watched the movie Wonder. We have loved the 2 books and we do recommend  reading these books.

This month our story  writing has been Christmas themed . Our titles have been, ‘Christmas in Our Home’ and ‘A Christmas Conversation which involved a boy called Andrew who saw Santa putting down the presents . ‘A Special Snowman’ was a story about a griping tale of a snowman that came to life on Christmas Eve.

Numeracy by Ava

This month we have been working on division and we have been learning how to do division mentally. This month we have also been focusing on data handling. We know what a bar graph and a pie chart are. We have been working very hard on these topics this month.

RE by Sophia

December is the feast of the Immaculate Conception which we enjoyed learning about. We  also reminded ourselves of the importance of advent. We made our own advent wreath and learned about the significance of each candle.

PE by Max and Ryan

Active schools have been coming with in on Tuesdays. Firstly we tried orienteering and also athletics. We have also been running with Mrs Gilfedder on our Thursdays,

In PE we have been doing Rounders. For rounders we have been using cones, balls and bats. In rounders there are two teams Fielders and Batters. If you ask all the children you will figure being a Batter is the most fun.

Learning Across The Curriculum – Japan by Cavan, Ethan and Hassan

We have been learning about famous people, cities, landmarks, and places on the map in Japan. This has taught us about Tokyo, The Shibuya Crossing, and The Imperial Palace. We have also learned about Thomas Blake Glover who originated from Scotland but moved to Japan. He introduced Japan to the railway system, which today is one of the most advanced rail systems in the world. He was also responsible for founding the Mitsubushi car company.

Japan has been our topic since the end of November and we have learned lots about it. We learned about Japanese schools and how much they care about their hygiene.  Did you know they brush their teeth after lunch? We have also been learning how to write our names in kanji also known as Japanese writing and we have learned how to count up to ten. We have drawn manga characters and if you are wondering what manga is its basically a Japanese style comic book which are normally about action and adventure.

In our topic (Japan) we have been learning about lots of things. One of them is Volcanoes (Mount Fuji). We have also been learning about the ring of fire which has LOTS of natural disasters.

Art by Farhan

In P7 we have been doing lots of fun art, recently. we did a popular Japanese art, named the Great Wave and we used water colour. Also since its Christmas  we created a Grinch art with oil pastels.  We created the nativity scene, at first it looked odd with lots of shapes but later it looks impressive.

Primary 7 and Mrs Gilfedder would like to wish everyone a very happy and healthy Christmas.

 December 2020  Reflective Friday Post 

December has been a very busy month for us in Primary 1. We had set a class target to learn more about the Nativity Story and we have agreed that we have enjoyed learning about the Story of Christmas. Over the past few weeks we have listened to stories about the birth of Jesus. We acted out the Nativity in the classroom and all had a part to play. It didn’t matter that we didn’t get to sing, as we got to be actors instead! It was so much fun! We listened to Away in a Manger and said special prayers to the baby Jesus, his Mummy Mary and his Daddy Joseph.

Our next target for January will be to learn even more about the numbers up to 20. We are getting so good at recognising the teens numbers and we would like to focus on counting, reading the numbers, writing their names and putting them in order on a number line.

We had so much fun on our Christmas party day! We went to a virtual panto and got up to dance. Then we made some magic reindeer to food to help Santa’s reindeers on Christmas Eve. After that it was time for our disco with special disco lights and even more fun and dancing! We really enjoyed pin the nose on the Snowman game. When we were having our snack in the dining hall we heard bells and Santa had come to our classroom and left lots of presents for us! We couldn’t believe it! Thank you Santa and Jingles the Elf!

Primary 1 and Mrs Stevenson hope that you all have a very special Christmas with your families. Stay safe and enjoy a relaxing time!

Merry Christmas! Here are some photographs of us enjoying our Christmas Party Day!

What a month we have had in Primary 1 / 2. We have had so much fun preparing for Christmas and learning all about the Nativity story.

We have had a special visitor in our class for the past few weeks – Snowball the Elf. Snowball has been a little bit cheeky sometimes. We laughed when he spilled the paper out of our paper recycling bin. We also enjoyed when he brought us a lovely story to read and asked us to write a letter to Santa. Our letters were amazing so fingers crossed they have reached the North Pole. Here are some pictures of us posting our letters to Santa.

We have also created lots of fabulous Christmas artwork in December. We have made penguins, Christmas puddings and Christmas cards to name a few. Mrs Simpson is delighted that our work is getting so neat.

Our target this month was to learn lots about the Nativity story. We have achieved this target by reading stories, story sequencing and doing artwork. We made lovely Advent promises and learned about the Advent wreath.

One of the highlights for our month was our Christmas Jumper Day. Look at how smart we all looked.

We loved our Christmas party. At the party we played ‘Pin the Carrot on the Snowman’ and the paper plate game. We did lots of party dancing and enjoyed a lovely snack. Our favourite bit was when Santa wrote us a letter and delivered some lovely treats to our class when we were out.

Looking back over the past few months we are so proud of everything we have achieved. This has been a very unusual year in our school but we have tried hard to follow the rules and still managed to work extremely hard. Mrs Simpson says we deserve a lovely rest with our families now it’s almost holiday time.

Looking ahead to 2021, we have so much to look forward to. We will continue to make lots of progress within literacy and numeracy as well as having lots of fun learning in other curricular areas.

Mrs Simpson and Primary 1 / 2 wish our families, friends, parish and school community a very happy and holy Christmas. We look forward to the year ahead and all the new things we will accomplish.

COMMUNITY SUPPORT FOR FAMILIES

We have recently been contacted the General Motors Club, Holytown who have been collecting gifts and food to make up Christmas gifts and food parcels for families who would welcome some support this year.

All gifts and food parcels are ready to be handed out and would be dropped off at school for discreet collection. All the information they would need is the age and gender of the children to match a gift accordingly.

If there are any families from Holy Family that could benefit from this please email me in confidence at ht@holyfamily.n-lanark.sch.uk and I will liase directly with the General Motors Club to arrange this.

Frances S Wilson HT

Looking back over this last month, we have achieved a lot here in P4/5! After the Hallowe’en celebrations, it was soon Bonfire Night and then Remembrance Day. This gave us some great opportunities to make beautiful artwork – we hope you enjoyed seeing it when the children brought home their pieces. The children have started their Christmas-themed Art; having made reindeer pictures already.

We will continue getting arty during December. There are so many restrictions in place at the moment, Art is something we can all do safely and can be a great way to take our minds off any worries.

The boys and girls have been working hard in Maths. We do Daily Ten mental maths warm-ups, Number Talks where we explore different ways to calculate the answers, and have been focusing on times tables recently, too. We also started looking at measure and the children knew that the safe distance adults are meant to keep is 2 metres, but they were surprised to see how long 2 metres really is! We also made hugs to send to a loved one of their choice. We hope these were well-received. Here are some photos of them being made:

The boys and girls have especially enjoyed reading their reading books this month for Literacy and got a special treat in Book Week Scotland of being able to bring in their own books and read more in class. Some of our fabulous pupils also volunteered to read books for the nursery children and we all made bookmarks to use in our favourite books. What’s your favourite book?

Welcome to Primary 2/3’s Reflective Friday post for November.

Another busy and hardworking month in primary 2/3. This week we have been reflecting on and discussing our achievements over the last few weeks and the children have all worked really well and I am delighted with their progression.

Our target this month was to try really hard to stay in our seats in order to keep everyone safe. The children all try really hard to stay in their class bubble.

This month we have agreed to look at Maths and how we could improve in this area. This month the children have all identified a personal target that they are going to work towards and I am sure that they will as always work really hard to achieve success in this.

In Maths we have spent a great deal of time working on addition and subtraction and I feel that the children are really confident in applying strategies to solve both written and mental calculations. We will continue to do this throughout the year through our Number Talks. This week we will be applying our skills and moving on to look at multiplication. The children will be looking at 2, 4, 5 and 10 times tables.

In Literacy the children have been learning trickier words and applying word attack strategies when reading and writing in class. They have been listening to popular fairy tales and are developing the ability to pick out the important parts of the story. We are now practising our letter writing skills with our first letter sent to Santa asking very nicely for a class elf. I hope he has heard our plea! We will continue to develop our skills in letter writing over the next few weeks. Please continue to support your children with handwriting and letter formation during any written homework tasks. I can see a real improvement in their handwriting.

In addition to our Christmas preparations and celebrations we are continuing to remember the real meaning of Christmas and the children will be learning about Advent as a time of preparation. We will be discussing ways that we can make a difference through our acts of kindness. We are still also looking at our Knights and Castles topic and the children really are very enthusiastic when discussing this. I have asked them to complete a personal project over the next few weeks, researching Scottish Castles. Choosing their favourite and explaining why? They should be able to share with us who lived there and when, battles or important dates and should also be able to identify the features of the castle.

I hope that the next few weeks will bring some well-deserved, fun, festive cheer for the children who have all adapted remarkably and worked incredibly hard during this first term.

Primary 7 Reflective Friday November 

Welcome to Primary 7’s Reflective Friday post for November. 

In literacy we have started working on new novels. Some children are enjoying reading Wonder, whilst others are reading Mosi’s War. We are focusing on our comprehension of both books and have been spending time discussing and writing about what we have been reading. We are also continuing to work on grammar, spending time on the correct use of apostrophes.  We have all really enjoyed learning to write persuasive arguments and have all become very good at this.

In numeracy we are have focused on multiplication, working hard to practise both mental strategies for multiplication and the standard written method. We are also working very hard to improve our speed and accuracy recalling times table facts. We are now regularly completing a timed challenge to recall our tables facts as quickly as we can and each time trying to beat our personal best. The children are really enjoying this, for some it is absolutely a highlight of the week.

November is the month of the Holy Souls which we have been learning about in RE. We are continuing to learn both Hail, Holy Queen and Memorare, saying both each day.  The children have also enjoyed learning about Jesus and Justice looking for evidence in the Gospels of Jesus’ goodness and fairness.

Our theme until the end of term for learning across the Curriculum is Japan. We have been learning to say the numbers to 10 in Japanese and we have written the numbers and our names in Japanese Kanji too. We have been locating Japan on a world map and finding out lots of interesting facts about it’s capital city. As part of our work on Japan we are also learning about Volcanoes and The Ring of Fire.

We are very lucky to be working with two fantastic active schools co-ordinators every Tuesday until the end of term. Our first outdoor session with them was athletics. We sampled a range of athletics challenges last Tuesday, but the definite highlight was learning a new, and particularly tricky  game of “pairs tig” which we managed to include in our own Thursday PE session too.

We are looking forward to a very busy December with lots more interesting tasks and challenges.

November has been so exciting in Primary 1 / 2. We have been working so hard and have learned lots.

In maths we have been working on Measure. We used a variety of different items to measure things on our desks. We also measured a huge octopus in the playground using our feet. We made estimations then compared our estimations to how long the octopus tentacles actually were.

We also weighed items from our desks using a pan balance and compared what items were lighter or heavier.

The Cubes group have also been working on ordering numbers to 10 and number names, and The Counters have worked so well on numbers to 100!

Within Literacy we have continued to work on new sounds and words. We have been learning how to do partner spelling and thought of lots of strategies to remember our common words. Within Writing, we have been working hard on narrative work and have produced some fantastic stories. We have even learned how to self-assess our work. Here are some of our Star Writers for November.

We have learned lots of new reading comprehension tasks recently and are getting so good at completing them independently. Here is one of our star pupils showing off her Beginning, Middle and End task.

During the Month of the Holy Souls we remembered those who have died and we thought about those people every day during prayers. We learned the Eternal Rest prayer and drew lovely pictures to remember them. We also learned about some Bible Stories this month; Jonah and the Whale and Noah’s Ark. We completed a variety of tasks and thought about how those stories could help us to be better people. We made our own Noah’s Ark with all the animals inside. Here are some of them on display in our classroom.

We have been working on three mini topics this month in our class; Bonfire Night/Fire Safety, Winter and Looking after the Planet. We loved hearing stories about Winter and our Winter Purposeful play sessions. where we enjoyed building ice castles for Elsa and writing our common words in the snow.

We also reflected on the story ‘The Lorax’ and thought about how we could help look after our planet too. Mrs Simpson is impressed as we are doing our bit to save the planet by always using our blue recycling paper bin in class.  The children have lots of other hints and tips to share with their grown-ups at home too!

Within Health and Wellbeing the children have been learning yoga. We have been learning to develop our strength, balance and confidence through lots of yoga poses. We understand that yoga can make us feel calmer and help us to regulate our emotions.

Some children have been finding homework tricky since we moved to our digital model. If you cannot find the homework, simply search for ‘Holy Family Primary and Nursery Class Glow Blog’ on Google. You select the first suggestion that appears which will take you directly to the correct website.

Each class has an individual tab at the top of the screen which you click on to select the current week’s homework. Please see photo as a guide.

If you have any questions or cannot find the homework, please either ask on Teams or write a note in your child’s diary. I have supplied a jotter for homework which should be handed in on Thursdays. Sumdog and Glow details were supplied again last week. They can be found inside your child’s diary. Homework is a very helpful tool for parents as this allows them to see what the children have been learning in school. It is also beneficial for pupils as it allows them to revise previously taught work.

We have been reflecting on November in class and the children have been thinking about the target they were set in their Learning Journeys. Please complete these at home with your child. Our new target for December is to reflect on the Nativity story. Please keep an eye on Twitter to see the children learning about the birth of our Lord.

Keep working hard primary 1/2. You are doing so well!

Hello and welcome to our November Reflective Friday post.

Our class target for this month was to try to include a capital letter and full stop in a sentence. We have all tried so hard to try to add these in our writing. Some of us are working so well that we can write words and sentences all on our own now without over-writing! Brilliant work Primary 1!

We have decided that our next target will be to learn all about the Nativity story. We are going to reflect on the Nativity Story and think about what it means to us as we embark on the period of Advent.

In Literacy we are continuing to focus on the formation of our letters and to make sure that they are the correct size and face the right way. We have been learning lots about reading strategies and the ways that we can begin to read unfamiliar words. Some great tips we have talked about are to be a ‘Tommy Tracker’ and bounce our fingers on the words, to be a ‘Parrot’ and say the sounds out loud and to be a ‘Sammy Snake’ and blend the sounds together with our fingers to read words. Keep up the great work! Here we are enjoying books during Book Week Scotland.

This month, in RME we have been learning all about the Month of the Holy Souls and have been remembering our loved ones that are no longer with us. We have prayed for those who lost their lives in war when learning about Remembrance Day. Here are some of our poppy fields that we created with finger painting.

In Numeracy we have been continuing to learn about numbers and how to solve problems. We have been talking about teen numbers and we know that they are made of a ten and units. We really like chilli challenges and trying out the hardest sum that the teacher gives us to see if we can solve it. We call his being a ‘Mathmagician’! We have been measuring and learning lots of language associated with measurement. We really enjoy learning outdoors and having fun at the same time, so we try to take our learning outside as much as we can.

This month we had reflective Thursday as Friday saw our class celebration for Halloween. Slightly different than usual but no less fun. The children looked fantastic all dressed up and I hope that you enjoyed seeing the art work that they created last week.

This month we have been extremely busy in class. The children have been working hard and it is great to see the progress that they have made. I hope that you enjoyed looking at all the wonderful work in their jotters?

In Literacy the children have been writing instructions and recounts and have been developing their comprehension skills through activities linked to their reading book. I have enjoyed listening to the children read and can definitely see an improvement in their fluency and accuracy so thank you for your support at home.

In Numeracy the children are moving on to subtraction, followed by multiplication and division. The children work very hard during class time and again I can really see how well they are doing. The children also very much enjoy Sumdog, which is a great resource tailored to the specific development needs of each child. In addition to this I select topics to support and consolidate the work that we are doing in class, so I really appreciate you encouraging your child to log in and spend some time this as part of their homework.

Health and Wellbeing/R.E and Topic

The children have been competing in the Primary 2/3 Class Games during P.E. They are either in Team Mario or Team Yoshi and are enjoying some healthy team competition by completing a variety of races, obstacles and developing skills in communication, timing, balance and footwork.

Throughout the month of October the children took part in praying the Rosary and the children loved bringing in their Rosary Beads to use during this time. In November we will be praying for all our loved ones who have passed and again thank you to those who have returned their list.

Finally in addition to the seasonal celebrations such as Halloween, Bonfire Night and Christmas, the children have been exploring the topic of Knights and Castles and can describe all the special roles of a knight and explain why their armour is so important and can even name some parts of this. Keep your eyes peeled for some fabulous artwork and your ears at the ready for some interesting facts.

Well done boys and girls on another successful month at school.