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.

It has been a busy month in primary 7.

Yesterday we read the final pages of Divided City. The children were excited to get to the end of the novel, but at the same time are disappointed there’s no more to read. It has been great to see so many of the children really engage with the book and get so much enjoyment from reading. We will be starting our new books next week so we have something to look forward to.

Divided City has been the inspiration for our art work this month. We have completed fantastic colourful Glasgow cityscapes, featuring many of the landmarks we have been reading about in the book. The church featured in the novel also inspired us to head outside and draw our own beautiful church with some lovely results.

In literacy the children have really enjoyed learning the skill of persuasive writing. We have written a range persuasive letters and essays all which have been fantastic, they certainly are a persuasive bunch!

In numeracy the children have spent a lot of time looking at addition, subtraction and multiplication. We have worked on both written calculations and have also been learning lots of different mental strategies for these kinds of questions. We have started a timed maths challenge too, with the children completing a challenge once per week in 60 seconds, each week trying to beat their own score.

As we finish our learning on Scottish inventors we are beginning to look at the solar system. The children are all very interested in space and the planets and are asking some interesting and thought provoking questions, well done primary 7.

PE has made a welcome return this month with the children enjoying getting outdoors. We will be focusing on running over the next few weeks, building our stamina and resilience and learning good running and breathing techniques.

For October, the month of the Rosary, we have been reminding ourselves of the Rosary prayers and reflecting on why the Rosary is so special. The children have enjoyed talking about the mysteries of the Rosary and have produced some really lovely illustrations.

We are looking forward to our “desk  Halloween party” tomorrow a great way to finish off a busy and successful month.

Hello everyone and welcome to our October Reflective Friday post. This month has been a very unusual one for our class as we have been isolating and learning at home for some of the time  We have been working so hard at home and completing all of our tasks posted on the website. Well done boys and girls!

This month our class target was to talk about our feelings. We have been doing this every day and using our mood monsters on our classroom wall to help with our emotional vocabulary. We are getting better at using our feeling words and have enjoyed exploring the emotion works orange cog in the assembly hall and classroom. At home we have been talking to our families about how we feel and sharing our worries, if we have any, with adults.

We have been working so hard with our number work and have had some fun in class learning more about counting and adding to 10. We can order our numbers to 10 and can even write the number names! At home we have been learning to measure, using the language of measurement – tall, small, order, measure, compare, size.

In literacy we have been learning how to write a sentence and how important it is to add finger spaces. We had lots of fun reading sentences that didn’t have any finger spaces and we noticed that they didn’t sound right! We have been text detectives and have been learning more about our sounds and common words. The boys and girls have been creating fabulous stories, writing about Percy the Park Keeper, Autumn and our October holiday. We can even include a feeling in our writing! Great job!

We have been exploring the season of Autumn together and have become Autumn detectives, noticing the changes in our outdoor environments. Here we are trying to find signs of Autumn.

During our Autumn topic we have been learning about Percy the Park Keeper and all of the animals that he works with in the park. We learned about animals who hibernate during the cold winter months. One of these animals was a hedgehog and we made our own using Autumn leaves that we collected on our walks. Before we began learning from home we made fantastic stick wands and pretended to be witches and wizards! We cast spells on each other and had lots of Halloween fun!

Well done Primary 1! Superstar workers!

We have had a fabulous month of new learning in primary 1 / 2. We have continued to work hard on learning our new school routines and have tried so hard to show great behaviour and work. Mrs Simpson thinks we are superstars. Our Rainbow Reward chart, Class Dojo and winning lots of Golden Tokens encourage us to do our best every day.

Within literacy we have made excellent progress within the Active Literacy programme. We have learned lots more sounds and have been learning to use the sounds we learn to build new words.

Our reading is constantly improving . We have read lots of interesting reading books and have enjoyed learning a variety of Read to Write tasks. We love completing Sticky Sentences. This is where we sequence jumbled up sentences. We have created lots of interesting pieces of writing this month also. We have been learning about recounts and have enjoyed creating our own. We have written about our October holiday and a Halloween story recount. We have been trying hard to assess our own work by becoming Charlie Checkers. We have been checking our work to ensure we have included capital letters, full stops, fingers spaces and that we are writing on the line. We carried out solo talks this month in class. We shared lots of interesting information with our new friends. Mrs Simpson said that we prepared very well and listened so well to others. Here is one of us carrying our our solo talks.

Within maths, the Cubes group have made an excellent start to Addition. The Counters group have been working on Subtraction. Both groups have been using concrete materials to help them understand these concepts. We love practising our number formation on our ‘Show Me’ boards. Mrs Simpson says we are getting good at counting forwards and backwards from a range of different numbers.

Our class has continued to develop their emotional literacy through Health and Wellbeing lessons. We especially enjoyed playing the Emotions board game where we had the opportunity to discuss times in our life when we felt a range of emotions.

Our topics this month have been Autumn and Halloween. We have participated in a wide range of lessons based on both topics. As well listening to spooky stories, we have had the opportunity to create various pieces of Halloween artwork. Our favourite was making 2D shape witches. We also enjoyed going on an Autumn treasure hunt. We were able to find lots of things relating to Autumn including lots of brightly coloured leaves which we used to make Autumn hedgehogs. We praised God for creating our beautiful Autumn world by creating Autumn leaves with praise words on them.

Mrs Simpson has been teaching us lots of Spanish in class. We have learned lots this month including a range of colours, some classroom commands and we can also bless ourselves. Our favourite game so far is Spanish Eye Spy.

Welcome back to primary 2/3 and our first Reflective Friday post. 

I hope that all the children are delighted to be back with their school family after lockdown. The boys and girls have settled in really well and have been working hard to adjust to the one way system and the play and learning zones. We have had a huge focus on Health and Wellbeing and the children have learned all about keeping themselves and others safe through increased hand washing, sanitizing and social distancing.   

This will be a very busy term for Primary 2/3 but the children have shown they are ready and willing to learn. In Math’s and Numeracy we have been focusing on developing their mental agility, counting forwards and backwards in 1’s,2’s,5’s and 10’s.  They have been exploring up to 3 digit numbers and will go on to apply this to addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. I hope you will continue to support your children by encouraging and supporting them with homework tasks which will always reinforce their learning in class. 

In Literacy the pupils will continue to develop their skills in reading, writing, listening and talking, and are progressing well through the core programmes. These last few weeks we have been revising and consolidating phonemes and spelling taught to date. To further support your child at home, please encourage them to read aloud every night and to discuss what they are reading as this will be beneficial to their understanding of the book. Please also practise weekly taught phonemes and spelling words as this will really help your child in their class work. Children have been issued with a homework jotter and should take opportunities to develop handwriting skills by completing any written tasks here. 

We take every opportunity to get outdoors, and participate in the Daily Mile. In addition to this the children have been developing their communication skills and physical fitness through participation in a variety of outdoor and indoor activities and really enjoy this.

This has been a very busy time in Primary 3 as we began the new term after a long break from school.  The children have been working hard to learn the new one way system and also learning to keep themselves and others safe by washing and sanitising their hands.

Our priorities have been Literacy, Numeracy and Heath and Well-Being with the children revising aspects of all areas in class and for homework.

We have been spending lots of time outdoors doing our Daily Mile and participating in outdoor games.  We are still operating our indoor and outdoor bubble system to keep your children as safe as we can.

In literacy. we have been revising all of the phonemes taught to date as well as focussing on proper letter formation.  You can really help by encouraging your child to write letters the correct way when completing homework tasks.

In maths, we have been counting on and counting backwards as well as learning our days and months.  The children know songs that they can share with you and you can help them learn them well by asking each day what the day, date is and asking questions such as, “What day will it be tomorrow, what day was it yesterday.

Could I please ask you to try and listen to your child read each night, check to see if they can read/write their common words and play counting games with them.

Primary 7 are enjoying being back at school and are very much enjoying being “top of the school.”  The children are obviously disappointed that they can’t work with their buddies in the usual way, but we have been looking at inventive ways we can get around this. The children have already sent a Welcome to Holy Family poster to their buddy with a note and we are looking forward to hopefully having a virtual link up with the P1s very soon.

We are currently reading Divided City by Theresa Breslin as a class novel. The children are all really gripped by the book and enjoying the story and the many themes it covers. It is so lovely to see each and every child so engrossed in a book.

In numeracy we have been revising rounding, estimating and place value and we are now focusing on addition and subtraction with numbers to 1 000 000.  We will move on to work on multiplication and division.

The children are also enjoying a Health and Well being focus and this month we have been thinking about how we can stay safe, especially during the pandemic. We have written instructions to show anyone how to stick to our new school safety rules and designed posters to promote this too. We are looking forward to continuing with our outdoor PE even as the weather gets a little colder.

The children have really enjoyed looking at Scottish Inventors. We have been researching the lives of famous inventors as well as imagining what it would have been like when these inventions were first discovered by creating newspaper articles and diary entries. Most of all the children have loved creating their own invention and writing a persuasive piece to encourage others to buy it.

In RE we have been looking at the liturgical year and reminding ourselves of the special times in our church year and the colours that symbolise each one. We spent some time thinking about Mary and why she is so special and will continue to do this in the month of October. We are also learning about Luke’s Gospel.

Finally the highlight of the month has to be the election of our new House Captains. All of the children worked really have to complete their application and the short listed candidates all produced really interesting speeches. I think those voting must have had a very difficult decision to make. Congratulations to Ava, Sophia, Shannon and Alfie.

The children have made me feel very welcome at Holy Family and we are looking forward to what October brings.