We have been very busy at the start of this new term.

We have begun a new reward system where we have to get to the top of our chart 3 times to get a reward. Here are some rewards

• Getting an I-pad
• Working with a friend in the cloakroom
• Getting a certificate
• Sitting at the teacher’s table .

To move up our chart, we need to show

• Good listening
• That we are working hard
• Kindness to other people.

Literacy

We continue to work hard on our spelling programmes. There’s always spelling homework on our homework tab. Even practising our words out loud can help. We are using Educandy more in class and hopefully at home too. It helps us with our common words.

We have been working on changing our Cosy Corner into a relaxing place to read. We have been to the library to borrow books on the Egyptians, we have recommendations for boys and girls, an author of the month ( Francesca Simon) and even comics. Two groups are working on novels and another on Rapid Readers. We are also looking at a non-fiction book which has some craft ideas for the Egyptians.

Reading our books at home means that we have more time in class to talk about the strategies, characters and plot.

Mrs Gilfedder is working on Instructions and spending time at the end to edit our own, and a partners, work. We can check that everything makes sense, has good spelling and punctuation.

Numeracy

We are finishing up on Division and going to revisit Subtraction as it was the most tricky. With a bit more revision, we should all become more confident. Division is also tricky but we are doing a great job, especially with word problems. Mrs Daisley is delighted!

Mrs Gilfedder has started Money. There is no better way to practise than to use actual money when out shopping.

We will move onto Time soon. We will revise the analogue  clock and 24 hour times. Practising at home will help. This is a great life school for everyone. Try checking when your favourite programmes are on, when you have to leave for school and going to bed.

Health and Wellbeing

We are doing athletics this term. This will hopefully be outside and get us ready for Sports Day. Good listening is very important as it can be very noisy outside.

We are continuing with Roots Of Empathy, where we have learned a lot about looking after small children and how to understand emotions.

Peter Pan

Many of us have signed up for the school show. The practises are going well and we can see some budding stars of the future! What a wonderful chance to shine!

The Egyptians

We read a non fiction book on Tutankhamen, which was so popular that we are going to do a full topic. We will be making lots of things, so we might need help from home. Any books you have at home, we would be delighted to borrow.

RE

We have our retreat this week and hope it will be a fun day for everyone. Then May will be a very busy month, preparing for First Communion.

ICT

We are working on editing with Mrs Le Blond and are getting some more sessions with Mr Quinn for coding.

Following on from a very  busy end of Term in March where we were so proud to see so many children in our class and school audition for our HFactor Talent Show, we have worked very hard over the past 2 weeks especially in Literacy and Numeracy.

Our 1st focus in Numeracy has been on Symmetry and Pattern, where we worked on identifying and drawing shapes and pictures with more than 1 line of symmetry.  Some of our patterns were very complicated and we discovered that it is very hard to write letters in a symmetrical pattern! Some of us liked to use a mirror but most of us preferred to use our ruler as  central marker to check symmetry.

We then moved on to Time which most of us initially found challenging but with lots of work and attention, we can confidently calculate durations, tell time using minutes past/to and convert time into am/pm.  As a way to extend our learning, we had lots of opportunities to work in our problem solving groups working through a variety of scenarios from using timetables, calendars and problem solving situations.

We were given lots of direction in ways in which our NLC Virtual School can support all aspects of our learning and we have been asked to try a range of these games and activities over this term.  We need our Glow email and password to access the tab on the Launch Pad.

In Literacy we are all working on books by the same author, David Donohue.  We are really enjoying them and look forward to practising to read with greater fluency and expression so that the stories come alive when we are reading them.

We have now completed our work as author’s and our books will be ready for display by the end of next week. Keep an eye out for the photos on Twitter.  We will take them home at the end of the term.

Our swimming block is going very well and we are enjoying the walk to and from the Sir Matt Busby each Tuesday.  More of us are learning to be confident in the water each week and hopefully we can all swim by the end of the block in June, ready to swim during the holidays.

It was lovely to catch up with parents before the holidays and look forward to seeing the remaining parents next week so that we can discuss your child’s progress and share their learning in their jotters.

As always, I am available via email or telephone should you have any queries throughout the term and I look forward to seeing you at upcoming events such as 1st Friday Mass Coffee Morning and Sports Day.

I hope you have all had a brilliant holiday and you are all ready for a new term.

Spelling

Red/Blue- Spelling Rule

hop-hopped/hopping

shop- shopping/shopped

get-getting

tan- tanned/ tanning

http://educandy.com

Activity codes- 574de/ 574e7

Can you explain this Spelling Rule in your jotter?

Yellow-wa

was, walk, wall, wash, wander, watch, warm, swan, wasp, water

http://educandy.com

Activity codes- 35f23/ 35f2b

Can you choose an activity ?

• Write sentences for 5 words
• Find out what 5 words mean
• Do Pyramid Writing for all of the words
• Do Rainbow Writing of all of your words.

Reading

We will have our new reading books by Wednesday. Until then, read for pleasure at home.

Numeracy

We are continuing with Division this week. Try this game.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

Choose a Division game. Also practise the 4 and 8 Times Tables.

First Communion

If you have home pages to finish, you can do them now as we only have the Last Supper page to do on our retreat. We are arranging the retreat this week and will let you know the date.

Numeracy

This month we have been very busy working hard to develop our money handling skills, shape and area skills and are beginning to revise our knowledge of fractions. We are learning that having a strong knowledge of our times tables, can help us in every area of numeracy and applying mathematical strategies is easier when we know our tables confidently.

Literacy

This month we have been enjoying adding some active spelling games into our spelling revision work to practise our words. We have completed writing our newspaper report on the outbreak of world war two and have continued to explore the active literacy strategies to deepen our reading skills using our class novel ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’.

Topic

We have been busy exploring Anderson shelters this month in line with our WWII topic and have begun to create our own which will be a homework project for pupils over the next two weeks. We will have a presentation of our creations on Friday the 24th March in class.

RE

This month we have celebrated the beginning of lent and have all made our Lenten promises together in class. A few of our pupils have been attending morning Masses during the school week which has been lovely to see and well done! We are continuing to work on our Confirmation preparation workbooks both in school and at home. We are getting closer to the time of our special preparation and the pupils are looking very much forward to receiving their sacrament together.

Health and Wellbeing

This month we celebrated Children’s Mental Health Week and took part in a week of mindful activities to encourage pupils to think about their emotions and ways to take care of their minds as well as their bodies. In PE we have been focusing on yoga which has been a lovely way to explore some stretching, meditation and breathing techniques too.

Primary 6/5 February Learning Update

We began the month celebrating Global Play Day where we got the opportunity to play with our friends and use our imaginations.  Technology was a real favourite in our class and some children recreated some of the Wonder of the World which we have been studying as part of our IDL topic.

Literacy

We are continuing to read our class novels and at the end of the month, will have an opportunity to watch The Borrowers together to see how the author’s ideas come to life on the screen.

In reading, we have focussed our attention on awareness of engaging our audience when reading aloud.  We have spent time reading to our peers and commenting ion one another’s expression and fluency so that we can continue to improve this key skill.

We have now completed our own imaginative fairy tales which we were able to read to our P2 friends on World Book Day.  Our completed books will be available to be read by our parents when they visit on Science Day on the 14th Marc h.

Maths

Throughout February, our main maths focus, in addition to our regular Number Talks and Mental Maths, has been learning all about Fractions, Decimals and Percentages.  We learned about the range of real life situations where these skills are important and most of us can now confidently calculate the discount on a price in the shops!

We continue to be reminded the importance of learning all of our tables to 12 which we have needed to be able to simplify fractions to make them smaller and more manageable.  We have been given our assessment marks as a percentage which I’m sure your child will have shared with you.

P.E.

We will continue to focus on badminton as the focus of our P.E. slots and have been improving our skills of serving and returning.  I’m sure all of the children will want to practise this skill when the warmer comes and they are able to play outdoors more regularly.

We have also been trying to improve our fitness levels as we have found out that we are unable to bend, stretch and run quickly in badminton if we are not very active out of school. Being active helps our overall health and and is especially good for our mental well-being.

HWB

We also took time to celebrate Children’s Mental Health Week in the middle of the month with  a range of activities focussing on the importance of relaxing, dancing and talking to others about how we are feeling.  We had a timetable of fun workshops that we participated in and enjoyed a lot.

Music

We took time to rehearse our amazing musical performance to thank Mrs Celino during her time with us in Holy Family. We sang very well and make great use of props and musical instruments and even managed to persuade Father Brown to join us.  Check out Twitter for the first half of our performance.

** REMINDER TO PARENTS**

Could you please take time to remind children about the importance of being kind online particularly when messaging on Social Media sites and What’s App and that any information that they take home should only concern themselves and not that of others.

Although this has been a short month, we have been very busy.

Literacy

We have been working on non-fiction reading. The Red/Blue groups have been working on Life In Space, followed by The Search For Tutankhamen. We worked very hard to produce a fact file on each where we have been concentrating on the Main Ideas and Summaries. Mrs Daisley was amazed at how hard we worked , using our books and videos to write notes to help us. The Yellow group have been continuing using Rapid Readers, which have fiction and non fiction texts for us to enjoy. We always enjoy the joke at the end!

We continue to follow our spelling programmes. We have been putting our weekly lists in our diaries so that it is easier to do at home.

Writing

We have just finished exploring narrative writing. We used imaginative themes and we also explored children’s mental health week during that focus week. Many children are demonstrating writing very imaginative and personal pieces. The themes engaged their imagination and ,for other children, allowed them to invent characters to describe some of their worries. Writing is a genre that allows children to allow their imagination the freedom to explore a range of ideas but also use imaginative characters to describe their concerns.

Numeracy

We’ve been doing lots of work on Multiplication. In Number Talks, we have been looking at different strategies which will help us as the  work gets harder. We have used arrays to support our work and have been working on word problems, which can be tricky.

Beyond Number

We have been working on Symmetry with Mrs Smith and she was delighted to display some of our work within the class.

R.E.

We prepare for our First Friday Mass and our teachers were delighted with our preparation. Father Brown gave us a tour of the church, which involved a trip up to the choir loft. We also had a good look at all of the statues around the church. This has been very helpful as we need to be church detectives in our First Communion work.

Music/Dance

We have been preparing a song for Mrs Celino’s last assembly. It has been tricky to keep it a big secret!

ICT

We got our first session with Mr Quinn on Coding and we hope to do more in March.

Art

We have been learning about Charles Rennie Mackintosh. We know that he was an architect and furniture designer. He was best known for his rose artwork, so we have been working on this. We hope to display our work on our class clothesline.

Health and Wellbeing

We have been continuing to get to know our little baby teacher! We have been learning about transitional objects, which was a discussion that we could all share in from our own experiences.

Topic

We have managed some work on Magnets but we hope to do more science in the lead up to Science Week! We learned words such as attract and repel and could use them to talk about magnets.

P.E.

We have been continuing with badminton but will move on from this as the weather gets nicer to work outside.

February saw another busy month of learning in Primary 3.

Literacy 

The children have continued to develop their listening, talking, reading and writing skills and have been reading a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts. They have been working on developing their understanding and ability to express this verbally and in their written responses. Children have been learning to use more complex sentences using connectives and have been exploring the genre of explanation writing through their IDL topic, the Romans.

Numeracy and Maths 

The children have spent the last few weeks developing their understanding of division, they have used a variety of concrete and pictorial materials to help explore this, such as cubes and counters. They are continuing to work on learning the 2, 5, and 10 X Tables, as well as learning the 3 X table. They are developing an understanding of division as sharing and equal groupings and are familiar in using mathematical vocabulary and notation related to this. Please continue to provide opportunities for children to practice and learn their multiplication facts and relate this understanding of division to their everyday lives.

RE 

Children are continuing to learn about the sacrament of reconciliation and their relationship with god and others. They enjoyed a confession retreat in the chapel hall and a special visit to the Church, where Father Brown was happy to discuss all important parts in the Church, such as the Alter, Sanctuary, Pascal Candle, Pulpit, Baptismal Fonts and Confessional boxes. Father Brown also visited the children in the class to answer their questions on the sacrament. The children have also been learning about Lent, and about prayer, fasting and arms giving. Throughout Lent, Mass is celebrated each Monday and Wednesday mornings at 8:15am.

Other Curricular Areas

IDL – The Romans – The children have been learning about the legend of Romulus and Remus and the development of the Roman Empire. They have learned about life as a roman soldier and identify their protective clothing. They have used Lego and Magnetics and Jenga blocks to create structures of famous roman building, such as the colosseum and Roman Forts. They designed and created their own roman shields and will continue to explore this topic through a variety of STEM based learning activities.

HWB/PE – The children are coming to the end of their learning block of gymnastics. In addition to developing their skills in balance, movement and shape, they have demonstrated that they can work together to create a sequence incorporating the above skills. They very much enjoyed being given the opportunity to incorporate some of these skills on the wall bars. Going forward, the children will move on to develop their wall skills. The children have also been learning what it means to be a good friend. They are learning to show respect and kindness in the playground and in the classroom. They are working hard at being responsible citizens and are working within the class and throughout the school at demonstrating our school values of faith, learning, encouragement, and mutual respect.

*Reminders*

Homework out on a Monday to be returned completed and signed on a Thursday.

PE Days are Monday and Wednesday. Children should come to school in full school uniform on PE days and bring in their PE kit. This will help to foster their organisational skills.

Numeracy

We have been working extremely hard learning both shape and measurement interchangeably during maths time. We have learned to convert units of measurement, learned to calculate the area of 2D shapes and the volume of 3D shapes. We have also continued to work hard on grasping on our times table knowledge every morning to consistently build our multiplication and division skills.

Literacy

We have continued to apply our spelling strategies to help us learn our spelling words each week. We have continued with our novels, applying our reading strategies to gain a greater understanding of the plot, characters, and setting.

It is important that all pupils read their class novels when assigned for homework. It would also be great if pupils read other books at home to further improve their literacy skills, such as spelling and grammar.

Health & Well-being

In Health & Well-being, we explored our emotions. We investigated triggers of negative emotions and strategies to overcome these emotions to turn them into more positive ones. We also explored different colours linking to certain emotions. We have completed playing badminton in P.E and have moved onto football. Along with practising our ball skills, we have also been practising kindness during our games.

IDL Topic

We have explored lots of exciting things during topic time. We learned about Roman Legionaries and the Roman Army. We created our own shields and practised military manoeuvres, just like the Romans did! We then moved onto creating catapults that Roman soldiers used in battle and measuring how far our play-dough cannon balls travelled. We also investigated Roman engineering and created our very own aqueducts.

Primary 2 were very busy in February. We worked so hard and achieved lots of great things.

In Literacy we have been very busy indeed. We have worked hard on all our previously taught common words and sounds, as well as learning lots of new ones too. We enjoy working with our literacy partners and playing Pot Luck. This is something that we can show our grown ups at home so they can help us practise too.

We have been learning even more about instructions this month, and can describe what instructions are. We made lovely Valentine’s Day Love Bugs for someone that we love and then had fun writing our own instructions about how to make them. 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 ‘The Twits’ and are currently reading George’s Marvellous Medicine. We love to discuss the events in the story and to make predictions about what might happen next.

In Maths we have continued to work on subtraction within 20. We have been learning strategies to help us to subtract from teens numbers. We enjoy practical Maths lessons and always have fun whilst we learn.

We have also completed our topic on Measure this month. We enjoyed learning about how to measure length and weight using non-standard units. To measure the length of objects we used a variety of resources such as pencils and paperclips. We also learned that parts of our bodies can help us to measure length. We were so surprised to find out that feet and hands can be used. We learned about estimating the height, length and weight of objects,  and soon realised that it is ok for our guesses to be wrong. Within our Area topic we learned about surface area. We designed a variety of shapes which covered different surface areas, and learned super ways of measuring them.

Our new topic is Spain and we have been very busy working on this during February. We learned about Flamenco and designed outfits for Flamenco dancers. We can describe a variety of Flamenco techniques and enjoyed watching Flamenco dancers perform.  We learned about bullfighting through watching the movie Ferdinand. We know how to talk about the weather in Spanish and made lots of props to help us to remember the new Spanish phrases we learned.

We began our Lenten journey on Ash Wednesday. We learned all about this special day and participated in Ash Wednesday Mass in our church. We understand that Lent is a special time when we think about how Jesus made lots of sacrifices during his time in the desert. We have a secure understanding of the three traditions of Lent; prayer, almsgiving and fasting, and we made our own Lenten promises.

This month we celebrated Pancake Tuesday. We designed our own pancake pictures then enjoyed pancakes in our class with lots of tasty toppings. Some of us had even more at home too!!

In February we celebrated Mental Health Awareness Week. During this special week we spent lots of time discussing our emotions and the things we could do to help us when we feel particular emotions. We made our own Worry Monster cups where we can store the worries that we have. We also decorated our own mood stones. We ended our week with a joint dance-along with P1 as being active helps us to maintain positive mental wellbeing.