Primary 1 January Update

Happy New Year from Primary 1! We have settled back into our school routine and have been thinking about our new year targets and resolutions. With our friends we are continuing to learn to co-operate with others, listen carefully and take turns,

Literacy

In Literacy we have continued to learn our alphabet sounds. We have almost learned the whole alphabet and our next step will be phoneme letter sounds (eg ng, sh, ch) to help us to read and write with even more confidence. We work so hard during our school day to learn our sounds and take part in games and daily challenges, sometimes even beat the teacher!

We are continuing to build our classroom word wall with the common words that we have learned so far in Primary 1. In class we read, write, make our words every day from magnetic letters and other materials. At home we should continue to learn our words and practise them every night.

We are learning how to write short, independent sentences. When we write independently, we are being encouraged to use capital letters, finger spaces and full stops. Some of our class can write a sentence and include a joining word (and, so, but). Fantastic work Primary 1!

In class we enjoy listening to and reading stories and talking about what we have read with our friends. This term our target it to ask some questions about the stories we hear and to learn more about sharing our thoughts and opinions with our classmates and teachers.

Numeracy

Primary 1 love learning about numbers, and we have been extending our number knowledge by learning all about teen numbers. We are learning how to read, write and count numbers to 20. Some of us are confident in reading number names and this is something we are continuing to work on. We are becoming very quick at reciting our number stories up to 10 and can add numbers in our heads from 0-10. This term we are going to be learning more about subtraction and will be able to subtract from 5 and then 10.

In addition to our number work we are going to be learning all about Money and this is something that we can practise at home with our families. We want to learn how to recognise coins up to 20p and be able to add small amounts of coins to buy from our class shop.

Interdisciplinary Learning

Our class learned all about Robert Burns this month. We liked hearing the funny Scots language and we thought it was very funny that Mr Creilly uses lots of these words at school! We had so much fun learning our Scottish Song ‘Oh you cannae shove your granny off the bus’ and we performed this at our Burns Assembly. The whole school performed for each other, we clapped and sang along. It was brilliant!

Our topic for this term is Under the Sea. We began our topic by talking about the things that we already know about under the sea, then we made a plan together about the things we would like to do or find out about. The children really wanted to learn about sharks. We were looking forward to showing our families our shark hats that we made this week! Over the coming weeks we are going to learn lots of interesting facts about sea creatures and life under the sea.

It was lovely to see all of our friends back in class after the Christmas holidays.  We took time to share our favourite memories with one another during talking and listening time.  There were so many stories and traditions shared during this time and it was very interesting to find out about the ways in which different nationalities and cultures spend the holiday season.

Our focus for Literacy this term will be to concentrate on writing neatly, using correct punctuation and grammar and remembering to check over all that we write so that we can correct our own mistakes more often.  Our taught writing focus is imaginative writing and we are currently writing our own fairytale to read to the children in P2.  I will post the photos on Twitter when we visit them.

We are working hard on our Novel Studies and are being encouraged to look up the meaning of unfamiliar words when we see them and not just read on past them.  This helps build our spoken and written vocabulary and improves the quality of our language work.  Please continue to get your child to read some of their book aloud to someone at home using good expression and clear voice.

In Numeracy, we began the term focussing on fractions and finding a fraction of an amount.  We are gaining confidence in this concept and are beginning to make a link between a fraction and decimals, especially tenths and hundredths.  Please continue to encourage your child to learn their tables 2-12 as this greatly helps their confidence in number and speeds up their computation.

We will begin a unit on Time towards the middle of February so it is important that your child is confident in the basics of time which has been taught in P3, 4 and 5.  If they have understanding of concepts previously taught then it is much easier to advance their knowledge and understanding of more difficult aspects of time such as adding/subtracting time and duration.

We are almost finished our topic on the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World which the children chose as their IDL subject.  They children took notes and created a factfile on each wonder and have used their ICT skills of word processing to complete an information leaflet.  We used our design skills to create a 3D pyramid and will be set a homework task of recycling household waste to recreate one of the Wonders of the Ancient World next week.

Our next topic will be the Celts and the Picts which we are all looking forward to learning about.

Our RME topics this month have included listening to the Liturgy that was read at Mass each week and exploring the idea of witness in the Old Testament. Our P6 children are all participating in the Pope Francis Faith Award which helps all of our young people to look at the skills and qualities that they have which can be used to help others.  They are also learning about the importance of taking an active part in looking after the health of our planet through the Laudato Si project.

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 have now settled back into our class routine and achieved lots this month.

Within Maths we have continued to work on number. We have learned lots of new strategies to help us add within 20 such as doubles, near doubles and friendly numbers. We really enjoyed adding 3 digits together and made Mrs Simpson very proud with our hard work. We love Number Talks in class and have enjoyed learning the hand signals we use when we discuss strategies during this part of our maths lessons. We like to try to solve problems mentally and help each other lots by discussing ways that may help others. We began completing Chilli Challenges this month and we love to solve problems and share how we got our answers. We will work on Subtraction and Measure 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, in order 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. We then made jam sandwiches and created instructions on how to make a jam sandwich.

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 our very first class novel ‘The Twits’. We love this exciting story, and enjoy letting our imaginations roam as we listen.

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. our new topic is New Birth. We spent time thinking about the nativity story and Mary’s hard journey to Bethlehem. We then thought about new babies and how we prepare for a new baby. We had fun playing Baby Bingo where we learned about all the things we need to look after a baby.

Our new topic is Spain. We have created a fact file about things we learned about the country and will shortly be learning about the weather, Spanish landmarks and some very famous Spanish people.

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 loved learning the song ‘Three Craws’ and had a ball performing our song in front of the rest of the school at assembly. Mrs Simpson thought we were brilliant and we earned a ‘Beat the Teacher’ point which meant we got some extra time at the park.

To celebrate Chinese New Year we read a fantastic story called ‘Dragons in the City’. We learned about all the things people do during this special time. We watched a Chinese New Year dragon parade then created our own Chinese dragons.

We can’t wait for February and all the exciting learning opportunities we will have. Please keep checking Twitter for all our class photos and updates.

See the following link for information about the Healthy Sleep Habits for Children workshop. This is a virtual workshop on the 23rd February.

Sleep workshop parents morning Feb 2023 leaflet

Well, what a busy month we have had in Primary 3. We have had lots of fun learning experiences throughout the month of November.

Literacy

We have been working through our spelling programme and learning new phonemes and common words each week. We are building our vocabulary and have been learning about using adjectives to improve our writing. We are enjoying our reading tasks each week and are good at recognising our common words and phonemes in the books we are reading.

We used the Monster Mallows that we made at Halloween as a stimulus for writing Instructions and then applied this later in the month when we made Snowman biscuits. We are getting good at writing instructions. We have also explored narrative and recount and have written about Sneezy the Snowman and created our very own funny Elf stories. Going forward we are going to try and work on our presentation. We are continuing to focus on letter and number formation and using a ruler to underline our work and making sure our letters are not floating on the line.

We are still working on our listening and talking skills and are trying to listen carefully to instructions to help improve our learning. We are trying not to interrupt and to listen carefully when someone else is speaking. We know this is respectful and that everyone in our class has a voice.

Maths and Numeracy

Over the last month we have spent a great deal of time working on strategies to help us with addition and subtraction, we have been using concrete materials such as ten frames, one hundred squares, cubes, and number lines to help us add and subtract in tens and hundreds. The children have applied their prior understanding of place value to help with this. They are now going to be focussing on multiplication and division and again will explore a range of concrete, pictorial and abstract resources to help them develop a greater understanding in this area.

RE

The children have been praying for all their loved ones during the month of November and remembering the angels and holy souls. The have been learning about the Nativity in preparation for their performance of Wriggly Nativity. They worked hard to learn all their songs and sang beautifully during the performance. The children are now learning about Advent.

Social Studies/Art&Design/Other Areas

The children have finished their topic on Space, completed by a trip to Motherwell Heritage Centre where the children took part in a Rocket Workshop. This was an enjoyable and educational visit for the children, and they all participated fully in the engaging activities provided. They also showcased their learning as were able to respond to the questions asked throughout the day. The workshop co-ordinator remarked that it was lovely to have such enthusiastic and confident individuals participating in the workshop. Please log on to our class Team on Glow to see pictures of the day.

In addition to this we have spent time making crafts for the Christmas Coffee morning and creating a variety of Christmas themed artwork. The children are exploring line, shape, colour and using a variety of different media to create different effects. We hope that you have enjoyed looking at their work.

PE – we have been learning dances for our Christmas Party. The children have enjoyed this and are almost prepared to demonstrate these at their Christmas party on 20^th December.

**Finally, Primary 3 have achieved their target and earned four hundred Dojo points. They have chosen to have a class pyjama and pizza party. Children may come to school in pyjamas or comfortable clothing on this day and bring in a pillow. They will have pizza, ice cream and a Christmas movie to reward their effort this Term. This will take place on Friday 16^th December 2022.

Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year and please check Twitter and our class Team over the next week or so for class and picture updates.

We had a very busy month in Primary 2. We finished October by learning about Halloween. We enjoyed reading Halloween stories such as ‘Room on the Broom’ and ‘Funny Bones’. We also had Halloween purposeful play where we completed lots of spooky challenges such as building a Lego haunted house.

In Literacy, we have continued to learn new common words and sounds. We have been practising our reading and have learned how to complete lots of associated tasks. Mrs Simpson loves when we practise our reading books every night as this help us to develop our fluency and accuracy. In November we read the story ‘Sneezy the Snowman’. We wrote our own stories about Sneezy, designed some new clothes for him, then made our own Sneezy the Snowman biscuits.

In Maths, we finished working on numbers to 100 and began to focus on addition within 20. It helps us to explore new strategies using a variety of resources such as ten frames, cubes and pegs on hangers.

In R.E. we have been learning about the story of the very first Christmas. We enjoyed showing what we have learned as narrators in our infant Nativity show ‘A Wriggly Nativity’. We hope that you enjoyed our performance as much as we did. We have also learned about Advent and how special this time is. We made Advent promises and learned about the Advent wreath.

During P.E this month we have spent time learning dance with a focus on social dancing. We enjoyed learning the ‘Grand Old Duke of York’ and ‘The Hokey Cokey’ among other dances, and can’t wait to show off our new skills at our Christmas party.

This month we learned about St. Andrew, our patron saint. We made beautiful stained glass window pictures to celebrate his special day.

We loved ‘Book Week Scotland’ in Holy Family. It was fun bringing our teddies and books to school and we enjoyed the variety of activities we participated in. We particularly enjoyed visiting the library and our friends in P5/6 so they could read to us. Thank you Mrs Cook and P5/6!

In December our highlights so far have been our Christmas lunch and our trip to Motherwell Civic Centre to see Cinderella. Please see Twitter for all our photos.

We have had a busy month. At the very end of October , we made cookies for Halloween! We also learned about The Day of the Dead in Mexico and did some lovely artwork for it. We met Primary 4 from Mossend at the park and had a lovely play together. At the end of the month, we went to Motherwell to see Cinderella! Oh yes we did! At the end of the month, we started to get visits from one of Santa’s main elves, Ralph. He gives us good advice on how to stay on the Good List , as well as giving us a pat on the back for all our talents.

Literacy

The Red and Blue groups finished one novel and moved onto another. The Red group are now reading a Jacqueline Wilson novel and the Blue group are reading The Boy Who Had Nearly Everything. They have been working on reading aloud with greater fluency and the reading strategies.  We like to use a dictionary to help us with Metalinguistics.  The Yellow group have moved on to Rapid Readers which have a fiction and non fiction element in each book.

We are continuing to work within our spelling groups to improve our spelling. The Red /Blue group are getting much more confident filling in phoneme charts and using the spelling strategies to support our work. The Yellow group are working on phonemes and writing sentences with our words in them. We have been working together on using magnetic letters to help build our phoneme words, amongst other things.

We have moved on to Persuasive writing with Mrs Smith.

Numeracy

We have started doing Maths  stations on a Wednesday and we are getting good at organising our resources properly to help us. We often have games  which require us to sort out counters, dice and other resources. This gives Mrs Daisley a chance to work with each group on Number Talks and everyone gets a chance to share a strategy.

We have moved on to Subtraction. Starting a new topic can be nerve wracking for some children but practise helps us all to improve.

We have been working on Pattern with Mrs Smith.

Health and Wellbeing

We are all enjoying seeing a little baby boy grow in Roots of Empathy. In three weeks, we always see a big change in his skills. Mrs Le Blond is encouraging us to always be gentle with him and watch our voices so that we don’t frighten him.

The Victorians

We have learned about famous Victorians such as Florence Nightingale and William Morris. We have also been learning about famous inventors of the time.

RE

November is an important time to reflect on our loved ones who have passed before moving on to Advent, where we prepare ourselves for the birth of the baby Jesus. We have tried to reflect on  what we can do that doesn’t involve present buying, like attending Mass regularly, praying and treating people around us kindly.

Dance

We are learning traditional Scottish dances for our party. We have finished with Gymnastics for now and will choose a new topic in the New Year. We will get to choose between 3 options.

Primary 5 have had another successful month during November.

We have been working extremely hard in maths developing our multiplication skills. We have been learning new strategies and problem-solving skills to solve our sums. We do a range of active maths exercises to supplement our learning. It would be great to encourage the children to practise their times tables consistently at home to aid their learning in school.

We have been showing great progress in literacy. We have been reading our literacy novels, ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’ and ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ by Roald Dahl. We have been applying our reading strategies throughout our novels, enabling us to gain a greater understanding of the texts. We have also been practising our oral skills by reading to our groups, in pairs, or to our self. We have also been enjoying watching chunks of the movie adaption, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, once we successfully complete our tasks.

Furthermore, we are enjoying learning our new spelling words each week. We work hard at learning our new phoneme of the week, spelling rule or common words.

We have been successful learners during our topic time which is the World Cup. We have been exploring the stadiums and even started to create our very own World Cup stadium through cooperative learning.

In RE, we have explored our patron Saint of Scotland, St. Andrew and created our very own saltires. We then practised extremely hard for the First Friday Mass which we led on December 2^nd.

We have been confident individuals during PE. We have teamed up with Primary 6/5 and Primary 7 (a & b) to practise Scottish dancing.  We are extremely excited to show off our new dance skills at the Christmas party.

During the month of November, we have been very busy in Primary 7B!

We started off the month by taking part in our first Friday Mass with pupils reading, sharing bidding prayers and taking part in the offertory.

In maths we have been focusing on multiplication and our times tables.  All pupils love to explore new ways to practise their times tables, so we have been playing some interesting active maths games including times table Jenga! Most pupils are becoming more confident using different multiplication strategies in their work and can confidently explain how they have come to an answer during our number talks sessions too.

In literacy, we have been continuing to read our Divided City novel and discuss new themes we discover whilst reading. Pupils enjoy using our cosy corner of the classroom to read privately on our comfy classroom beanbags!
We have also been learning how to write a discursive argument. Pupils used these new skills to write a discursive piece of work discussing whether or not there should be a smoking ban in Scotland. This directly links to their health and wellbeing topic of the dangers of alcohol and substance abuse and misuse.

During this month, we have also been taking part in a lot of drama games which the pupils thoroughly enjoy. We have used different skills such as improvisation and speech and movement to develop our theatrical skills within the classroom.

We have been very lucky to still receive PE sessions from Cardinal Newman sports leaders each week and we will be sad to see them return to High School in December. The pupils have loved having their input and taking part in each week’s lesson.

However, in preparation for our Christmas parties, we have started practising our Scottish dancing skills! We have joined up with primary 5 and 6 to learn various group dances including the military two step and the dashing white sergeant. We are very excited to take part in these dances during our Christmas parties!

We have also been continuing to learn about the Scottish Parliament and democracy in Scotland which is part of our mini topic this term. The pupils are now very excited as we are going to visit the Scottish Parliament next week!

November has been full of learning, fun and hard work for Primary 7B and we are very much looking forward to the Christmas fun in December!

Please make sure you follow the school’s twitter page to see photos of what we get up to during the week!