Time for another update from the hardworking children in Primary 3

Literacy – The children have continued to select a variety of books from our class library or from home and often choose reading time which has helped them progress in their fluency and accuracy when reading aloud in groups in the class. They have enjoyed listening to stories and looking for facts in their topic books. We have read The Roman Beanfeast, and are reading Pugly Solves a Crime. They continue to work hard using various strategies each week to learn new common and tricky words. The writing genre focus was on letters, explanation and recount. The children demonstrated their skills by writing letters for penfriends in P3 at Mossend Primary and we delivered these to them. We were so excited to receive a letter back from them.

Numeracy and Maths – Having spent a great deal of time working on multiplication and division they are now working on Money. The children can identify and order all uk coins and notes up to £20.00. They have been using plastic coins to make amounts and calculate change up £10. We learned about the decimal point separating pounds and pence and know this is really important. We looked at receipts we had brought in from home and added and subtracted items. We loved playing games like Money Monopoly, Coin Collecter and Toy Shops which helps to reinforce what we were learning in a fun and enjoyable way. We can’t wait to move on to Fractions.

IDL – Oceans and Continents – The new IDL topic chosen by the children was Oceans and Continents and the children are really engaged in this already – asking lots of questions which we will explore in more detail over the next few weeks. Please ask children to tell you all about what they have learned. They can already name the 7 Continents and 5 Oceans and I’m certain they will all be able to impress you with their learning already.

PE/HWB–The children have come to the end of their sessions on ball skills, they learned how to make different passes and to travel with the ball. Athletics will be the focus of this term, and they will looking at improving their fitness and performance in running, jumping and throwing – all great practise for Sports Day. The class have also been talking about their emotions and explored these through the story ‘The Rabbit who was Afraid of the Dark’, we will continue to work on this,  identifying triggers and behaviours which are connected to our emotions.

RE – The children have had the opportunity to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation on a further two occasions in school with Father Brown and were incredibly lucky when Bishop Toal visited our class on a recent visit to talk to the Primary 7’s about Confirmation. We have been learning about Jesus’ apostles and how we can show love to one another as Jesus did. We will be leading first Friday mass this week and look forward to celebrating with our whole school community. Please join us if you can.

We have started our literacy novels: The Santa Marie by Kenneth Steven and The Last Wolf by Michael Foreman. We will continue to apply our reading comprehension strategies as well as work on our fluency, pace and expression when reading the chapters out loud. We have continued to apply our spelling strategies each week. We no longer do a weekly spelling test and instead will complete one every four weeks to gain a more holistic approach to spelling.

We are focusing on decimal numbers in maths. We have explored the relationship between decimal numbers and fractions and have understood the link between these two concepts. We are now working our way through the operations of maths such as adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing decimal numbers.

We are enjoying our weekly swimming and dry sports trip to the Matt Busby centre, along with Primary 6/5. We are gaining more confidence in the pool each week and hopefully by the end of the block, we will all be sound swimmers. A special thanks to all the parent helpers who have accompanied us each week.

We have recently started rugby lessons with Scottish Rugby. This will continue for a few more weeks where we learn passes, formations, and conversions.

We have started our topic: Oceans and Continents. So far, we have explored the Pacific Ocean and created our very own Great Barrier Reef. which is part of our wall display in class. We are excited to explore more oceans and the different continents from around the world. We will be investigating different cultures such as music, food and animals.

Primary 2 have had a very exciting month. We have been working very hard and celebrated lots and lots of successes in April.

In maths we have been learning about multiplication and division. We began by making sets of items. We then learned about the multiplication sign and what it means. We are able to solve lots of multiplication problems now. We have also been sharing things equally when learning about division. We enjoyed using concrete materials in class to help us to learn more effectively. We will now move on to grouping within division. Our next topics in maths will be money, fractions and data handling.

In literacy, we are still working hard on all our sounds and common words. We have been doing lots of work with Mrs Simpson on writing sentences independently. We are getting so good at this. We have been reading lots more reading books and completing lots of activities based on our books. We must remember to read our books every night at home as this will help us lots in school. To help us become amazing listeners, we have been working hard on developing essential skills through our class novel ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’.  We love making predictions to guess what will happen next in the book. We have realised that we don’t always need bright, colourful illustrations to look at because we can just use our amazing imaginations when Mrs Simpson reads to us.

Our new topic in primary 2 is Minibeasts. We have been reading super stories about different minibeast characters and then using these stories to help us to create our own. We have really enjoyed ‘The Cautious Caterpillar’ and ‘Superworm’. We try so hard to remember our core writing targets when we write and our favourite part of the week is when we find out who our Star Writers are. We have also learned all about the life cycle of a caterpillar and can describe this cycle to others.

In April, we learned about Islam, and we investigated what happens during Ramadan and Eid. We looked at different styles of mosque and, through purposeful play challenges, we designed our own mosques in a variety of different ways. We were so proud of some of our friends in primary 1 and 2 who told us all about their prayers, traditions and described what happens when they attend mosque.

In Health and Wellbeing, we have been learning ball skills. We have learned lots of amazing new skills such as catching, throwing, bouncing and kicking. We have also looked at road safety this month. We know this is so important because it keeps us safe outside of school.

We are looking forward to our next month in primary 2 and the adventures we will experience. We can’t wait for lots more fun and learning. Please keep an eye on Twitter for regular updates from our class.

After a lovely Easter Break, we welcomed our Primary 7 pupils back for their last summer term at Holy Family Primary!

During the first two weeks of term we have been very busy! We had a very successful trip to Cardinal Newman for the commonwealth games where Holy Family secured the first place trophy! We are so proud of our teamwork and sports skills needed to achieve this.

Last week we began rugby sessions with our friends in P7A, which we are looking forward to continue to take part in over the new few weeks. With this in mind, our PE days are now a Tuesday and Friday this term so please remind pupils to bring their PE kits to school on these days.

On Thursday last week, alongside Primary 7A, we received and celebrated the Sacrament of Confirmation after months of careful preparation. It was such a special night for our pupils and families, we are very proud of them and all that they have achieved!

We are also very excited about our upcoming school show which will take place on the 6th and 7th of June in St. Gerard’s Primary school hall. Pupils across the school are busy practising dances, lines and songs together with lots of excitement! We can’t wait to see them all show off their talents at the end of term!

Within our own classroom, we have started a new novel called ‘The Thief Lord’ which is set in the city of Venice which is also our new topic this term! As well as this, we are taking part in an enterprise challenge with Primary 7a to help raise money for our Primary 7 treats at the end of term. All pupils are thoroughly enjoying this challenge and working with all of their peers.

We have begun working on algebra within numeracy and I am very impressed with every pupil’s efforts so far! Keep it up Primary 7B!

I hope this last term is a special one for you all and you enjoy your final few months at Holy Family Primary school.

On returning to school after our Easter break, we have been delighted to have Miss Walker working with us in Primary 1. She will be with our class for most of the month of May. We are really enjoying working with Miss Walker and all the fun and exciting learning experiences she has planned for us.

Literacy

In Literacy we have begun to learn our phoneme sounds and have looked at phoneme stories and become text detectives to find our phoneme words. We continue to use our skills in reading and writing to explore our phoneme sounds and words. So far, we have learned ch, th, sh, ng, oo and ee. Ask us to spell some words with these sounds or find them in books at home.

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 independent sentences using joining words like and, so, but and because. Great job!

In class we enjoy listening to and reading stories and talking about what we have read with our friends. This month we have been able to ask questions about the texts we share and like to share our opinions on the texts that we read. When we read at home ask us to sound out each sound and blend the sounds together (eg c – a – t , cat). This will help us to improve our reading fluency.

Numeracy

In Primary 1 we continue to extend our knowledge of numbers and are becoming confident when discussing numbers beyond 20. We have been practising adding and subtracting with numbers up to 20 and enjoy our daily challenges, like daily 10 and number of the day to help us to learn more. We like to talk about our mental strategies with our classmates and this can help us to share our great ideas and learn more about number. Some of our friends are counting up to 100 and can talk about numbers before, after and in between. Fantastic job Primary 1!

We have begun our Time block and are learning how to tell the time. So far, we have talked about analogue o’clock time and we will continue to learning more about this in the coming weeks. We will be playing time games, making our own clocks, and having fun! At home we could look at clocks and talk about time with our families.

Interdisciplinary Learning

This term our class have been learning all about the Seasons and in particular Spring. Ask us to sing our ‘Spring is Here’ song for you at home. We have enjoyed looking for signs of spring in our environment and have begun to learn more about Minibeasts. We have been on our Minibeast hunt and found lots of different creatures outdoors. We have learned about the life cycles of the caterpillar/butterfly and enjoyed listening to the story of the Very Hungry Caterpillar. We are looking forward to learning more about minibeasts and working on our classroom display.

In Primary 1 we are showing a keen interest in learning more about the human body. We will be learning more about our body parts and organs in the coming weeks. In PE w will be preparing our bodies and updating our skills for our Sports Day activities.

Our Muslim friends have been celebrating Eid Mubarak this month and we have really enjoyed learning all about Ramadan and Eid celebrations. Thank you to our friends for sharing their knowledge of their faith with us so well. You are all stars! In the coming weeks we will be learning more about Mary, as May is the month dedicated to Our Lady. We will continue to practise the Hail Mary prayer and learn more about the mother of Jesus. We will attend first Friday mass this week and look forward to celebrating with our whole school community.

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.