For information about the upcoming Hallowe’en Parties and meeting minutes from the Parent Council go to the website tab Getting Involved –> Parent Council for all the latest. 

Welcome to our September update which has seen us very busy indeed!

Literacy

We have begun to read our new exciting novels The Queen’s Nose and Dragonfire. Both are very topical given that we celebrated the life of Queen Elizabeth II as well and looked at the connection she had with Edinburgh where Dragonfire is set.  In reading aloud, we have been focussing on reading clearly and with expression in order that we can entertain our reader.  If possible,  encourage your child to read some of their novel aloud to someone at home in order to boost their confidence when asked to read to others in their group or class!

We continue to work on revising all spelling strategies taught in order to read and spell both common and unfamiliar words.  We have again revised diacritical marking and have attached a short clip which will help parents what this means and how we do this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y1-QFjT5yc

Numeracy

We have completed our work for now on Place Value to 10,000 and I would encourage all pupils to continue to spend some of their time completing the Sumdog challenges which will reinforce what has been taught in class.  We will return to this topic throughout the year to ensure sound knowledge and understanding this important aspect of number.

We have also completed our block on Estimation and Rounding and can successfully round numbers to 10. 100 and 1,000 to routinely estimate the answer to a problem.

RME

As October is the month dedicated to the Holy Rosary, we will say these prayers together for peace in our very turbulent world and would encourage our families to join their prayers to ours by saying some or all of the Rosary together with everyone at home.

Science

We have been exploring our amazing bodies and began by looking at the Leonardo da Vinci painting of the Vitruvian Man where the dimensions on many aspects of our bodies are linked to other parts.  One of the most fascinating facts was that our foot is the same length as the distance between our wrist and inner elbow, try it out at home!

We are now exploring our 5 senses and have some brilliant experiments planned.

HWB

This month’s focus has been on being kind and focussing on what makes a good friend.  We were helped greatly by the parents and families that came to our Meet the Teacher afternoon and assisted us in creating an Autumn themed Friendship Tree.  Pictures to follow.

Helpful resources from Nessy all about dyslexia:

Science of Reading, September

Interesting reading for you if your child has dyslexia or you suspect they might:

Dyslexia Explained

August ’22 Update – Primary 1

Hello and welcome to our first update from Primary 1! At the end of each month, we will share some of the exciting things that we have learned in Primary 1 and some photographs so that our families can see us having fun at school. The children have settled very well into school life and have been having lots of fun with new friends!

The boys and girls are learning to follow new routines and are working hard to take care of their own belongings when at school. The children are being supported in unpacking and packing their own bags, taking home their own reading books, and making choices for lunch. We are learning to change into our PE clothes and back into our uniforms, this is something we must keep practising at home with our families. Here we are enjoying PE with our P6 friends.

In Literacy we are learning to use good listening skills. Percy the Park Keeper has come to our class to help us to do good sitting and concentrating. We take turns to listen to our friends and share our thoughts and stories. We listened to Percy’s book ‘The Rescue Party’ and talked about the story with Percy. He asked us to make a book with our name and things we like. We loved becoming authors! Percy will be coming to visit us with different books in Primary 1.

Our Smart pal helps us to practise our letter and number formations. We use these in the morning to help us to focus and concentrate. Every day we practise writing our names too, even in the playground with chalk.

We have been learning how to form our numbers in Primary 1. We read the number puppy stories and talk about what our numbers look like and how to write them. We can count together in 1’s, forwards and backwards. So far, we can read, write, and count 0,1,2 and 3.

If your child is aged between 9 and 16, see link below for all details:

Street Soccer 2022.pdf

Healthy Sleep Habits for Children

Virtual Workshops Online

Please see information about these courses that may be of interest to you regarding your child (and you!) getting a good night’s sleep:

Sleep workshop afternoon Sept 22 parents

sleep workshop dates 22-23

We are looking forward to welcoming back all the pupils of Holy Family Primary on Wednesday the 17th of August at 9:00am.

For our P1 intake, we will welcome all our new starts at 10:00am on the Wednesday where they will be collected at the gate and taken into their new class by their teacher, Mrs Stevenson.

P1 parents, you are most welcome to come, a maximum of two parents per child, at 2:15pm to collect your children from inside the school where you can take lots of First Day photographs of your child.

Primary 5/6 had another successful month of learning in May.

Numeracy

We worked extremely hard investigating different types of angles. We even learned how to measure and draw angles. We then moved onto learning about money. We learned to add, subtract, multiply and divide money. We used our prior knowledge of our taught strategies to do so. We also practised budgeting our money and exploring profit and loss.

Literacy

As always, we worked hard at applying our spelling strategies. We are all able to do this independently which is fantastic. We have been working our way through our reading novels (Wonder by RJ Palacio and The Demon Headmaster by Gillian Cross). We have explored and applied different reading strategies to help us understand our novels to a great extent. Furthermore, we have also worked hard in our writing lessons. We have focused on narrative, persuasive and discursive. Some of us have even became Star Writers and we are so proud of ourselves!

Topic

We were introduced to our new Enterprise topic when we came back from the Easter holidays. In groups, we have been planning for our Enterprise Day, 17^th of June, where we are selling products and services to raise money for Cancer Research UK. Some examples of the products and services we are selling are stickers, face painting and beat the goalie activities.

Science

We were also introduced to our new science topic, Human Biology. We have explored bacteria growing on teeth, the sense of taste, our heart and BPM as well as memory. We are enjoying the practical experiments and investigations that science offers us.

H&W

We are exploring kindness during our health and wellbeing lessons. Kindness is one of our school’s core values and it is also a core theme within the Primary 6’s reading novel, Wonder. We have explored what it means to be kind to our self and others, ways we can be kind and the impact kindness has on the world around us.

Keep up to date with our school’s Twitter feed to see pictures of all the wonderful learning.

Well…where to begin with all the learning and fun that the children have experienced over the last month.

Prior to updating I asked the boys and girls “so what have we been doing/learning this month” they couldn’t wait to tell me and share their achievements.

Lauren – we have been learning about time.

Amber – we have been going to Mass more and saying lots of Hail Mary’s.

Laraib – we have been learning about Venn Diagrams and Carroll Diagrams.

Ava – I have really enjoyed the PE this month and making my First Holy Communion.

Dzeisonas – I just always love Maths.

Caobhin – I have really liked doing Athletics in PE.

Lacey – I loved saying the Rosary, learning all about Mary in the Month of May and making my First Holy Communion.

Connie – I have learned lots about time and Data Handling.

Holly, Grace, Olivia and Emily – We loved reading Horrid Henry

Maths and Numeracy

The children have worked extremely hard this month and have demonstrated their developing knowledge and understanding in the four operations and fractions by applying this to other areas in Maths such as Time, Data Handling and Angles. They all very enjoyed the active aspects of these areas and surveyed everyone in the school to gather data on favourite foods, colours and animals. I have also been very impressed with how quickly the children are picking up angles and compass points and they were able to identify a variety of right angles in our classroom and can give directions using North, South, East West, clockwise, anti – clockwise. Ask them to tell you their little rhyme for remembering the order of the Compass Points. Going forward we will be working on Symmetry and consolidating our number knowledge before the end of term.

Literacy

The Green Group are continuing to use the six main reading strategies of prior knowledge, metalinguistics, visualisation, inference, main ideas and summarising to help them gain a deeper understanding of what they are reading. They have been reading The Best Dog in the World and are enjoying learning all about the relationship between Denzil and Elliot. The children were given a home reading record and I have asked them to ensure they are choosing a book to read at home and to record it in their diary.

The Red Group have enjoyed reading all about the antics of Horrid Henry. They have been reading in groups, in partners and individually and are learning to read for longer periods. They have looked at some comprehension strategies such as visualisation, metalinguistic and main ideas to help them gain a fuller understanding of what they are reading. They have demonstrated this in their written work and we are going to try to read another Horrid Henry book before summer.

The Children have been exploring their senses when writing poetry this month. They have discussed the use of their senses to help them when writing.

Religious Education

Throughout the month of May the children have participated in class and whole school decades of the Rosary in devotion to Our Lady. They have been to Mass and have been learning some beautiful hymns including Bring Flowers of the Rarest. The boys and girls in Primary 4 celebrated the Sacrament of the Eucharist on the 14^th May and did themselves proud with their full participation in the mass responses and hymns. Their hard work and preparation was clear to see and we are very proud of them. As a class we celebrated

OTHER CURRICULAR AREAS

We have been busy over the last few weeks, participating in Health Week and in PE we have been developing our skills in Athletics, running, sprinting, jumping and throwing and we can’t wait to showcase our skills at Sports Day.

Our class Enterprise topic that the children decided; was that, they wanted to raise money to help the people of Ukraine affected by War. We watched news coverage and discussed the cause of and impact of the conflict in Ukraine. The children have written prayers for peace and used oil pastels to create a piece of artwork that shows the sunflower and the thistle combining the two national symbols.

We collaborated with Primary 2/3 and decided we would plant sunflower seeds to sell; the proceeds will be donated to a charity dedicated to helping support the affected Ukrainian families. The children designed persuasive posters and advertising posters to promote this throughout the school.  So far they have raised a fantastic amount, keep your eyes on Twitter for the final amount raised.

Over the next few weeks, we will be looking at Sea Animals and exploring the habitats in the World’s Oceans.