Primary 7a have been working really hard in the past month!

They have been continuing to read their class novel ‘Divided City’ and are really enjoying looking at the different themes and ideas that this book explores.

In Maths we have been working hard on our times tables and learning to use them in different ways. They should be encouraged to practise these at home as much as they can. The class have really challenged themselves to try more complex math problems involving their times tables and have learned how to use the lattice method to solve multiplying digits with more than one number.

In Health and wellbeing we have been exploring substance misuse and the class have worked really hard to learn about the negative impact that substances can have on their bodies. They were really shocked to hear some of the facts behind smoking and drinking alcohol. I am sure they be happy to share some of what they have learned with you at home.

We have been learning about the lives of some Saints this month as our focus has been the month of All Saints and we have enjoyed learning about how they have became Saints and how they lived their lives.

We are really looking forward to the month of December and all the fun activities we will have during this time!

Primary 7 have had a great month of February, we started back our sessions with the senior pupils from CNHS on Thursday’s which the primary 7’s really enjoy. This is an important part of our transition time. We have also been working with Science ambassadors and cannot wait for our next visit to CNHS next month.

In literacy we have been continuing our class novels, Goodnight Mister Tom and The Boy in the Striped Pjs. These relate really well to our WW2 topic which we have been working on since the start of January. The children are really knowledgeable in this area and are really enjoying finding out about life during this time in Britain.

In literacy, we have been focusing on money and learning about many of the situations they will face when they are adults. This has been really interesting for the class and they have really focused on this well. Next month we will be starting to look at fractions, decimals and percentages which some of the children are feeling quite nervous about but we will work really hard on this.

We have continued our preparation for the sacrament of Confirmation. The children have been so invested in this and have put in much thought and researching into learning about their chosen Saints. They are so excited to be making this Sacrament next month. If we could continue to practice our knowledge of the responses in Mass this would really help as well as completing our home tasks.

We have lots to look forward to in the month of March. We have another teacher starting with us who will be here before and after the Easter break. We are looking forward to working with Miss Taylor.

Primary 3/4 have had another busy month in class with lots of fun learning activities. We have had Pancake Day and World Book Day as well as an exciting day spent carrying out Science experiments. This month we have been lucky to have student teacher Miss Bradley joining us each Thursday, she will be working with us over the next few weeks and is delighted to work with the children who have welcomed her warmly.

 

Maths and Numeracy

It has been all about the Money in Maths. Children are able to recognise and identify all coins and notes to £20 an can record these in pounds and pence. They are able to calculate the total cost of items and work out change. They have had lots of fun in class using the cash register and solving money related problems.

As always it is great for them to get some practical experience of using money and paying for items in store, alternatively get them to look at receipts and detail amounts and totals.

Please try to encourage children to spend 15 minutes each day on Sumdog, unfortunately I have noticed that only a few of the children are accessing this so would like to take this opportunity to remind you that this is used as homework to reinforce and consolidate what the children are learning in class.

We are currently looking at 2D shapes and 3D objects and will then be moving on to Fractions.

Literacy

The Green Group have now finished reading Horrid Henry and have enjoyed reading all about Henry and the Bogey Babysitter.  We are looking forward to starting our new novel. The children in this group are reading fluently and with expression and are developing their comprehension skills and demonstrating this in their writing. You can help them with this by asking them to answer in full sentences when discussing their homework.

The Red Group are making good progress and are enjoying the range of novels that they are reading.

Children have completed some excellent writing this month; they wrote a narrative piece where their fictional character encountered a storm, or extreme weather force. The children really enjoyed writing these and used some good adjectives to enhance their writing.  The boys and girls also carried out research and note taking to apply to the genre of explanation writing. Pupils chose whether to explain the cause of a Tsunami, an Earthquake or a Volcano. Ask them to explain to you! I am certain you will be impressed!

Religious Education

This month started with our class leading First Friday mass on the 4^th February, the children prepared carefully and did themselves proud in their readings and participation of the prayers and hymns. The children are making good progress with their Sacramental preparation and I thank you for your support in working with the children to complete the Home Sessions. The children who are involved in Sacraments will attend a retreat in the Church Hall to help in the very special preparations for Reconciliation and Communion. All children will be learning about forgiveness and have been listening to parables and bible stories. We attended Mass for Ash Wednesday and are learning about Lent and the Easter Story.

OTHER CURRICULAR AREAS

We have spent the last few weeks learning all about the layers of the Earth, Extreme Weather and Natural Disasters.

We created Tsunami’s in a bottle, which showed us the impact of a Tsunami on the coastline.

We moulded Volcanoes from clay and used a chemical reaction to watch them erupt.

We built model towns in trays and used card to act as tectonic plates to show us what causes Earthquakes.

This visual representation in each activity allowed the children to develop a deeper understanding of their learning.

We cannot wait to learn about Hurricanes and Tornadoes.

HOMEWORK

We have decided as a class that we are going to use our ICT skills and access our homework from Teams each week. This will be posted on a Monday under the Primary 3 / 4 Team and on our class tab on the school website.

Please remember to sign homework diaries to confirm completion each week.

Thank you once again for the support provided and please do not hesitate to contact me should you need to discuss anything.

Welcome to our February update, we have had another very busy quick month due to our long weekend. Here are some things we have been up to in Primary 6 this month.

Maths

We have been working hard in maths on money. We have been using our 4 calculations to work out profit and loss, bills, totals, change and even working on budgets.  We now are aware of the importance of wants and needs when we are planning our budgets and how important this will be for our future life skills. We will be moving on to measurement next which we are all very excited about.

Literacy

We have continued to apply our spelling strategies to help us learn our spelling words each week. We have continued with our new novels, applying our reading strategies to gain a greater understanding of the plot, characters and setting. One group is reading Santa Maria by Kenneth Steven and the other group is reading The Eleventh Orphan by Joan Lingard. So far both groups are really enjoying their new novels. We have really enjoyed our instructional writing this month and if you go to twitter you will see pictures of what we have been making.

Health and Wellbeing

We have been working on peer pressure and what effect it can have on our mental health. We are now aware of the importance of good friendships and how others can have good but also bad influences on you. In the month of March we are going to be looking at substance misuse.

Science

We are now looking at Space and focusing on The Solar System. We have already investigated the position and size of each planet. We are now looking at the craters of the moon and the chemicals that help make up each planet.

RE

We learned all about Saint Valentines and gained a deeper understanding of Other World Religions looking particularly at Islam. As we now move into March we are going to be learning all about Lent.

Topic

As you can see from Twitter we have been very busy making our cabins at home as part of our home project. We have had the whole school coming up looking at our display and the children all really enjoyed making them. Thank you very much too any parents/ guardians who helped with this home project. We have been really enjoying learning about the disaster that changed the shipping world and how this happened. We have recreated our own boarding passes and even painted our very own portal art which you can see on Twitter.

Even though it’s been a short month with a holiday, we’ve been working hard in Primary 4.

Literacy

We have been continuing with our daily spelling which is supported by our weekly homework tasks. This month we have been getting more confident using spelling strategies and Mrs Daisley was surprised at how good we were at Mnemonics. This is where we use each letter to make a little saying that helps us to remember how to spell words.

big

elephants

can

always

understand

small

elephants

This is helpful to remind us how to spell because. Mrs Daisley had to admit that the children did this better than she could manage!

In reading, we have been continuing to work on our group reading activities. We have to remember to take our reading work home and to bring it back. It’s very tricky to look up words or find clues if we don’t have our books in class. We are working on making sure that we do our best written tasks by talking about what makes our work good. Some of us a working on Summaries, for example, and we know that a good Summary shouldn’t be too long and should mention the Main Ideas from our novel. Others are working on answering question in full sentences with good punctuation.

Mrs Cooney has been reading a novel called Orion Lost to us in class.

We have had great reading materials about Space to read independently in class. We got some from our school library. We are very proud of our hard work restoring the school library with Mrs Cooney. The other classes are delighted to get a turn using it now.

In writing, we have learned the features of explanation pieces of writing, written about Chinese New Year and identified key vocabulary around our topic on space, so that we could write a report on that too. We watched Authors Live to listen how a real author plans his stories and we have started planning a very special narrative piece for someone we love.

We continue to work on talking, through class discussions and through our reading work. Listening to follow instructions is ongoing in class.

Numeracy

We have been working on Subtraction in class. Some of us are working up to 50 and others are now working with 3 digit numbers. All of our good work on Addition has helped us to progress with this, as we can use strategies like adding on for this work.

We continue to work on Times Tables. This month, we have concentrated on the 3 and 6. We know that the 6 Times Table is double the 3 Times Table.

We also continue with Time and we worked on Fractions as we could see patterns in Time.

This month, we started to work on stations-we go round different stations such as practical activities. We enjoyed this and we will do more in the future, now we can share resources more.

Health and Well-Being

We continue to work on Gymnastics and are delighted to be able to work inside using the equipment, such as the wall bars.

We are spending a lot of time discussing our friendships and ways to keep them strong. It is normal  for our age to have some difficulties in dealing with friends. With the help not our teachers and family, we can get stronger at dealing calmly with tricky situations.

Here are some issues that we face

• feeling left out
• feeling hurt by someone’s words or actions
• feeling lonely in the playground
• getting carried away with play fighting
• not knowing how to calm ourselves down after a disagreement.

In class, we get best results when we discuss our problems once we have managed to calm down. We can then see both sides and we are getting good at finding a solution. We are also stopping to think how we would feel if we were the one left out, for example. The best way you can help at home, is to talk calmly with us and help us to find a way to deal with it ourselves.

 

Topic

We have enjoyed learning about Space. We are impressed to learn about the careers of astronauts, such as Tim Peake and Neil Armstrong. We are real scientists as we have had to do the same experiment over again to see what works best. Our rockets didn’t go straight up into the air , so we discussed what we will do next time. Real scientists don’t give up!

RE

We all learned about Jewish Passover this month and why this celebration is important.

The First Communion children are getting through their workbook and we will be finished in March. You can help by making sure that the home sections are finished by the time we finish Unit 7. We will do Unit 8 after the First Communion itself.

Welcome to the first post of the year from Primary 6. Wow what a busy January we have had and we cannot wait to tell you all about it. We hope you all had a lovely Christmas and New Year and are ready to enjoy term 3 with us all. We only have 9 weeks left now till the Easter holidays and have so much to fit in. This term we are lucky to have Miss Carr join our class for the next 6 weeks and we cannot wait to see what she has planned for us.

Maths and Numeracy

We have continued on with Division since more reinforcement was needed. This week we will start on our new maths topic Money. We have already planned a lot of active maths games to help us gain a better understand and link this in with four key operations of maths (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division).    

Literacy

We have now all finished our group novels in class and will be starting our new novels this week in class. We have also started to read a class novel called Survivor Titanic by Stephen Davies. So far we are already on Chapter 4 and we want to read more. This novel is a success as this relates to our new topic Titanic. We have been doing great with our spelling, exploring different spelling rules, and developing our skills in applying our spelling strategies. In story writing we are now working on Instructional Writing, now we are in Primary 6 we will need to go into more detail and make sure we are using our checklist properly. Next week we are starting off with making Empire Biscuits and then the following week we are getting to make Fairy Bread.  

RE

This week if First Friday mass, unfortunately we will not be able to attend however we will be watching this online in the classroom. We really enjoyed learning all about the Epiphany and investigating Missio. We have investigated world missionary organisations and discusses the poor people of the world. We are now moving on next week to Other World Religions.   

Topic

Our new topic this term is Titanic. We have already looking into what we know and what we would like to investigate within the topic. So far we have investigated on the journey she took and the stops she made before the disaster. We have researched first, second and third class cabins and compared them. We are now looking into the company who build Titanic and how she became the most talked about ship ever.   

Science

Our new Science topic is Space, particularly we will be looking at the Solar System. So far we have looked at each planet and how close they are to the sun. We have investigated each planet and now researching the size and functions of each planet. We cannot wait to create our own PowerPoints about this. We have finally managed to do our experiment ‘Rain Cloud in a Jar’ which we all loved and got amazing results from (check twitter for the pictures).     

Health and Wellbeing

During Health and Wellbeing we have been looking at food labels and identifying which foods are healthier than others. We have investigated food packaging which highlight the traffic light system to help guide the consumer. We have also created our own labels down in ICT. During PE this term we have started Badminton and slowly working on our serve.  

 

Thank you for taking the time to read what we have been up to in the month of January. We are looking forward to sharing more pictures on twitter of our work so please remember to have a wee look.

From Mrs Speirs and Primary 6

Welcome back everyone and I hope that you all had an enjoyable and restful period over the holidays.

The boys and girls have settled back well and have enjoyed seeing their friends and classmates. We have shared our holiday experiences and have discussed our hopes, wishes and targets for this coming Term.

 

Maths and Numeracy

Since we returned to school, we have been learning all about Division of 2 and 3 digit numbers by a single digit. We have been sharing, grouping and using concrete materials to help us with this, we can see how important it is to learn our Times Tables and will keep practising them all year.

We have now moved on to Measurement and have been measuring the length of various objects in our class. We even measured our own heads, necks, wrists and ankles using measuring tapes. We can describe what we would measure in mm, cm, m and km. We are looking forward to measuring weight in g and kg and capacity in ml and l. Later this month we will be learning to use and solve problems using money so maybe we can help when out shopping or at the supermarket. Practical experiences will really help us to gain a better understanding of what we are learning in class.

Homework for Maths as always is set via Sumdog; this corresponds and reinforces what we are learning in class so please try to spend 15 minutes each day online.

Literacy

We are busy working through our spelling programme and continue to learn new phonemes and common words each week, it is a busy programme and schedule so it is important that we make sure we are practising our words and reading our books at home each week.

The Green Group are delighted to be reading Horrid Henry and have given themselves new names to tie in with the theme, ask them about them. Their names suit their personality like ‘Perfect Peter’ and ‘Moody Margaret’. The other groups are reading small chapter books and should receive one or two books home each week, please continue to support the children by listening to them reading aloud and asking them questions about the characters, the settings and the main ideas/plot in the story. This will help the when they are using what they are reading in their writing.

Health and Wellbeing

Our focus in Health and Wellbeing is on being active and we have chosen to learn and develop our skills in football. We have named our own football teams and are competing in a class tournament. We are very competitive! We are also learning how to be good teammates and opponents, to be ambitious and try hard but also to be gracious in winning and losing.

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Religious Education

Some of us have some special Sacraments that we are preparing for. Primary 3 children are beginning preparation for the Sacrament of Reconciliation and will be bringing our special workbooks home to share our journey with you. Primary 4 children have already started their workbooks and have been learning all about being part of a community and how in making their First Holy Communion they become an important member of our Church Community with God.

OTHER CURRICULAR AREAS

We recently celebrated Burns Day by listening to some poems by our national bard Robert Burns, we wrote our own poems about love, made tartan bags and kilts and explored the Scots language. Do you know any? Ask us and see if we can translate?

Primary 3/4 have decided that this Term they would like to learn all about Natural Disasters. We have started looking at Tsunami’s and the children have used their research skills during ICT to find out some information about them. We are excited to learn about Volcanoes and Hurricanes and Earthquakes and look forward to creating some experiments and extending our knowledge on each of these.

Finally, thank you for your support in preparing the children for school each day. We look forward to a busy month of fun learning opportunities and hard work with pupils striving to become successful learners, responsible citizens, effective contributors and confident individuals.

 

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November has been a very exciting month for primary 7. We have had a few visits from CNHS to our class to prepare us for our move there next year. We also enjoy weekly PE lessons with some of the students from CNHS, which are really fun.

Literacy

In literacy we have been continuing with our weekly spelling words and work hard to learn them. It is important that we practise these at home as well as in school for our weekly tests. We are all working on our group novels, Mosi’s War, Kensuke’s Kingdom and Dragon Ride. We have weekly reading to be completed at home and it is important that we do this reading so we can complete tasks in the class. We have also been learning how to correctly use the apostrophe. This has been a little tricky but we are getting there now.

Numeracy

This month we have been focusing on multiplication. We need to make a real effort to learn these off by heart. We started by learning to multiply by 10, 100 and 100. This was easy but became tricky when we looked at multiples of 10, 100 and 1000. We have also been working on long multiplication and so far seem to be doing very well with this. We just need to remember to add our zeros (smiley faces).

Health and Wellbeing

This month we have been looking at peer pressure and how to tackle situations if we ever feel pressured into situations we don’t feel comfortable with. We have spoken about friendship and what makes a good friend.

Science

We have continued to look at inheritance and DNA this month. We have a good idea about what DNA is and made the basic structures. We also have learned about inherited and non inherited traits. We are able to describe where some of our traits have came from.

Expressive arts

Following on from the visit from the firefighters at the start of November learning all about being safe on bonfire night, we create our own firework images using oil pastels and scratch art. These were very effective. We also used pointillism to create some autumn tree images.

We have had such an exciting November and cannot wait for our Christmas activities in the month of December.

Thank you for reading.

Mrs Anderson and Primary 7