St. Brendan's Primary School and Nursery

Dear Parent/Guardian,

We hope you all had a fantastic Easter holiday and it was lovely speaking to you all at Parent’s Night.

We would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate the children on making their Sacrament of Confirmation. It was a beautiful service and the children, along with their families, worked very hard to prepare for this sacrament.

This term will be particularly busy for our Primary 7 children as they head off to Kilbowie and continue their preparation for high school and planning their leavers’ events.

Once again this letter will provide you with a brief overview of the learning that will take place this term in Primary 7/6.

Literacy
The children will continue to follow North Lanarkshire’s Active Literacy programme for Spelling, Reading, Writing and Listening and Talking. This programme will help to develop further their literacy skills and provide exciting and new challenges.
The children will take part in a group novel study with a text suitable for their age and stage. This will be an opportunity for the children to apply all of their prior learning from Term 1, 2 and 3 and demonstrate their ability and understanding of the Active Literacy Strategies. The novels will be read at home by the children and there will be reading homework on a weekly basis. The children should be encouraged to complete all reading homework on the allocated nights as the classwork will coincide with the reading homework. Some of the novels for this term are ‘Wonder’ and ‘The Silver Sword’.

This term the pupils will further develop their narrative writing skills with a focus on up levelling their writing by making use of similes, alliterations, metaphors and ambitious vocabulary. As well as this the pupils will also use the discursive and information genre.

Numeracy
This term Primary 7/6 will explore decimal fractions, patterns and relationships, angles, symmetry and transformation, as well as number and number processes and ideas of chance and uncertainty. The children will have the opportunity to learn these skills and concepts through a mixture of both active and written tasks. This will enable the children to apply their learning across contexts and see a real purpose to their learning. Children should continue to regularly practise their times tables at home to help support ongoing classwork.

Health and Wellbeing
Health and Wellbeing will be taught across the curriculum. This term in Physical Education the children will develop their athletic skills as we look forward to the end of term sports day. Hopefully we will also be able to take advantage of lovely weather which will allow the pupils to be outside to play striking and fielding games to enhance their team skills.

This children’s Health and Wellbeing topic will link to Religious Education this term as the children will explore God’s Loving Plan. This programme helps children to develop healthy and respectful attitudes to their bodies and to relationships with families and friends.

Interdisciplinary Learning
The children of Primary 7/6 will be exploring ‘Diversity’ this term. This theme will allow the children to examine our rights and why we have them. They will also research examples of historical discrimination and key figures who promote equal rights such as Civil Rights Activists, Suffragettes and Suffragists and Sectarianism in Scotland.  The children will apply their learning across the curriculum with a particular focus within the curriculum areas of Social Studies, Expressive Arts and Technologies.

Religious Education
Religious Education will be taught through the ‘This Is Our Faith’ programme. This term Primary 7/6 will explore the theme of suffering and examine suffering in the bible and the meanings of these passages along with making clear links to suffering in our own lives. Additionally, they will explore Mary and the bible passages associated. They will examine the Rosary and learn about the many titles of Mary. The children will also continue with God’s Loving Plan covering the core learning for Primary 6 and Primary 7.

Science

Our science topic this term is ‘Scientists – Past and Present’. The pupils will learn about scientists life, their discoveries and how their work impacts on today’s society. As well as this, the pupils will research and present to the class about a scientist’s life which is of interest to them.

Homework
The children’s homework will help to support their on-going classwork and I would appreciate your continued support in ensuring the children keep up with all homework tasks.

Many thanks,
Mrs. Williamson and Mrs. Colton

Dear Parent/Guardian,

I hope you had a wonderful Easter holiday! It was lovely to see all of you at parents evening and I am very grateful for all of your continued support. The following is a brief outline of the work which we will be undertaking within the class during the final term in Primary 2.

Literacy

We will continue to work on North Lanarkshire’s Active Literacy programme for spelling and phonics. Children will learn new sounds and words each week and this will be consolidated through class work and homework. The new phonemes for this term include: e-e, ss, ll, ff, kn and mb. For reading, the children will continue to read one or two books per week. I would be grateful if you would continue to support reading at home and ensure that your child brings their book into school each day.

Numeracy

This term we will be focusing on the following key areas of numeracy: measurement, time and angles, symmetry and transformation. The children will experience a variety of active lessons as well as written tasks in order to develop their skills in each of these subject areas. We will also continue to work on addition and subtraction as well as mental calculation skills.

Health and Wellbeing

In P.E. the children will be taking part in Athletics. Aspects of Physical Education will be demonstrated on sports day in June. It is very important that your child takes their P.E kit to school on the days in which they have P.E, Monday and Wednesday. All kits should be clearly labelled, so that it can be easily identified. NOTE: please check that your child has the correct P.E kit as a number of kits have gone missing throughout the year.

This term we will also be exploring the theme of ‘Respected’. This aims to help children become familiar with their rights and responsibilities that go with them as well as how to show respect for the rights of others.

Religious Education

This term we will be focusing on the themes of ‘Community of Faith’ and we will explore the importance of Mass, prayer and worship as well as learning about other world religions.

Interdisciplinary Learning

This terms IDL (Inter-disciplinary Learning) theme is ‘Enterprise’. This will be explored through the theme of ‘Sweetie Land’, encouraging the children to participate in decision making and to consider different options available in order to make an informed decision. The children will lead the enterprise making decisions about what type of enterprise business to run as a class, where it will take place and when. Throughout the IDL the children will revisit money as they will need to work out an amount of money needed in order to buy items and understand that they may not always afford what they want. The children will learn the different jobs involved in running a business enterprise and understand the role each person plays in its success. Our new role play area will shortly be set up in the classroom which will run alongside our topic.

Finally thanks again for your continued support and please do not hesitate to contact me concerning your child’s learning. You can communicate any concerns/comments through your child’s homework or behavior diary.

Kind regards,

Miss Degnan.

P2 Class Teacher