We’re excited to share what we’ve been learning and enjoying so far this term. Our class teacher is Miss Connell, and we have 15 pupils in our class. We’re also supported throughout the week by Mrs Eaglesham, Mrs Morrison, Miss Mackay, and Mrs Robertson. On Thursdays, our class is taught by Mr Woods.

Our Weekly Routine

• P.E. takes place every week on Thursday.
• Our other PE session is either a Tuesday or a Friday!
  • If we have Outdoor Learning on a Friday (which happens every second week), P.E. will move to Tuesday.
  • If there is no Outdoor Learning that week, P.E. will take place on Friday instead.
• Committees take place every Wednesday afternoon.
• Outdoor Learning happens every second Friday.

Literacy – Talk for Writing

This term, our Talk for Writing focus has been on the story ‘Mr Big’.

We’ve been developing our creative writing skills by learning how to use descriptive language to bring our characters and settings to life.

So far, we have:

• Created detailed story maps to help us retell and innovate the story
• Collected powerful and interesting vocabulary
• Explored how to write strong openings

We’ve been working hard to include adjectives, adverbs, interesting openers, and to create characters that go through a clear change in the story.

Numeracy and Maths

In Numeracy, we’ve been exploring 2D and 3D shapes. We’ve learned how to:

• Name and describe a variety of 2D shapes (like triangles and quadrilaterals, polygons)
• Irregular and regular shapes
• Identify 3D shapes such as cubes, spheres, cones, and triangular prisms
• Talk about their properties (sides, vertices, edges, faces)

We’ve also been learning about symmetry, and soon we’ll be diving into angles and transformations.

As always, we’re continuing to practice our core skills in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and developing our problem-solving strategies too!

Topic – Travel, Tourism and The Titanic

At the start of term, we explored the topic of Travel and Tourism, looking at different destinations and types of holidays.

We’ve now moved on to a fascinating new topic: The Titanic. So far, we’ve learned about:

• The Titanic’s voyage and why it was considered “unsinkable”
• The tragic events that led to its sinking in April 1912
• How Morse Code was used on board to send messages and call for help

Next, we’ll be investigating:

• How the Titanic was built
• What the ship looked like inside
• What life was like for passengers in first, second, and third class

It’s been a really exciting and thought-provoking topic so far, and we’re looking forward to learning more!

Our Class Rules

As a class we have decided on the following rules which align with the following Rights – article 29, 12 and 19.

• Be positive and always try your best!
• Keep unkind thoughts and actions to yourself!
• Always be respectful and listen when others are speaking!
• Be polite!

Class Rewards and Responsibilities

We have two exciting systems in place to help us stay motivated and learn about responsibility:

1. Shooting for the Stars – Reward Rocket

Our class earns (or loses) free choice time based on our actions and efforts throughout the week. We work as a team to make good choices and aim for the stars!

2. Classroom Economy

Each week, we can nominate ourselves for different class jobs, and if we carry out our duties responsibly, we get “paid” on Fridays. We can also earn or lose money depending on our actions.

This helps us understand important real-world skills like budgeting, responsibility, and teamwork.

We are now in the final term, time flies when you’re having fun! We will continue with our usual homework routine. Spelling will be given out by Mr Woods on a Monday and returned on a Wednesday. Mrs Kirkwood sets us reading homework on a Wednesday to be completed for a Friday. Please check and sign your child’s yellow reading record each week. Children also get time in class each morning to read their Accelerated Reader book. When children complete a book they can then do a quiz online which allows staff to see how well they have read and understood it. Lots of children have been in the 100% club, let’s hope this continues this term!

We have been participating in the Virgin Money project ‘Make £5 Grow. ‘ This is a great way for children to learn about managing money and enterprise. We sold ice creams at our school show. We made £117 profit from this. We plan to have a special ‘Toast Thursday’ tuck shop, make keyrings and bracelets to sell and have a snack stall at Sports Day. We greatly appreciate support from parents with this project.

Mr Woods will continue to work on number, place value and the 4 operations with us in maths. Mrs Kirkwood will be teaching us about measure once we have finished our money topic. This will involve lots of fun practical activities.

For the next few weeks PE will be on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Caitlin from Active Schools teaches us on a Tuesday and on Wednesdays we will join with P7/6 to take part in inter-house competitions in preparation for Sports day. Please ensure your child has a full change of PE kit on these days, including t-shirt, shorts/trousers and shoes. No jewellery should be worn on PE days please.  Outdoor learning will continue this term. Please check the newsletter dates for the diary for specific dates.

Our topic for this term will be ‘ Our Community’. Mr Woods has a special art project planned, keep an eye out for this! We will also be learning about lifecycles in Science.

We started this term with learning about the Scots Language. We learned the songs “The New Teacher” and “Wild Mountain Thyme” and performed them at our Scottish afternoon. Primary 5 learned the poem “The Dusty Miller” and Primary 4 did “Graffiti.” We also completed projects about the life of Robert Burns and designed our own kilts, which you will see around the hall. Well done to our poetry, artwork and project winners.

We have been writing our own poems. We have written Haikus, Limericks and rhyming poems. We are now moving on to our next Talk for Writing unit, which is based on the text “The Class Trip.”

Reading homework is given out on a Wednesday and should be completed for a Friday. It is important this homework is done as we then complete a quiz on Accelerated Reader on the book we have read. Lots of children have been achieving great scores and we are all aiming to be in the 100% club! We have a display of our reading achievements in the library area. Spelling homework is given out on a Monday and is to be completed for a Wednesday.

In Science we have been learning about our senses. We have already completed smell tests, taste tests and a guess the sound test. This is a fun topic and we have been sharing some of these activities, plus learning in other curricular areas on Learning Journals. Please make sure you login to see what your child has been learning. We have also been learning about the weather, which was a very significant topic during Storm Eowyn. We wrote and presented our own weather forecasts and have been looking at how the weather impacts us. We will be learning more about climate change too.

In maths we have been working on fractions and division. We will soon become young entrepreneurs when we begin the Virgin Money project Make £5 Grow. One of our parents will be helping us and hopefully we can make lots of profit for our school funds. This project will help us to learn all about managing money.

This term we have PE on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Caitlin from Active Schools has been doing football with us on Tuesdays and Mrs Kirkwood has been teaching us gymnastics on a Wednesday. Please ensure your child has full PE kit on these days, including a change of shoes and no jewellery.