Our spelling focus this week has been the ‘are’ sound, and the children have been working hard to spot and use this pattern in their reading and writing.
Our Explorer’s Magic Bag delivered a magnifying glass and a letter from Brazil, which led to some fantastic writing. The children created their own detective stories, using the magnifying glass as a key clue in their mystery. We also wrote an informative fact file all about magnifying glasses — what they are, how they work, and why they are useful.
In word work, we revisited prefixes and played Real or Imposter, a fun word-building game that helped us explore which prefix combinations create real words and which do not.
In maths, we learned how to use the chunking method for addition, building on our knowledge of number bonds (friends to 10) to help us break numbers apart efficiently.
Our Speedy Skills focus this week has been times tables, and the children have been practising quick recall through games and challenges.
We continued exploring symmetry, looking at symmetrical patterns in the world around us and creating beautiful symmetrical butterfly images.
This week’s UNCRC focus was Article 29 – the aims of education. We read A Superpower Like Mine and discussed how everyone has their own superpowers, skills, and talents. The children reflected on what makes them unique and set personal goals for something they want to grow or improve.
Our big question this week was: “What happens when forces are equal and unequal?”
We read The Great Paper Caper and explored the forces involved in flying paper planes. The children investigated how pushes, pulls, lift, and air resistance impact speed, distance, and motion.
On Friday, the whole school enjoyed Big Play — an afternoon of open classrooms where everyone was free to explore, play, and spend time together. It was a fantastic opportunity to help build a strong sense of community, with children of all ages sharing spaces, activities, and plenty of fun. We also had a visit from Winnies mum and her new puppy. We all loved getting cuddles and watching him play.
Our spelling focus this week has been silent ‘h’, and the children have been working hard to spot this pattern in their reading and spelling activities.
In our Explorer’s Bag, we discovered some mystery keys left by the Magical Explorer, who also told us he had been travelling through China! This inspired lots of fantastic writing — the children wrote imaginative stories about unlocking a mysterious door, described a disgusting sandwich the Explorer found in his backpack, and created their own acrostic poems. They even created their own mysterious doors out of Lego, junk and blocks.
We also learned about prefixes, creating bright and creative prefix flowers to show how adding prefixes changes word meanings. This week also saw the introduction of our new independent reading time and task, giving the children space to enjoy reading and reflect on what they’ve read.
In maths, we worked on counting in tens, hundreds, and thousands, and continued exploring symmetry — this time using LEGO to build symmetrical designs and patterns. The children showed great focus and teamwork while creating their builds.
Our Health and Wellbeing focus this week was Article 12 of the UNCRC – the right to have a voice. We read The Day the Crayons Quit and discussed why it’s important for everyone to have a voice in our class, school, and community. The children shared thoughtful ideas about how we can listen to others and make sure every voice is heard.
Our big question this week was “How do different surfaces affect how things move?
We read Mr Grumpy’s Motor Car friction and how friction affects movement on different surfaces. The children took part in a hands-on investigation using ramps and toy cars, experimenting to see what makes things move faster or slower and how motion changes depending on the forces applied.
This week’s PE session was calm and creative — a yoga session based on the book Dear Zoo. The children used movement and balance to represent different animals, showing great focus, imagination, and coordination. We did have to finish with some parachute fun too!
This week, we continued practising our tricky words and began an exciting new writing adventure! The Magical Explorer left us a map and letter in the special bag, telling us all about his recent travels to Egypt. We used atlases to find Egypt on the map and began to plan how we could track his journey as he continues to explore the world.
The children wrote about where the map might lead, described what Egypt might be like, and created thoughtful diary entries about how they felt when they first received the map.
In writing, we have also been working on using adjectives to make our sentences more interesting, and continuing to focus on sentence openers. We were lucky to have Miss Farmer join us during our writing slot this week — she led a brilliant STEM challenge where half the class worked on building pyramids, linking our literacy to our Egyptian theme!
In maths, we combined creativity with number work by making firework pictures using glitter and arrays for windows to help us visualise times tables. We also explored addition and subtraction fact families through fun games, and consolidated our knowledge of friends to 10 and 20 by creating chatterboxes.
We also continued our work on symmetry, recognising symmetrical patterns and shapes around us and creating our own symmetrical designs.
Our big question this week was: “How do pushes and pulls help us move things in the world?”
We explored different examples of forces in action, from everyday movements like opening doors and pushing swings, to bigger forces like pulling up fishing line to dropping a ball. The children made great links between what they already knew and what they observed in action.
We also tried out some live movement activities, experimenting with how our bodies push, pull, and balance — helping us to consolidate our understanding through play and exploration.
This term, we are learning about some of the UNCRC articles and how they relate to ourselves, our class, and our community. This week we focused on Article 2, exploring what equity and inclusion look like in our class and school. The children shared thoughtful ideas about how we can make sure everyone feels valued and respected.
We also read the inspiring story “What To Do With an Idea?” and discussed its message — that all ideas are important and worth sharing. We talked about how even big ideas like kindness and respect have to start somewhere, and how our own ideas can grow if we nurture them. The children then created beautiful artwork based on inspirational idea quotes, which turned out so well that Mrs Johnson has proudly displayed them at the front office for everyone to see! 🌟
In PE, we had a firework dance session! The children used movement to express different fireworks, played a teamwork game called “Pass the Spark”, and worked together with the parachute to show rhythm and coordination. Everyone showed brilliant teamwork, creativity, and enthusiasm — and our firework finale was spectacular!
Mat Skills Focus:
Apparatus Focus:
This approach supports creativity, problem-solving, and physical literacy.
Everybody loves this term in the gym, so I’m sure their will be plenty to talk about when they get home.
PE Reminder
Please ensure pupils:
Week 1 and 2 Mat Skills
Week 1 – Shapes and Rolls
WEEK 2 – ROLLS, HANDSTANDS AND CARTWHEELS
Over the last three weeks, we shifted our focus to rugby, where pupils learnt essential skills like carrying the ball, moving away from defenders and passing.
FOOTBALL
RUGBY
This term we’ve moved on to a new writing focus: vocabulary. Our first area is adjectives – describing words. To get us started, we created our own slime monster pictures and wrote fantastic descriptions using lots of interesting adjectives to bring our monsters to life!
We began the term by recapping place value with a fun skeleton hunt around the classroom. We also started exploring symmetry, learning how to identify when something is symmetrical and what makes it balanced. The children then created their own symmetrical skeletons, showing great creativity and accuracy!
We also revisited our addition and subtraction skills, which we’ll continue to build on throughout this term.
Our new topic for Term 2 is Forces and Energy. We kicked things off by exploring magnets and investigating what materials they attract. We then used our new knowledge to create our own flying ghosts, learning how magnets can cause movement without direct contact — a very spooky science start! 👻
This week, Primary 3/4 were invited to visit the P5/6/7 Museum of Life in Medieval Scotland. The older pupils had transformed their classroom into a fantastic museum space, filled with exhibits, artefacts, and information displays.
Our class loved exploring and learning from their peers about what life was like in Medieval Scotland. They discovered fascinating facts about food, fashion, housing, and daily life, as well as many other interesting details from the past.
It was wonderful to see the children so engaged, asking questions, and showing curiosity about history — and to see the older pupils confidently sharing their knowledge. Everyone came away inspired and impressed by the amazing work P5/6/7 had created!
On Friday morning, Primary 2/3/4 the Botanic Gardens came to Cunningsburgh School! The visit was full of imagination and storytelling as the children took part in an adventure to help Heather, a girl who had become lost in the forest.
Working together, the children explored the gardens, searching for natural items to help them retell Heather’s story. Along the way, they discovered clues and met mythical creatures, all while hunting for some very special magic yellow flowers that would help Heather find her way home.
The class showed brilliant teamwork, curiosity, and creativity as they explored, listened, and shared ideas. It was a fantastic opportunity to connect storytelling with nature, and the children had so much fun immersing themselves in this magical learning experience.
This week we completed our “Save Fairyland” focus by writing about how we saved Fairyland. This gave us a wonderful opportunity to look back at all the fun and amazing writing we have created this term.
We also hit our class target on sentence openers 🎯 and celebrated by voting for a hot chocolate/ice cream and movie afternoon – which was lots of fun and very yummy! 🍫🍦🎬
Our spelling focus was ‘ur’, and we continued to use our spelling strategies to practise words with this sound.
We celebrated our learning with an End of Term Place Value Party 🎉. We had lots of fun making numbers with our party hats and recognising which digits belonged to which value. There was also a glow stick number challenge, Swat the Number, and even Pass the Parcel with a twist – where each layer could only be opened after answering a place value question. These activities helped us to revisit and consolidate our knowledge of digits, how they are formed, and why place value is so important.
We concluded the plants phase of Planet Protectors by looking at inheritance and characteristics passed through generations in both plants and humans. The children had great fun comparing themselves to other members of their families and noticing similarities and differences. They also created drawings to reflect their learning.
This week the Primary 5/6/7 class joined us to help us develop our skills in Glow and Canva. Together, we created fantastic Planet Protector comic strips, showing creativity and collaboration.
We also completed another internet safety lesson using the book #Goldilocks: A Cautionary Tale. We discussed what is safe and unsafe to post online and thought carefully about how our digital choices affect ourselves and others. The children then created their own examples of safe and unsafe posts to show their understanding.
In PSHE, we discussed and wrote about how to care for a baby. As part of our play provision, the classroom was set up with lots of baby equipment, which has been a big hit and provided plenty of opportunities for role play, discussion, and teamwork.
On Wednesday, we were very lucky that baby Rosie and her Mummy came to visit us. We asked lots of really excellent questions, learnt lots about babies from Rosie’s mummy and even got some cuddles.
We enjoyed Big Play on Friday — a great opportunity to explore the other classes and interact with the wider school community.
We also helped the Primary 6s complete their Play Leader training in the gym hall, joining in their activities and having great fun together.
We received another letter from the Magic Dragon this week, telling us that we have nearly saved Fairyland with all our amazing reading and writing! He set us a final challenge to help Cinderella.
The children wrote invites to our celebration ball, designed beautiful new shoes for Cinderella, and thought carefully about what they would wish for from her Fairy Godmother.
Our sound focus this week was ‘ir’. We also learned about root words, prefixes, and suffixes, and how these change the meaning of words.
We have also been working on some tricky joins in our handwriting practice. This week we had some STAR hand-writers!
In maths, we used our place value knowledge to practise ordering and comparing numbers. We also continued our work on data handling, collecting information and presenting it in tally charts, frequency tables, and pictographs. Our hands on domino pictographs turned out to be a great display of team work, resilience and problem solving too!
This week we learned how to log in to Glow, access our emails, and find programmes such as Sumdog and Canva. Next week we’ll be exploring Canva further alongside Primary 7.
We read The Colour Monster and used it as inspiration to create fantastic pieces of artwork, using colours to show different feelings. We also talked about regulation strategies and how we can manage our emotions.
On Friday we held a Cinderella Ball in class to celebrate helping the Magic Dragon save Fairyland. We enjoyed games, dancing, and music together. As well as being lots of fun, the ball helped us to build skills in teamwork, cooperation, communication, creativity, and confidence.
