🌟 Primary 3/4 Weekly Round-Up – Term 3, Week Eight

✏️ Literacy & Spelling

This week our literacy focus was inspired by Stick Man by Julia Donaldson. The children imagined that Stick Man was something special — perhaps a magic wand, a sword, or another powerful object — and wrote creatively about what it could become. It was fantastic to see their imagination and descriptive writing skills shine.

Our grammar focus this week was on capital letters and full stops. We even learned a little dance to help us remember when and how to use them correctly! The children then applied this knowledge carefully in their writing.

We also wrote our own newspaper reports, focusing on using alliteration in our headlines. The task was to create catchy titles using repeated initial sounds, and the children produced some fantastic, eye-catching examples.

In spelling, all of our spelling words this week contained the suffixes “less” and “ness.” We explored how these suffixes change the meaning of root words and practised using them accurately in our writing.

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🔢 Maths

In maths, we introduced the jump strategy for addition, using practical and visual approaches to help us understand how numbers move along a number line. The children showed growing confidence in applying this strategy independently.

We continued consolidating our understanding of place value with another lively round of Place Value Bingo, and we extended our shape work with Mrs Smith.

This week we also explored odd and even numbers, learning how to look at the last digit of a number to decide whether it is odd or even. We read a fun story about Monster Odd and Fairy Even, and played games to help embed our understanding.

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💻 ICT

We continued developing our coding skills using Code.org, building on our sequencing and problem-solving skills. The children are becoming increasingly confident at debugging when something doesn’t work the first time and understanding the importance of giving clear and precise instructions.

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🏊 Wider Learning

We enjoyed another visit to Sandwick Library before heading to swimming. The children continue to show great enthusiasm and responsibility during these outings.

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🎭 Assembly Preparation

We have begun preparing for our upcoming Maths Spectacular Assembly. The children will be sharing their maths learning with the rest of the school through drama. This week we enjoyed drama sessions to begin rehearsing, developing ideas, and working collaboratively on our performance.

We also attended the P1-2 assembly, where we listened respectfully and enjoyed learning about what they have been working on in their class.

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🧠 Dough Discovery Session

We ended our week with a busy and creative Dough Discovery session, which included a range of mini challenges linked to our recent learning. The children:

• Measured and compared lengths

• Created 3D shapes to consolidate our shape work

• Formed punctuation marks out of dough

• Built a bridge strong enough to hold counters

• Designed an animal habitat

The session ended with a lively Dough Disco, where children took turns leading dance moves using their dough along to music — a brilliant mix of creativity, teamwork and fun.

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🎨 Play Provision

Our play provision this week was inspired by Chinese New Year. The children explored:

• Noodles and tongs for sorting and fine motor challenges

• Chinese New Year crafts

• Large traffic light signs

Our Play Project focus this week was vehicles, which linked perfectly with the traffic lights and cones. The children created detailed digital vehicle pictures using Paint, built vehicles with blocks, designed car washes, and tested imaginative transport creations. It was fantastic to see such creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving in action.

🌟 Primary 3/4 Weekly Round-Up – Term 3, Week Seven

🔢 Maths

This week we became Angle Detectives! As trainee detectives, the children completed three case files, each exploring angles in a different way. They investigated angles hidden within letters, linked angles to their knowledge of compass points, and identified angles on a clock face. The class showed excellent reasoning skills and attention to detail while solving their cases.

We also continued developing our mental maths skills through our One Minute Whizzers and introduced a new Speedy Multiplication booklet. The children timed themselves completing times tables questions, aiming to improve both their accuracy and speed, and showing great determination to beat their previous scores.

We also created place value monsters, using different digits to build and represent numbers, helping us to continue strengthening our understanding of place value and how the position of a digit changes its value.

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✏️ Literacy & Spelling

Our spelling sound this week was ‘ze’.

We began a new focus on punctuation, reading The Full Stop That Got Away. This helped us think carefully about the importance of full stops and capital letters in making our writing clear and meaningful. The children then wrote imaginative pieces exploring what would happen if all the full stops disappeared, leading to some wonderfully creative ideas.

As part of our IDL learning, we enjoyed a fun pancake-themed afternoon. The children absolutely loved the imaginative role play, wearing chef hats and aprons as they created their own recipes. They worked collaboratively to design, discuss, and write clear instructional recipes, developing important writing, sequencing, and organisational skills.

We also read a story about a pancake thief who stole Mrs Teale’s pancakes. The children created detailed Wanted posters and designed digital images of the thief using Paint software. It was fantastic to see their creativity and engagement throughout the afternoon.

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💻 ICT

This week we began learning to code using Code.org. The children worked through a series of modules, starting with an Angry Birds coding challenge.

Through this, they developed skills in:

• Sequencing instructions

• Logical thinking

• Problem-solving

• Debugging (finding and correcting mistakes)

• Perseverance when tasks became more challenging

They showed great resilience and focus as they worked through each stage.

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🏊 Wider Learning

Swimming started this week, and the children were very excited about their journey to the pool. They also enjoyed visiting Sandwick Library, showing responsibility and maturity while out in the community.

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🌍 Topic – Vikings

We concluded our Vikings topic this week. The children learned about Viking gods and created their own imaginative Viking god characters. We also explored Viking settlement maps, helping us understand where Vikings travelled and lived.

It has been wonderful to see the creativity and depth of understanding the class has developed throughout this topic.

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🧘 PE – Teacher Led

In PE this week, we played games such as Traffic Lights, Corners, and Islands. These activities developed listening skills, quick reactions, spatial awareness, cooperation, and teamwork, all while keeping the children active and engaged.

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🎨 Play Provision – Pancake Day Focus

Our play provision this week centred around Pancake Day. The children explored:

• A pancake role-play station with flour, fake eggs, measuring spoons, scales, aprons, and chef hats

• A pancake shape station, adding shapes they have been learning about as creative “toppings”

• A rice weighing challenge, comparing and measuring weights using scales

These activities supported learning in measurement, shape recognition, comparison, collaboration, communication, and imaginative play, while reinforcing literacy and maths skills in a hands-on way.

🌟 Primary 3 Week 6

🔢 Maths

In maths this week, we have been developing our mental maths strategies, continuing our work on adding in tens and then applying that knowledge to help us add 9 and 11 efficiently. The children worked hard to explain how they could adjust numbers using what they already knew about place value and number patterns.

We also revisited place value, consolidating our understanding in a fun and engaging way through a lively game of Place Value Bingo, which proved to be a big hit with the class!

Throughout our play we used Mrs Teale’s valentines petals to explore measurement in a fun and hands-on way, setting ourselves challenges like how many petals long the room is, a metre stick, or even a person — all discovered naturally through our play.

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✏️ Writing & Health and Wellbeing

This week, we took a short break from our usual writing focus and centred our learning around the theme of love and kindness. The children wrote thoughtful pieces about:

• Things they love about themselves

• Things they appreciate about their classmates

This led to meaningful discussions about what it feels like to be kind, to say positive things about others, and also how important it is to receive kindness and value ourselves.

The children created a beautiful piece of artwork to take home, celebrating positivity and self-worth. We also read Love Monster, which linked beautifully with our discussions, and designed colourful Love Monster posters to brighten our classroom door.

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🌍 Topic – Vikings

We continued and completed our Vikings topic this week. The children finished writing their Viking sagas and completed their accompanying Viking artwork.

As part of our final topic assessment, we also learned how to write our Viking names in runes, bringing together creativity and historical learning in a fun and memorable way.

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💻 ICT

In ICT, we continued developing our mouse control skills and worked on Story Blast, a comprehension platform where the children practised word sorting and sentence building. This supported both reading and grammar skills in an interactive way.

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🎨 Play Projects

Our play project theme this week was Under the Sea, and the classroom was filled with creativity. The children designed and built impressive underwater settings, created fact files, and even incorporated imaginative ideas such as underwater vehicles and structures. It was fantastic to see such creativity and teamwork on display.

🌟 Primary 3/4 Weekly Round-Up – Term 3, Week Five

✏️ Literacy & Writing

Our spelling sound this week was ‘dge’.

Our literacy learning was inspired by another Julia Donaldson story, The Snail and the Whale. We continued developing our use of adjectives and adverbs, while also introducing similes and encouraging the children to use their senses to add detail to their writing.

The children wrote a beautiful sensory description of the sea, using sight, sound, smell, and movement to bring their writing to life. They also created rainbow simile poems, which were imaginative and expressive. We loved them so much we got them up on our WOW wall.

🔢 Maths

In maths, we worked on adding 1, 10, and 100 to numbers, building confidence with place value. We continued our work on number bonds to 100 and practised quick recall through our One Minute Whizzers, helping to improve mental maths speed and accuracy.

We also explored right angles, using a right-angle fish to find and identify right angles around the classroom and school environment.

📖 Comprehension

Due to its success previously, we revisited I’ll Read to You, You Read to Me. Working in pairs, the children took turns reading parts of the script aloud to each other before answering questions, building fluency, confidence, and comprehension skills.

💻 ICT

This week we continued developing our typing skills and completed a Sumdog assessment, allowing the children to demonstrate their maths knowledge using digital tools.

🌍 Topic – Vikings

As part of our Vikings topic, the children followed a drawing tutorial to create a Viking, which will form part of a final piece of work when we create our own Viking sagas.

We were very lucky to welcome a visit from Dougie and Neil Grant, who shared his knowledge of sagas and explained how he creates them for Up Helly Aa. This visit gave the children lots of inspiration and ideas for creating their own sagas, which we will be working on next week to accompany our Viking artwork.

🧘 PE – Teacher Led

In PE, the children took part in a session using Lummi sticks, learning about rhythm and beat through movement. The session encouraged coordination, timing, and teamwork in a fun and energetic way.

🎨 Play

This week we have enjoyed the knitting needles and wool, learning to knit and be creative with the wool in other ways. We also had the dinosaurs back out with the sand as they are a big favourite. Other play opportunities that arose this week came when some of the children wanted to create catapults and targets which was great fun with lots of measuring, distance and meta skills(adapting, collaboration and communication) coming into play.