Monthly Archives: May 2026

Term 4 Week 7

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

✏️ Literacy

This week, our magical door transported us to Ocean World! When the children returned from the long weekend on Tuesday, they discovered that the classroom floor had been “flooded,” with seaweed, stones, shells and beach-themed objects scattered near the magical door. This created lots of excitement and curiosity about what might have happened when the door opened.

As part of our writing, the children imagined having a conversation with a sea creature, learning about how pollution is affecting our oceans and marine life. This linked beautifully to Global Goal 14: Life Below Water.

We continued developing our understanding of speech marks, while also exploring more exciting alternatives to the word said. Our grammar focus looked at how emotions can be shown through speech and how different verbs can help bring conversations to life in our writing.

🔢 Maths

In maths, we began a new focus on measure, linking this directly to our Building a Business topic. The children recognised that running a café involves both money and measurement, from designing spaces to preparing food.

We started by exploring metres, taking our learning outdoors and around the classroom with practical measuring activities. Later in the week, we introduced centimetres, using hands-on tasks such as estimating and measuring Play-Doh snakes. These activities helped the children develop confidence in estimating, measuring accurately and comparing lengths.

🌍 Topic – Building a Business

This week, our café project became even more realistic as the children completed their job application forms and began developing their interview skills in preparation for applying for roles in our class café.

This has been a fantastic opportunity to develop important real-world skills such as communication, confidence, responsibility and self-awareness, while encouraging the children to think about the qualities needed for different jobs.

💻 ICT / Global Learning

This week we explored the Earth Cubs website as part of our learning about protecting the oceans. We completed the “Plastic is Not Fantastic” lesson, which linked beautifully to both our literacy work and Global Goal 14.

The children enjoyed engaging with the songs, quizzes and activities while learning about the impact of plastic pollution on sea life. It was a fantastic way to reinforce our learning about caring for the environment.

🥔 Wider Learning – Potato Day!

Friday was our much-anticipated Potato Day, which was packed full of learning across the curriculum.

We began by exploring Global Goals 2 (Zero Hunger), 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), and 13 (Climate Action). We watched the Earth Cubs video Potato Dream, which helped us think about where our food comes from and the journey food takes from farm to table.

The children then created their own potato people, giving them names, personalities and even passports. This linked to our geography learning as we explored where people come from and different nationalities around the world.

After break, we put our new measuring skills into practice. We measured the height and circumference of our potato people and then learned about grams and kilograms, estimating and then weighing them. We also completed some fun practical challenges, including estimating how many potatoes would make a metre and guessing the combined weight of three potato people before checking our answers.

Next, we read Potato Pants and discussed how clothing is designed and made. After lunch, we linked this to sustainable fashion, exploring how our clothing choices affect the environment. The children were amazed to learn facts such as how it takes approximately 15,000 litres of water to make a single pair of jeans – roughly the amount an adult drinks in 15 years!

Using recyclable and reused materials, the children designed and created outfits for their potato people before taking them down the catwalk in our very own fashion show.

To finish the day, we learned how potatoes are turned into crisps and enjoyed a small crisp tasting session while reflecting on all the learning we had packed into one potato-filled day.

It has been another wonderfully busy week, full of creativity, practical learning, global citizenship and real-world skill building! 🌊🥔✨

Term 4 Week 5/6

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🌟 Primary 3/4 Weekly Round-Up – Term 4, Weeks 5 & 6

As Mrs Teale was out of class from Tuesday–Friday in Week 5, this is update is a combination of the last two weeks into one update — and what two busy weeks they have been!

✏️ Literacy

Over the past two weeks, we have continued developing our literacy skills in lots of creative ways.

In grammar, our focus has been on speech marks, learning where they go and how to use them correctly. We explored this through superhero comic strips, which made the learning fun and practical, and the children have really enjoyed applying this skill in their writing.

We have also continued our Story Blast and Ninja Comprehension work, developing reading comprehension skills through a range of texts and activities.

Our Magical Door writing theme has continued too! In Week 5, the magical door took us to Tiny Village, where the children imagined what life might be like in a miniature world. They explored what jobs the tiny villagers might have and even took part in a job interview with a tiny person! We also created beautiful “Through the Keyhole” artwork inspired by this theme.

This week, our magical door brought a new frozen surprise, with animals asking for our help who had been frozen in ICE! This has inspired our writing, where the children are exploring different viewpoints through a debate-style piece between a planet protector and a business owner, linking beautifully to our global learning.

🔢 Maths

In maths, we have continued building confidence with money through a range of practical, real-life activities.

The children used Lidl supermarket shopping booklets to complete challenges involving comparing prices, ordering prices, and estimating totals. This week, we extended this learning to focus on working out change from £1, helping children apply their skills in realistic contexts. And again looked at money in real life context, estimating and comparing prices on the Nando’s website – this just made us all very hungry!!

We have also continued practising our times tables to keep our number fluency developing.

💻 ICT

In ICT, we have continued using digital tools to support our learning. This week we used Blooket to practise our money skills, helping reinforce our classroom learning in a fun and engaging way.

Over the next few weeks, the children will begin presenting their PowerPoint research projects  to the class, developing important CfE listening and talking and digital literacy skills, alongside key meta-skills such as confidence, communication, organisation, and critical thinking.

🌍 Topic – Building a Business

Our Building a Business Together topic continues to grow!

We planted herbs for our café garden, thinking ahead to how we might use them in our business. This gave the children a hands-on opportunity to think about sustainability and growing their own produce.

We have also explored job roles in our café, and this week the children are completing job application forms to apply for the roles they would like when we begin running our café. It has been wonderful to see them thinking seriously about responsibility, teamwork and the qualities needed for different jobs and linking these to Meta Skills.

💛 Health & Wellbeing

As part of our Mental Health Awareness learning for Mental Health Awareness week(week 5), we explored feelings and regulation strategies. Using the theme of monster feelings, we talked about recognising emotions, understanding how we feel, and identifying strategies to help us regulate our emotions and support our wellbeing. We also painted some amazing giant feeling monsters

We also continued our RSHP learning, focusing on important life skills and relationships.

🐝 Wider Learning

This week we explored World Bee Day, listening to an Earth Cubs podcast called Bee Brilliant. This sparked fantastic discussions about the importance of bees and what would happen if bees disappeared.

The children then created beautiful contrasting artwork, showing a world with bees and a world without bees, helping them think deeply about biodiversity and caring for our environment.

🎨 Play Provision

Our play provision over the last two weeks has been full of imaginative learning opportunities.

This week, we created a Teddy Bears’ Café, linking beautifully with our business topic. The children took on different café roles and developed communication, role play and teamwork skills.

We also had a water tray fishing activity, where children practised working out change from £1, with each fish costing under £1.

To support our grammar learning, we also included speech mark and superhero literacy activities, helping children continue practising their skills through play.

It has been a wonderfully busy couple of weeks, full of creativity, practical learning, and lots of excitement! 😊

 

Term 4 Week 4

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

✏️ Literacy

We continued our Magical Door writing theme this week, exploring a new world: Jungle World. On Monday morning, we arrived to find sand at the bottom of the door, an animal footprint, some bananas, and a mysterious note!

This sparked lots of excitement and led to some fantastic writing. The children created fact files about the jungle and animal profiles about jungle animals, linking our learning to Global Goal 15 – Life on Land.

We have also been learning how to peer review and edit with a partner. This has been lots of fun and is a great way to spot mistakes, make improvements, and add more detail to our work.

Following our literacy focus last term, we were very excited to receive a letter back from Julia Donaldson. We had written lovely letters to her telling her all about our favourite books. She also kindly sent us some stickers!

In grammar, we continued our work on pronouns through pronoun art and a pronoun phrase mix activity. We also worked on comprehension using Story Blast and Ninja Comprehension, exploring texts about the United Kingdom and Mahatma Gandhi, with a focus on filling in missing information and checking understanding.

💻 ICT

In ICT, we finished our personal research projects. The children used Kiddle to research their chosen topics and then learned how to use PowerPoint to present their information clearly to the class.

🔢 Maths

In maths, we continued learning about money, building our understanding of coins, values, and how things are bought and sold. This links closely to our Building a Business Together topic.

We also continued working on column subtraction with exchanging, and developed our doubling and halving Speed Skills. The children created beautiful doubling flowers to help show their understanding.

🌍 Topic – Building a Business

Our business topic continued through our money work, helping us understand how money is used in real-life situations such as buying and selling in a café.

🌱 Wider Learning

On Friday, we had a full David Attenborough Day to celebrate his 100th birthday. We read the Little People, Big Dreams book about David Attenborough, watched clips from some of his documentaries, and learned more about his life and work.

The children created fact plaques, made mini animal documentaries, and recorded a birthday message video. We also created large leaf art pieces, adding our own promises to the planet, which we hope to turn into a tree for our classroom door. The full film will be shared with families by email.

We also enjoyed attending the P4/5 assembly on Friday, and another group visited the polytunnel this week to help with planting and support our school community.

🎨 Play Provision

Our play provision this week has included lots of creativity and imagination. The children enjoyed dressing up, creating and performing with a puppet theatre, and developing their observational art skills through still life drawings of daffodils using watercolours.

Term 4 Week 3

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

✏️ Literacy

This week we continued our exciting Magical Door writing theme. When the children came into the classroom, they discovered that Mrs Teale’s spoon had turned into a giant spoon, leading us to imagine that the world behind the magical door was a giant world! It wasn’t so good for eating her lunch!!

This sparked lots of creativity, and the children wrote about the dangers they might face in a giant world, thinking carefully about how everyday objects might become challenges. They then wrote a diary entry titled “My First Day in Giant World,” describing their experiences and feelings as they explored this new and unusual place.

In grammar, we focused on pronouns, taking part in fun games to help us identify and use them correctly in our writing.

🔤 Spelling

Our spelling focus this week was the ‘au’ sound. Everyone is enjoying using Sumdog Spelling to consolidate their new words. Who’s been having a go at home?

🔢 Maths

At the start of the week, we continued our work on fractions, building on our understanding of parts of a whole.

We then moved on to a new topic of money, where the children explored coins and notes, looking at what they look like, how they feel, and how much they are worth. We discussed how values work (for example, 100p = £1) and took part in hands-on activities to support understanding.

The children also used Sumdog to consolidate their learning through interactive activities focused on coin recognition.

💻 ICT / Languages

This week we had fun combining movement and language through a French yoga session, helping the children practise their French in an active and engaging way.

🌍 Topic – Building a Business

As part of our Building a Business topic, we focused on the skills and qualities we each have that could help us in our café.

We discussed different job roles within a café and how our personal skills could match these roles. The children began thinking about how they might apply for a job in the café and what they would need to do to be successful in that role.

🥣 Health & Wellbeing (RSHP)

We began our RSHP learning, focusing on important life skills. This included:

  • Recognising and understanding feelings
  • Learning about healthy behaviours
  • Exploring friendships and relationships
  • Knowing how to seek help and stay safe

🌱 Wider Learning

We were very lucky to enjoy a visit from the Shetland Folk Festival, where the children experienced a live concert. It was a fantastic opportunity to enjoy music and culture together.

We have also begun visiting the polytunnel, where small groups of children will take part in planting over the coming weeks. Our first group went this week and had lots of fun helping with planting and learning about how things grow. We are looking forward to everyone getting a turn!

With the lovely weather this week, we also made the most of outdoor play, enjoying time outside and staying active.

🎨 Play Provision

Our play provision this week has been very hands-on and engaging. The children explored a tinkering table using tools and an old till to investigate how things work, developing problem-solving and practical skills.

We also set up a shop role-play area, where the children used money to practise their maths skills in a real-life context. This supported their understanding of money while encouraging collaboration, communication and imaginative play.

It has been another busy and creative week, with lots of excitement and enthusiasm across all areas of learning!