🌟 Primary 3/4 Weekly Round-Up – Term 4, Week Nine
✏️ Literacy
This week, our spelling focus was the ‘ey’ sound, and in grammar we explored conjunctions, learning how they help us join ideas together and improve the flow of our writing.
Our Magical Door journey took an unexpected turn this week, as the door was suddenly closed and placed under review! This sparked lots of discussion and debate in class. Linking to Global Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, the children considered whether the door should remain open or be closed permanently.
The children wrote an opinion piece answering the question: Should the Magical Door stay open? They had to think carefully about the benefits and risks of keeping the door open, considering all of the worlds we have visited this year. They used reasons and evidence to support their opinions and showed great maturity in their thinking.
We also completed our end-of-year spelling assessment, giving the children the opportunity to demonstrate all the progress they have made this year.
🔢 Maths
In maths, we continued developing our understanding of division, using multiplication squares and number lines to help us visualise how numbers can be shared equally into groups.
We also introduced area, beginning to explore how we measure the space inside shapes and objects.
Throughout the week, we continued to apply our mathematical skills in practical situations, helping the children see how maths is used in everyday life.
💻 ICT and Digital Learning
This week, we explored Artificial Intelligence (AI), discussing what AI is, how it can be used safely and responsibly, and how it links to online safety and our rights and responsibilities as digital citizens.
The children explored ways AI could support our learning and even help generate ideas for our café enterprise posters. This led to some thoughtful discussions about technology, creativity and how to use digital tools safely and effectively.
🌎 World Cup and Global Learning
As excitement builds around the upcoming World Cup, we have created a large World Cup wall chart and world map in the classroom. Each child was allocated two countries to follow as part of our class World Cup sweepstake (with no money or prizes involved!).
Each morning, we have been reading a story from a different country taking part in the tournament. Together, we have been learning about each country’s capital city, location, culture and interesting facts before finding it on our world map.
We have also enjoyed tracking match results and updating our tournament wall chart, helping us develop our geographical knowledge while following the competition.
🌍 Topic – Building a Business
Our café enterprise project continues to gather momentum.
This week, the children worked alongside Primary 1/2 in their enterprise groups, developing different aspects of the café project.
The Finance Team worked on budgeting, quantities and researching products using supermarket websites. They also wrote a letter to the new café in Quarff, asking questions about running a successful business.
The Menu Team continued designing attractive and informative menus.
The Marketing Team worked on logos, branding and welcome banners to promote our café.
Meanwhile, the Barista and Cleaning Teams developed checklists and procedures to ensure the café will run smoothly and safely.
We also enjoyed an additional morning working alongside Primary 1/2 for a special Café Challenge. The children worked collaboratively in mixed-age groups to complete a range of practical maths and enterprise activities. They took part in measuring and weighing challenges using café-themed items, exploring skills that would be important when working in a real café or bakery.
The children then followed a draw-along to create beautiful rainbow cupcakes, which will be used to help decorate our Rainbow Café. We rounded off the session with some café-themed Play-Doh challenges, including creating the longest breadstick, the biggest pancake and pretzel shapes. The morning finished with a fun Dough Disco, giving everyone the chance to celebrate their teamwork and creativity.
This project continues to provide fantastic opportunities to develop communication, teamwork, organisation and problem-solving skills while applying learning in a real-life context.
🧸 Wider Learning – Squishy Day
On Friday, the children arrived to a surprise Squishy Day, with the classroom transformed into a Squishy Adoption Centre!
Each child began the day with a £5 budget and had the opportunity to adopt their own squishy pet. They created adoption certificates and character profiles before making important spending decisions. While there were essential items to purchase, such as food and adoption paperwork, the children also had to think carefully about budgeting and saving money for unexpected emergencies.
Throughout the day, surprise events occurred where some squishies became ill and needed a trip to the vet, while others required additional supplies. This encouraged the children to think carefully about managing their money, planning ahead and making sensible financial decisions.
The squishies became part of our maths learning too. The children used them to explore division, sharing and grouping, as well as data handling. We learned about what a census is, why it is important, and how it helps communities and countries gather information to make decisions. The children then collected information about the squishies and used it to create tally charts, graphs and class data displays.
In the afternoon, each group received a £3 business grant to create their own Squishy Enterprise. The children worked collaboratively to design a business, decide what product or service they would offer, and consider how they could make their enterprise successful.
The day was filled with creativity, teamwork, budgeting, problem-solving and lots of excitement!
It has been another busy and exciting week, filled with enterprise, creativity, global learning and real-world problem-solving. We are looking forward to seeing our café project continue to come to life over the coming weeks!
