P4 Blog – May 2025

Literacy

Our Term 3 reading books, Cliffhanger and The Queen’s Nose, have allowed us to practise our reading strategies. These included summarising, prior knowledge and connecting. We could all think of a time where we felt scared, anxious and uncertain – just like Tim did in the book.

“We had to do tasks on Cliffhanger. We were doing predictions, answering questions and finding tricky words in the dictionary.” – Harley

“We used bullet points to make summary notes.” – Leah

“A summary is when you shorten something that is long with the interesting and important points.” – Ozy

“Cliffhanger was epic!” – Logan

Although an IDL topic, we have had lots of opportunities to develop our writing skills when learning about Glasgow and Edinburgh.

“We did persuasive writing about landmarks in Glasgow and Edinburgh and why you should go and visit them. Some examples of persuasive language are:
• Definitely
• Must
• I am convinced that
• You should
• There is no doubt that.” – Morris

“We also wrote newspaper reports on things that have happened in Glasgow and Edinburgh. There were all so funny when we read them out because we made the stories up.” – Arwyn

Some of our reports included aliens invading Edinburgh Castle, aliens singing with Justin Bieber at the Hydro, the Royal Family getting trapped in the Edinburgh Dungeons and a war between Edinburgh and Glasgow – they made extremely interesting reads!

We also learned how to write sets of instructions. To help us visualise, we made jam sandwiches, planted tomato and sunflower seeds and used Google Earth to help write directions from Neilsland to somewhere local.

   

   

As we come to the end of Primary 4, our spelling words are continuing to become more challenging.

“We’ve been getting quite tricky words like ‘electrician’ and ‘competition’. We have been practising them by doing speed writing, rainbow writing and chalk spelling.” – Elliot

   

Maths
Our maths topics last term included fractions and percentages, measurement, equations and the four operations. We all know why we are learning each of these skills and how they can help us as we get older. We have also been developing our problem solving skills by applying our skills and strategies to different word problems.

“50% is the same as a half, 25% is the same as a quarter and 20% is the same as one fifth. If you’re a builder you need to work out percentages of different materials.” – Leo

“If I was going to buy a new cardigan and it had a 25% off sticker I would know how to find a quarter and tell me the new price. If you’re a carpet fitter you need to know how to measure out the carpets.” Leah

   

   

   

With our student teacher, Miss Prentice, we learned all about data handling. She taught us that data is information that is collected to help us understand things. We created bar charts that showed our favourite sweets, types of pasta, colours and school subjects.

“We did surveys to gather data. We put our information in bar charts, tally marks, Venn diagrams and Carroll diagrams.” – Daniel

“We liked data handling because we got to go round the classes to do our surveys with the classes upstairs.” – Elliot and Ibrahim

“A Venn diagram is two circles overlapping. One side might be ‘green’ and the other side might be ‘vegetables’. In the middle you would write in all your green vegetables because they come under both categories.” – Leah

“We also collected natural materials and sorted them into hula hoops outside.” – Halle

Now that we know how to gather and display data, we can apply our learning to any topic! In Term 4, Miss May is going to show us how to upload and display our data findings on an Excel spreadsheet.

This term, with Mrs Brock, we will be learning about the area of 2D shapes to the nearest half square and exploring how different shapes can have the same area and creating our own shapes. We will be learning about Roman numerals and their impact on the world in the past and present. We are going to be learning about capacity too, and are looking forward to getting outside to use lots of water and measuring and estimating in millilitres and litres using lots of different containers.

IDL
We had lots of giggles as we learned new words and phrases used in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Here are some of our favourites:
• Raging – angry
• Bolt – go away
• Gallous – cocky
• I ken – I know
• Shan – shame

“We searched up famous landmarks and people that are from Glasgow and Edinburgh. I figured out that Kenny Dalgleish is from Glasgow.” – Leo

  

Health and Wellbeing
With the nicer weather, we have been making full use of the MUGA and playground for our outdoor PE sessions. Hockey has been a firm favourite – we are all now experts at dribbling, push passing and working as a team. We know that the hand we write with should be relaxed at the top of the stick for control and our other hand firmly closer to the blade for more power.

   

   

“I like hockey because Miss May taught us how to hold the hockey sticks and how to dribble properly.” – Caled

“We learned to hold the hockey stick with two hands and point our thumbs down the way.” – Lily

“We liked it because you had to team up and work together. That’s called good sportsmanship.” – Harley and Elliot

As well as outdoor team sports, our class has also been visiting the Hamilton Water Palace for our block of swimming lessons. We have been sorted into different groups and have been practising different kinds of strokes, dives and floating techniques.

“I’m having lots of fun at swimming. I really like swimming in the deep bit of the pool.” – Hannah

“I enjoy being in the pool. I feel a bit worried sometimes but the instructors are there to help me. Free time at the end is my favourite part.” – Logan

“I love the instructors because they’re so nice. I like doing the mini swimming races with Lily.” – Jessie

STEM
Every Thursday, Mrs Brock teaches us science. We have been learning all about the different ways sounds are produced by vibrations and travel as sound waves.

We had fun doing lots of different experiments and activities to help us learn. We found out about how our ears work, we made and played our harmonica, which was very noisy!

“We got two lollipop sticks and put some paper inside. We put straws at the side to let air in and then tape it. When you blow it, it sounds like a drill.” – Sophie

We created a glass bottle xylophone which helped us understand how the speed of the vibrations in the filled bottles altered the sound when we played ‘Twinkle Twinkle’. We also tested the different sounds that different containers made when filled with water.

   

This term we will be learning all about energy sources and sustainability. We will be looking at the different sources of energy around us, learning why they are important to my everyday life and survival. We will be learning about non-renewable sources and their limited supply and how renewable energy sources can be replenished in a short period of time.

Diversity

The whole class demonstrated excellent respect, compassion and curiosity when reading The Proudest Blue, which is all about a girl whose sister experiences her first day of wearing a hijab. We could all think of a time when we felt nervous about doing something new, being different from others and being proud of a family member.

    

Class Assembly

All of us are very excited to showcase our learning at our class assembly next week – our lab coats and science goggles are at the ready! We hope to see lots of our parents and carers there.

“Our class assembly is about all of our IDL topics that we’ve done in Primary 4.” – Shea

“Making volcanoes will be amazing because when we mix everything together our volcano will look like it erupts.” – Layla