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

Welcome back to the Primary 4 class blog – we can’t believe we are already halfway through the year! Everyone had a lovely Christmas holiday and enjoyed sharing stories about the fun things we did at home with our families.

Literacy

Last term, we focused on information reports and narrative pieces of writing. Each group chose an animal and used the chromebooks to gather information.

“For an information report you need a title, general statement, description and evaluation.” – Lucy

“My group chose polar bears. We had to search up what they do, what they eat and where their habitat is.” – Caled and Max

“We found out that green anacondas live in the Amazon Rainforest and can eat capybaras. Once we finished our planning sheets, we turned our notes into paragraphs.” – Morris

During our grammar lessons, we did lots of work on the apostrophe of contraction – we decided we learn best when we can practise by playing games and doing practical activities. Our favourites were matching the Lego pieces and the contraction flashcards.

Our class also had lots of opportunities for poetry during term 2. Firstly, we used onomatopoeia to create our own firework Cinquain poems. They were very effective!

“It was fun to use the pastels to decorate our firework poems.” – Max

“Onomatopoeia is when you use a noisy word. The word sounds like the thing it means, like crash, zip, bang and kaboom.” – Leo

Similes have also been a big focus for our writing. We thought of lots of examples of our own to help us create excellent Christmas simile poems.

“A simile helps you to describe something better. You compare whatever you are talking about to something similar.” – Quinn

“Santa’s jacket is as red as a rose.” – Halle

Maths

Some of us used number lines to one hundred to help us work out how to give change. We were very confident at coming up to the whiteboard to share examples with the rest of the class. Once we knew how to find change from £1, we realised we could then find change from £2, £5, £10 and even £20!

“We were using coins and notes to help us.” – Shea”

“The coins made it easier.” – Olivar

Some of us have started learning about decimals and percentages and how these link to fractions. We were able to link our prior learning of fractions and division to help us find 50%, 25%, 10%, 5% and 1% of different amounts. There were lots of real-life situations we discussed where percentages are important to know about.

“If there was a 50% off sign in a shop you can work out how much you would need to pay.” – Caled

“I thought decimals were quite tricky but it was helpful to have some extra challenges to practise.” – Lucy

We are continuing to use fluid groupings in maths and numeracy tasks. Lots of us enjoy working with other people in our chosen group to discuss our learning, problem solve together and peer-assess our work.

“I like having different levels because it lets me decide what challenges I can do.” – Hannah

“I like that if the work is tricky you can pick silver. If you can do silver, Miss May tells us to move up to gold.” – Quinn

Health and Wellbeing

Every Monday, Mrs Brock does HWB sessions with us. We have been learning about different kinds of fruit that help give us a balanced diet.

“Mrs Brock made bear sandwiches with us. Some people used slices of bananas as eyes and some people used spread to make the fur.” – Morris

“I liked eating the bear sandwiches. We used Biscoff, jam and Nutella and grapes, apples and oranges.” – Jessie

STEM

One of our favourite skills we continued to develop in term 2 was coding with Marty the Robot and Vex. We learned how to connect Marty to our class iPad and explore the different features of the app.

“Marty was fun because you could control him and make his lights change colour.” – Logan

“You can put coloured tiles down on the carpet and make him walk, turn and do a cool dance.” – Daniel

“You could make Marty dance and kick the ball. Two groups were making him play football. It was amazing!” – Lily

“I like Vex because you can write answers to times tables on the squares on the Vex board and give him directions to get to the right answer.” – Arwyn

“Vex was fun because you could control him and make him go onto patterns and find numbers. I liked watching him spin round and round.” – Morris

IDL

Our IDL topic last term was Enterprise. One of our main challenges was organising a stall for the Christmas fayre. Each group was responsible for sourcing materials and making a product to sell at the fayre.

“We searched up different ingredients online and made a list of the cheapest ones because we had a budget and we wanted to make more money for the school.” – Ozy

“We went to different classes and made empire biscuits, reindeer dust and all sorts of stuff!” – Jessie

“My group went to P6 and made sweetie cones. It was fun.” – Olivar

“I went to P2 to make hot chocolate cones. It was fun helping the little ones.” – Layla

“I liked making the icing for the biscuits in P7. I felt a bit nervous at first but when they came to the table I felt more confident.” – Arwyn

“I liked that lots of people were interested in the things we made. We sold lots and lots of everything.” – Lily

Every single teacher commented on how responsible, organised and confident we were when we led our demonstrations – Miss May was so proud of us! We had a lovely surprise during the next assembly when the whole class received the Golden Balloon for our efforts.

Our topic next term is Glasgow and Edinburgh. We have created a big poster with everything we know about our topic already, as well as what we would like to find out.

“We have decided we will use chromebooks to research more about Glasgow and Edinburgh.” – Leo

“We can find information from books from the library. I want to find a book about landmarks in Glasgow and Edinburgh.” – Elliot

“I want to find out where the Science Centre is.” – Olivar

“I want to research how many people live in each city.” – Kali

Expressive Arts

The whole school was lucky enough to attend an assembly and workshop with Chief Chebe. As well as having a shot on the drums, he also let some of us try and recreate songs and rhymes on this special instrument!

“Trying the drums was fun but scary because at first I didn’t know how to do it! Chief Chebe helped me practise.” – Hannah

“Chief Chebe showed me how to play ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ on the instrument. It was tricky to start with but Chief Chebe was really fun!” – Lucy

Numeracy and Maths

This session, we are doing maths lessons a little bit differently. Instead of being put into groups, Miss May teaches us a new concept and then we can choose the level of follow-up task that we complete. This has been really popular in our class because we like taking some responsibility for our learning and challenging ourselves.

‘Miss May lets us choose what level we do. We can choose from Silver, Gold or Platinum.’ – Leah

‘We choose the right level for us.’ – Hannah

‘It lets us challenge ourselves and it means Miss May listens to our opinions.’ – Harley

A new resource we have made great use of this term is Numicon. We love how it can be used to support lots of different skills and strategies, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and fractions.

On Thursdays, Mrs Brock has been teaching us all about 2D shapes and 3D objects. We made our very own shape nets attached to string – when we pull them they turn into 3D objects!

 

  

Mrs Brock has taught us lots about keeping our bodies healthy. We have learned about the importance of a healthy and balanced diet, demonstrating good hygiene and the dangers of smoking.

Mrs Brock has also taught us lots of interesting facts about different states of water during our science lessons. We have carried out different experiments, including picking up ice using a piece of string (this worked by melting the ice using salt) and creating our very own rain.

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