Category: Whole School

In literacy this week we have been learning several different skills.  As well as our usual spelling lessons, we have had a lesson on expressing our likes and dislikes about a text, giving reasons why we have these opinions. This is quite a tricky skill and we will continue to practise.  We have been adding our reading books to the school total for the First Mininsters Book Challenge, as we do this it is important that we can discuss what the books are about and give our opinion on the book.

We further developed our letter writing skills as we wrote letters to children in Australia.  As Mrs Kennedy has a friend who teaches in a school in Ferny Creek, Melbourne, she thought it would be good for us to write to children in an Australian school to find out about the differences and similarities between growing up in Australia and growing up in Scotland.   In our letters we introduced ourselves and wrote a little about what we enjoy at school as well as our hobbies and interests outside of school.  We also got the opportunity to ask lots of questions.  Mrs Kennedy will post the letters at the weekend and we hope to receive some replies soon.

On Tuesday we furthered our research on Australian landscapes.  We chose either the Great Barrier Reef or Ayres Rock and then carried out some research and created a powerpoint to show the information.  We presented our findings to the rest of the class.  We were very lucky to have some children from P7 to help with our research and they were also a fantastic help in creating our powerpoints.  They made sure they showed us what to do as well us letting us try for ourselves rather than do all the work for us!  The P3s and P7s worked very well together and Mrs Kennedy was very impressed (I could almost have gone for a cup of tea and let them get on with it!)

In numeracy, we have continued our work on addition, learning different methods of adding a two-digit number and a single digit and some have been adding two two-digit numbers.

We have had the excitement of Halloween this week too.  We all had fun at the party, playing lots of games and enjoying a Halloween snack.  A big thank you to the PTA and our compare, Miss Baillie.

In music with Mrs Bain, we have been creating musical magic spells!  We chose  instruments to create atmospheric sounds to tell the story of The Witch’s Magic Potion. We followed conducting signals, including crescendos and diminuendos to control the volume. As well as being great musicians we learned a little Italian too!

We have been busy spreading the message about our Shoe Box Appeal, encouraging children and teachers throughout the school to bring in shoe boxes or items for shoe boxes.  We would be very grateful for any items you have.

Have a lovely weekend, stay safe and enjoy any fireworks you may see, P3B and Mrs Kennedy

Thank you to everyone who has already supported our P3 Shoe Box Appeal. A special thank you to HD who has donated 4 boxes!

P3 are in charge of the shoe box appeal this year. By handing in a shoe box with a few gifts inside, you will allow a child to receive a Christmas gift.  These boxes will be sent to areas of the world where children are less fortunate than us.
​

Suggested items:

Toiletries (no talc)

Toothbrush

Hat, scarf, gloves

Small toy

Sweets (no chocolate)

Stationery

 

It would be great if you could wrap your shoe box in Christmas paper with the lid separate to the bottom with an elastic band around it.

Please attach a checklist which can be found at the link below or by visiting the Blythswood Care website.  You can also get one from school if that is easier.
​

https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/213375_0185a5151b3c417fbd9c0a3c2f968458.pdf
​

Rather than donate a whole box, you can also donate any item from the list above and we will compile some boxes in school.

Please return any shoes boxes or items by Friday 9^th November 2018.

Thank you again for all your support,

P3

After a lovely week long October break, we were back on Tuesday and ready to learn.

Literacy: This week in Literacy we have been thinking about who inspires us! We have entered the Jim Clark Memorial Writing Competition. We brainstormed our ideas on what, who, when and how we have been inspired. The title for this year’s writing competition is ‘My Inspiration’. While writing, we concentrated on using interesting and descriptive vocabulary. We focused our writing on emotive writing, to help give the reader a sense of how we felt about our inspiration.

Numeracy: Who knew fractions could be so ‘sweet’? During numeracy this week, we completed some fraction introductory activities. Using real life items that Mrs. Matos brought in, we discussed and shared what we understood about fractions and how using concrete or real- life items can help us with calculating fractions. The highlight of our week was using skittles to show our understanding of fractions. Next week we will be learning about equivalent and simplifying fractions. Challenge this week, to see how many times you would use or see fractions around the house, at the shops etc.

HWB: It’s a new term and a new start. We spent some time this week to evaluate our targets that we set for ourselves in Term 1. We discussed with our partner what went well and learning we may need to improve on. We set new Numeracy and Literacy targets for Term 2 – we all very determined to work hard and reach our targets, using confidence and resilience.

PE: During PE this week consolidated and played our ‘Final’ rounds of basketball. This term our PE/ active focuses will be Athletics and Skiing. 

1+2: In French this week we are revising the objects of the classroom. We had the privilege of being joined by an S6 language ambassador from Linlithgow Academy, Alexander. Thank you Mrs. Gordon for all your help in making sure we are ‘French’ ready for the Academy. ( Dayna – Language Ambassador)

P7b and Mrs. Matos

 

 

 

A great start to the second term, we have  ‘hit the ground running’, as they say.  All the children have come back with lots of holiday news and are as eager to learn as always.

Our numeracy focus for the beginning of this term is addition.  We have been consolidating our number bonds to 20 and some have been adding multiples of 10 to 2-digit numbers.  We began with some problem solving – revisiting our prior knowledge to help us as we learn new things. We have enjoyed playing games on the smartboard and netbooks, these help us with our mental maths and recall of number facts.  We have also used text books; writing sums in our jotters and solving word problems.

In literacy, we have been concentrating on punctuation.  Although many of us know when to use capital letters, full stops, question marks and exclamation marks we sometimes forget to use them correctly when writing longer pieces of work.  We played a game call ‘Rapid Rounders’ on Education city – correcting lots of sentences, then we had a go at correcting sentences in our jotters. We will continue to discuss this and think about it when we are writing next week. In French, we began to learn parts of the body and will continue with this next week too.

On Tuesday, we had PE with P7 Sports Leaders who were teaching us ball skills.  They were good teachers and we enjoyed the session.  We also had PE with Mrs Kennedy on Thursday, our benchball skills are developing really well and we will be more than ready for the festival next month.

We have enjoyed comparing the climate in Australia to the Scottish climate.  We looked at weather websites and weather news reports from both countries, then created our own weather maps and presented them to the class in the style of TV weather reporters.  Each report was very professional and informative, with some wild weather on the way according to some!

Have a good weekend everyone, P3B and Mrs Kennedy