Mrs Conway

P3 Weekly Round Up!

A fantastic week for P3 – we have been out and about this week… lots of adventures have been had!

On Tuesday the boys and girls were lucky to join the infant classes for a trip to The Vue Cinema in Livingston where they seen a lovely movie called ‘Flying the Nest’. The boys and girls in Primary Three gave this movie good reviews! It was a long morning after walking up and down to the cinema… but the class managed to squeeze in just a little bit more learning before the end of the day!

As it was Cool to be Kind week our young people have embraced the anti-bullying message to ‘CHOOSE RESPECT’. The highlight of Cool to be Kind week was making fortune tellers with positive friendly messages inside! This was so inspiring to our class that many children chose to make additional fortune tellers when finished their work, or during SmartStart. We watched a lovely video at our house captains assembly this morning which teaches us that kindness is a ripple effect…

We hope these messages will continue to live in the hearts of our P3 pupils as we aim to ensure our three school rules are being met; READY, RESPECTFUL, SAFE.

Our new topic is based on the Lanthorn Community centre and how it services the needs of our community in Dedridge. We have spoken about our schools place in the community and some of the buildings/services we have nearby… and some that are further afield! We were very lucky on Thursday as Donna, who has worked at the Lanthorn for many years, agreed to meet us for a tour! The boys and girls came up with fantastic questions about the Lanthorn, some of which Donna was able to answer. Lots of us wanted to know what was up the stairs at the Lanthorn… and now we know; a computer suite, a small meeting room that is used for crafts, a large meeting space, a lawn bowls carpet area and the office of the ‘Dedridge Good Neighbour Network’. We met Cheryl who runs the DGNN and she told us all about the people in Dedridge (and beyond!) who use the facilities. The highlight of our trip wasn’t only the keyrings and badges we got from the library ladies… it was our juice and biscuit we got from the lovely ladies at the cafe! Prior to our visit we looked at the council web page for the Lanthorn and discussed reading for information, scanning and finding key pieces of information and whether a site was a good site to trust. See if your child can find out information about the Lanthorn using the link below;

https://www.westlothian.gov.uk/article/6398/Lanthorn-Community-Centre

As if that wasn’t enough… we also went for a ‘prayer walk’ tour of our local parish church. Father John was there to greet us and guide us around our prayer walk. We learned about the font, the altar, the Tabernacle, the paintins and statues and the stations of the cross. Primary 3 were so respectful and mature during this session – they made us very, very proud! We prayed for the people of the parish and bowed to the cross on the altar as we left. In addition to this, we have been thinking about November as the month of the Holy Souls and learning the Eternal Rest prayer;

Image result for eternal rest prayer

After all the excitement at the Lanthorn, we managed to squeeze in a quick ten minute playtime at the Lanthorn Park!

It was lovely to see so many of our parents/carers on Wednesday and Thursday at parents night! Mrs Scott and I would like to thank you for your continued support over this term and encourage you to get in touch with any queries or concerns through the usual channels such as homework diary or afternoon pick up 🙂

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs Conway and P3 🙂

P3 Weekly Round Up!

What a fantastic week it has been in P3!

Routines and Behaviour

Mrs Scott and Mrs Conway have been SO impressed this week with the behaviour in P3! On Thursday we had almost everyone on our praise board 🙂 fantastic! We have been trying so hard with the routines in class – to help us listen to instructions, follow directions, show we are READY to learn, show RESPECT to our classmates and staff and to keep ourselves and others SAFE.

We have recently started earning table points which the boys and girls are really enjoying – if you are spotted being good, being organised, being ready to learn, being a good friend (amongst other things!) you can earn your table 10 points – the winning table at the end of each day get a special prize! We are thinking about team work and what makes a good team 🙂 ask your child if their table has won, and if they have any ideas to help their table earn table points next week.

Literacy

We have continued to work on our WORD BOOST work. This week we read ‘Beware of Girls’. Our boost words were;

damp

cottage

sniff

grumble

stagger

distant

Can you child use these words in a sentence? We are aiming to build the vocabulary of our children and word boost helps us do that! Does your child know any amazing words that would make us go WOW? Let us know of any next week 🙂

Numeracy and Maths

On Wednesday we managed to consolidate our grid reference work with a Halloween problem solving task. We had Mrs Swann (parent helper) to help with our grid reference colouring challenge. Mrs Swann was so impressed at how little help the boys and girls needed! Well done! Next week Mrs Conway is hoping to introduce the boys and girls to a simple version of Battleships – have you got this game at home? Ask your child if they would like to play to support their learning about grid references 🙂

The boys and girls LOVE learning about place value – especially when we can watch the ‘Place Value Rap’! This is a bit tricky for our boys and girls but has taught us about how we write numbers from left to right, but build numbers from right to left!

We showed maturity and respect at our whole school mass on Thursday to celebrate the feast of All Saints Day. The boys and girls completed lovely prayers to some of the saints we discussed in class. Although the clip below is American, it helped us with our discussions about All Saints.

Committees

This week we had our committee group Friday – we split into our committee groups 9-10am on Friday morning and each of us explore something different through play. Have a look at our school twitter page to get an idea of the kind of activities we have been taking part in!

Have a fantastic weekend!

P3 Weekly Round Up!

We have had a wonderfully creative and calm week in P3 – despite it being very busy!

The boys and girls were a great help in keeping Mrs Conway and Mrs Scott organised as they swapped their Tuesday and Thursday this week – Mrs Conway was SO pleased to see how amazing the class are at writing! We wrote our own Skeleton fact files on Tuesday morning and can’t wait to share them with you at Stay, Play and Learn on Friday 12th at 9am. Do you love the warm/cold colour art work in our featured image? These will also be on display on Friday!

Mrs Scott was also very impressed with how well our boys and girls are developing their reading comprehension! Most of our reading groups came home with special bookmarks this week – these will help you and your child choose some questions to discuss about their reading books when they do reading homework with an adult or older sibling. If your child doesn’t have theirs please let Mrs Conway know by writing a note in their homework diary 🙂

Our number work continues this week with addition and working with numbers to 1000! Some people couldn’t load our homework game – but our Sumdog homework challenge next week will be focusing on these areas. Your child’s sumdog login will be in their reading diary – please let us know if they are unable to complete sumdog homework at home, time can be given to this across the school day!

This weeks Boost words were;

Nudge

Nervous

Astonished

Continue

Separate

Co-operate

Our core literacy homework task will be based on some of our Boost words next week!

In RE we have been learning a lot about Our Lady, which will continue to be our in class RE theme throughout October – we LOVE this action song… have a go at home;

How can you and your child say YES to God, like Mary did?

We have noticed some fantastic creativity in our collage Smartstart! This week we even had some budding authors making books during their smart start time! Mrs Scott has taken these ideas on board to incorporate into our writing sessions next term.

Sean joined us this week from St Margaret’s Academy on his work experience! He has been a hit with the boys and girls of P3 – and even brought his Nintendo Switch in today for us to enjoy during FUN31! Sean’s help this week has been great and we will all miss him next week – we hope he will come back and visit us!

Have a great weekend! Next week will be the last week of term before the October holiday!

P3 Weekly Round Up!

A quick week it has been!

The boys in girls in P3 have packed in so much learning to three short days!

We are so excited to begin our science topics! Mrs Scott will be exploring the Skeleton with the class and Mrs Conway will lead the learning about the sun, moon and stars – with a focus on the patterns of night and day! We have started to think about both of these and the things we would like to learn about.

Wednesday saw a class vote for our new class novel! The choices were Fantastic Mr Fox, How to Train Your Dragon and Gangsta’ Granny. As How to Train your Dragon and Gangsta’ Granny got three votes each we asked those who chose Fantastic Mr Fox to vote again… which led to Gangsta’ Granny as the overall winner!!! We will read short parts of this novel as a class over the next few months at suitable times in the school day. We continue to promote reading for enjoyment in our class – if there’s a novel or book that your child enjoys at home, please allow them to bring it to school to read for enjoyment on Wednesdays/Thursdays 🙂

This week saw the end of our symmetry topic in maths – and a tricky topic it has been! Some of the boys and girls moved on to creating symmetrical block patterns, which we found quite tricky. Here is a great symmetry matching game which explores reflective symmetry, perhaps you could try it at home?

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/symmetry/symmetry-matching

This morning we had our first pupil committees! The P1-3 committees are play based and range from outdoor learning to games to Mini Glee! This was a big hit with our boys and girls and we are already looking forward to the next meeting!

Keep an eye on your post over the coming days as today we popped some important mail in the post box 😉

At the end of the day today we reflected on our week and the things we enjoyed the most;

Ephraim ‘we were playing a game called poisonous ball in PE, I enjoyed that you got to throw your ball and if it hit the other teams bench their bench would be poisoned’

Amber ‘I liked doing my committee today – it was arts and crafts – I made one painting and one drawing’

Klaudia ‘I really enjoyed the committees. I did the mini glee – we are going to perform on the stage!’

Adam ‘ I liked when we were doing our textbook work in maths’

Sahara ‘I loved posting my letter’

Kerr ‘I liked doing the picture of the world in RE’

We are looking forward to distributing homework on Monday which reflects the changes in our home learning policy following feedback from pupils, parents and staff – stay tuned! 🙂

Have a fantastic weekend!

P3 Weekly Round Up!

Another whirlwind week in P3!

In writing, Mrs Scott was so impressed with the quality of work that we didn’t just have one star writer… we had three!! Our three star writers wowed the class with their amazing news reports about Flat Stanley. Using connectives, ambitious vocabulary and understanding that newspapers need headlines – these are all the skills we built on this week. We can wait to show you at Ninian’s Natter next week!

Our reading groups are up and running now that we have settled into the swing of things 🙂 the boys and girls are using their decoding strategies to build fluency as they read. We plan to change the reading books on a Wednesday, though when children begin to read novels it happens as and when the book ends. We hear reading on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday in small groups where we use various questioning skills to challenge the children’s understanding of what they have read.

As we are continuing to build a reading culture in our class – boys and girls are encouraged to bring a book from home that they might read for enjoyment in class. We have some avid readers in P3 – Roald Dahl and Diary of a Wimpy Kid books have made an appearance this week 🙂

In maths we are continuing to build on our knowledge of number as we practice skip counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. We LOVED the whack a mole game and will continue to use it as we practice counting in 3s, 4s.. etc. Have a go at home – some of us got up to 1000 today!

http://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/whackAMole/

During Word Boost we read together a picture book throughout the week, focussing on chosen ‘boost’ words to help us develop a broad ranging vocabulary. This weeks boost words were; local, popular, repeat, mumble and vast. Every time you hear any of these words with your child pop your finger on your nose to indicate a ‘boost word’! Can your child use these words in a sentence?

Ninian’s Natter information is on the school’s weekly update – Mrs Scott and I would love to meet the parents/caters of all of our children! Please do come along to meet us, discuss what learning looks like in the P3 classroom and ask questions about the year ahead! 🙂 looking forward to seeing you all then!

Welcome to P3!

Hello everyone! Welcome to Primary 3, with Mrs Scott and Mrs Conway!

We have been so impressed with how well our pupils have settled in during their first week of Primary 3. It has been a whirlwind week with lots of new things to learn and lots of fun things going on.

Our learning context for the next few weeks is ‘Flat Stanley’, a book about a boy who gets crushed ‘as flat as a pancake’ – the boys and girls have enjoyed hearing parts of the story and have enjoyed follow up tasks such as making a flat Stanley of their own and finding things in and around our classroom that are as flat as Stanley. Maybe over the weekend they could make pancakes as flat as Stanley?? Yum!

Our PE days are going to be TUESDAY and THURSDAY. Mrs Scott will take the class for class teacher PE on a Tuesday, and Mr McCurdy will take the boys and girls on a Thursday PE session. This week Mr McCurdy had the class growing and shrinking as they played ‘Mario Tig’ – what great fun!

By the end of next week the class will receive their homework diaries and their reading books. For the first few weeks we will run with reading homework only, and build on this as we get further into the term.

If your child is keen to explore other areas of their learning at home they may want to write letters to family members as we will be exploring this in our writing sessions. Perhaps they could build on their mental maths skills by playing games through Sumdog and Topmarks;

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

We will also be looking at measurement in maths, and have already used rulers for measuring this week;

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/measuring-in-cm

Our Class Charter has been completed around the following three school rules;

Be Ready
Be Respectful
Be Safe

We explored these in group work and through drama to come up with some pointers to keep us right – one thing you can help us with is ‘get a good sleep’ which was suggested by the Smarty Pants Group.

We can’t wait to meet you all and get to know our boys and girls even better over the coming term!

Ps. there have been a few good secret handshakes taught to us this week – keep them coming!

Nursery News

It was our SPORTS DAY this week!! And what a sports day we had! There was cheering, screaming, running, jumping, giggling and falling over… and that was just the staff – heehee!

Our boys and girls have spent the week rehearsing for sports day – changes to routines and patterns in the nursery can be difficult for little minds to understand so the staff team took time to explain to them what sports day would include and let them practice, practice makes perfect after all. We also made wonderful coloured banners to lead our teams in with – green, yellow, red and blue teams, with some children managing to wear their team colours! Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side on Thursday – but our contingency plan worked just beautifully…

We came roaring in to the cheers from the crowd as we did a lap of the hall for waves and smiles, before we got down to business and started racing. There were a few ‘cheat-abix’ moves on show – I’m talking to you Mrs Beattie 😉 but that all entered in the spirit of the day, where our boys and girls showed off their wonderful sporting talents in front of their parents, grandparents and friends. After all the hard work was over, the boys and girls received their medals as a huge well done for taking part in a fantastic day! Then we made our way back to the nursery where ice poles were awaiting us, to cool us down after all the physical exertion! A huge thanks to the crowd on the day for making it special for our children with their encouraging cheers, words and smiles – we couldn’t do it without you all!

In addition to Sports Day, this week we have taken on board a very exciting idea for our Welly Wednesday session next week… A few of our parents have made us aware of a ‘movement’ in West Lothian called ‘WEST LOTHIAN ROCKS’ – the idea behind it is that you find a rock, paint it and hide it somewhere outdoors, for others to find! You can then re-hide it for someone else to enjoy 🙂 once explained to our boys and girls they were super keen to take part! We went on the hunt for some rocks, and the PM group painted some for us to hide next week! If your child finds a rock they’d like to paint over the weekend, bring it to nursery on Monday to be painted in time to be hid on Welly Wednesday!

We also got a quick peek at the new baby signets on the pond – unfortunately one of the nine signets had to be taken away by one of the SSPCA officers due to having a poorly leg.

A little reminder, we capture the voices of our children in many different ways.. Now that we near the end of the session please take some time to look over our floor books, planning wall and learning journey wall – these are all tools that we use which are made to be shared with our children and their families 🙂 have a look and let us know which bits your children remember clearly…

Image result for its not what you teach its how you make them feel

Keep your eyes peeled for our new school website which will be launching very soon!

Nursery News

Well it was a big week for some of our children and their families as the future P1 children had their transition days in St Ninian’s Primary School!

Wednesday and Thursday of this week brought much excitement, and some nerves.. as the preschool children prepared for school by taking part in the next phase of our transition programme – spending time in the P1 classes. Miss Boyes and Mrs Davenport were so excited to welcome the children and had lots of fun planned for them all. The AM staff were lucky to be able to peek in to see how everyone was getting on and we are so proud of how well they adapted 🙂 well done boys and girls! Next week we have our lunch hall experience where the boys and girls will experience school lunches, and their parents will have an opportunity for an informal chat with Miss Boyes and Mrs Davenport.

We have started to get ready for our sports day!! This week we have started to talk about what will happen at sports day and have had a shot of trying some of the races and lining up in our colour groups! Everyone is welcome to attend on Thursday 14th. 10am and 2pm – bring your loudest voices to cheer on our sporting superstars! After our busy wellbeing week last week we were glad to spend some time with Mr Mccurdy on Tuesday during our usual PE slot. We had the parachute out and have been practising our throwing skills – why don’t you have a go at home?

Our AM session was super quiet on Wednesday and Thursdays transition days! But we still packed in lots of fun.. none more so than our emergency trip to the shop for butter for Mrs Beatties pancakes! A disaster was averted and we had some great discussions about what we could and couldn’t get at the shop and how many pennies we needed!

Both sessions enjoyed picnic snacks this week and a welly Wednesday trip to the trim trail! Please keep a look out in our weekly update for details of our final welly Wednesday session.

Many thanks to those parents who have agreed to help out with our big clean 🙂 there will be a list in the cloakroom for sign ups, there’s still time to get involved 😉

Our learning context for the next few weeks is ‘school’! Our learning wall is for everyone to look at, with our consultative planner added at the top. As with all of our planning, we consulted the children (have a peek in our talking books to see what they said!) and used their ideas to think about possible lines of development (PLODs). This will help to frame some of the activities in our nursery environment in the coming weeks. Some of our children have been talking about ‘homework’ – we are pleased to say there will be a ‘help yourself homework’ box for any and all interested children from now until the last week of term 🙂

Nursery News

Wellbeing week has taken it out of us all this week – in the best way!

Monday was a great start to our wellbeing week! Some of our parents and children made it along to Bootcamp with Mr McCurdy at 8am, starting the week as they meant to go on – well done everyone, Mrs Conway still hasn’t recovered! The nursery children had great fun in a session with Star Harmonies. Ask your child if they can remember the ‘Toe – Knee – Chest – Nut…’ rhyme they learned! This session included singing and dancing.

The wellbeing week continued in the sunshine outdoors on our trim trail. School children demonstrated their caring ways by helping the nursery children to complete the course.

Tuesday brought our first parents for their stay and play and come back and play sessions. Parents were able to join us in a Yoga session in the school. It was very relaxing and zen. Lots of children found the funniest part was talking about filling their sandwiches… sounds strange but led to some good yoga posing!

The P6 buddies and the current P1 classes were down to have fun in our garden at school playtime today for transition fun this week. Parents of future P1 children are reminded that only a small snack is needed at playtime 🙂

Wednesday was a whirlwind of excitement as we had our ‘park picnic’ trip for our ‘Welly Wednesday’ focus, some of the parents were lucky enough to join us as part of the stay and play/come back and play sessions. We also had dancing! Lots of great moves were displayed, and that was just the teachers and parents 😉 the routine was simple but effective! Our favourite part was the freestyling without a doubt! We hope your weekend will be filled with dancing!

Thursday begun with football for the groups – this involved lots of careful listening to the coach… And lots of lovely laughing as we played games together to help us develop our movement, balance and ball skills. The future P1s enjoyed a real playtime in the school playground with their friends from P1! It was very exciting as they learned which areas they were allowed to play in and what happens if you need the toilet at playtime (you don’t ring the nursery bell.. haha!) – this has been a wonderful experience to help our children build their confidence in preparing for school in August!

Friday was a quiet day, we made most of the wonderful sunshine (and enjoyed a story in the shade) before the forthcoming rain and stormy weather!

Please stay tuned to your emails for next weeks weekly update 🙂 transition for P1 on Wednesday and Thursday next week! Have a lovely weekend 🙂

Nursery News

St Ninian’s Nursery has been a hive of activity this week!

Our boys and girls who are off to school in August have had an exciting week! On Tuesday, there were transition carousels in P1 classes – this gave the boys and girls a feel for how they will learn when they get into P1. The P1 pupils did a great job of modelling, showing them the ropes in the big school! There was much excitement during these activities, which helps to build the transition to P1 into a positive time of change in our children’s lives! We have also had buddy visits this week – this is a highlight for our boys and girls, who regularly ask ‘is my buddy coming down today?!’. It has been lovely to watch the relationships between the children and their buddies blossom over the weeks 🙂 next week, we have PLAYTIME for transition! On Tuesday, the P1 boys and girls (and buddies) will come to the nursery garden for a ‘playtime’. And on Thursday, they will go to the infant playground for a ‘playtime’, again with the P1s and their buddies. Preschool children should bring a small snack on these days to practice eating, playing, chatting all in the one! A drink is not necessary as they will have milk/water available in nursery beforehand, and when they get to school they will be able to have a water bottle in their classroom and milk after playtime.

In addition to all of this, the P1 classes have been finalised and the children now know which teacher they will have in August 🙂 Miss Boyes and Mrs Davenport (who used to be called Miss Meechan!) are very much looking forward to meeting their new pupils and their families.

Our interest in the garden has multiplied since the beginning of this beautiful weather spell! We have more than made the most of the lovely sunshine as we have scooted, climbed, ran, rolled and chalked all over the garden! Our welly Wednesday focus this week was chalk drawings.. we love to look at mark making in different ways and chalking was one of the suggested activities for our welly Wednesday sessions! By the end of the day there wasn’t an inch of garden that was untouched by chalk! We look to build mark making skills from basic shapes and lines, to more controlled written numbers, letters and detailed drawings. Which stage is your child at? Have they access to mark making materials at home? Share your views with your child’s key worker to see if, together, we can help them build their skills and confidence in this area 🙂

Jelly proved to be a very popular snack this week! The boys and girls loved talking about how it felt, with some of the AM boys and girls keen to play with it! On Friday we had jelly play and a sensory walk in the garden. The language and vocabulary around this play was fascinating – gooey, cold, gloopy, slidy! Great job boys and girls, maybe this type of messy play will make a reappearance sometime soon!

Make sure to consult our weekly update for all the details about wellbeing week next week – parent and child bootcamp begins at 8am on Monday morning on the school field. Mrs Conway and Mrs Martinek will be attending with their own children – will you join them? Letters will come home on Monday about our family wellbeing festival on Thursday evening (6-7.30pm) – it is set to be a highlight of the term with lots of interesting activities planned – make sure to get you choices handed back asap to ensure you get your first choice of workshops!

Have a lovely weekend!