HAPPY NEW YEAR!

It was a busy first day back after the holidays here in Primary 3!  After we shared all our holiday news with the rest of the class, we started to make some New Year Resolutions.  We have been reflecting about what we enjoyed about 2015 and what we are looking forward to in 2016.  At the moment, we have been thinking of resolutions that will help us achieve personal targets, such as learning to swim, learning to do stunts on a BMX bike and being a good friend.  Soon, we will start to think about achievement in school and set ourselves a new target for Literacy, Numeracy and Health and Wellbeing to work towards this term.

We also had a lot of fun in a Nycos session this afternoon with Mrs Poynter.  We enjoyed a “Play and Sing” session, which gave us a taste of what happens in these workshops.  We will be coming home with a leaflet to provide more information of local classes that Nycos will be running as part of the Youth Music Initiative.

We also received some very special letters today – from Katie Morag!!  During our topic last term we wrote to Katie Morag with lots of questions and she was obviously very busy replying to us all.  We each opened and read our letters today – sharing some of the answers we had been waiting for.  We have been reflecting on our Katie Morag topic and checking if we have learned everything we hoped to at the beginning of the topic.

It was such a busy and exciting first day back!

Today in class, six of our children received achievement certificates for their fantastic work over the past couple of weeks.

First up, for doing a super job at sharing his learning at the showcase, we have Luca!

Luca says “I liked getting a certificate.  I feel happy!”

Next, for his wonderful Katie Morag short story, we have Roan!

Roan says “I feel epic. It was exciting and I can’t wait to show Mum and Dad”

Next, for working in a successful partnership to create their model island, we have Ryan and Eve!

Ryan says “I feel amazing!” and Eve says “I fee outstanding.  I can’t wait to show my Mum and Dad”

And last up, also for working in a successful partnership to design and make their model island, we have Morgan and Ethan!

Morgan says “My Mum and Dad are going to be so pleased!  I feel epic!” and Ethan says “My Mum and Dad are going to be so happy with me.  I feel epic too!”

Well done to our achievement certificate recipients!  You have worked so hard and Miss Robertson and P3b are proud of you all!

In the event of a school closure, due to winter weather, here are a selection of activities that P3 and P4 pupils can choose from to complete at home.  Enjoy!

P 3 4 Snow Day Activities

We are still very busy in Primary 3 and learning lots of exciting new things!

In topic, we have started working in pairs to design our own island.  We started by listing everything we would have on an island and then learned about Map Keys and made a Key for all the island features we had chosen.  Today we drew the coastal outline of our island and we will soon be ready to add all of our Map Key symbols.  We have also written and sent letters to Katie Morag and are anxiously awaiting replies.

We are doing a super job in PE at the moment and can now dance a Canadian Barn Dance to music.  We have even learned to make the dance progressive which means the boys move on to a new partner!  We have also learned the beginning of the Gay Gordons, which is quite tricky.  We will soon be ready to try that to music as well.

We are coming home today with letters to invite our family to come to school and see all that we have been doing in Topic.  We are planning to put on a fantastic showcase and are excited to share our learning on Thursday 3rd December.

In topic maths, we are soon finishing our data handling topic and enjoyed learning about Carroll and Tree Diagrams recently.  We will soon be moving onto learning about Grid References, which ties in nicely with our Katie Morag island activities.

We have signed up to take part in the West Lothian Sumdog challenge which begins tomorrow.  We can play Sumdog at home as normal but are competing against classes in other West Lothian schools.  The more we play Sumdog at home over the next week, the better chance we have of doing well in the challenge.

Look out for more updates soon!

We have a had a busy few weeks in Primary three!  Here’s just a few things we have been up to………

In Maths topic, we have finished learning about Pictograms and Block graphs and today we started using Venn diagrams to sort information.  This is all part of our information handling topic.  We also started to create a mind map of everything we have learned in our Maths topic so far and will continue to add to this as we learn more.

It was money week last week, so we also set up a Post Office in our cloakroom space for Maths topic lessons.  This was an excellent opportunity to combine money week with our Katie Morag topic and use role play to explore what happens in a Post Office just like the one Katie Morag’s family run.  We also played a variety of money games.

Last week we also had the opportunity to use Sumdog in school which is a Maths website Williamston subscribe to.  We have all had a look around the site and played lots of fantastic Maths games, and this week we will be coming home with our own personal login to use Sumdog from home.  Our teachers are asking that we always use our school login to access Sumdog from home and that we all try to play some games before we come back to school after the October holidays.  Please can our parents help us with instructions, but try to let us answer the questions ourselves.

Also in our Katie Morag topic, we have been exploring what makes an island and comparing life on Coll (the island Katie Morag’s Isle of Struay is based on) with life in Livingston.  We have learned that the one thing that is the same for all islands all over the world is that they are surrounded by water.

In literacy lessons, we have been continuing to develop our flow and expression when we are reading and have been using our skills to illustrate parts of our reading books, create character profiles and identify the meaning of unfamiliar words.  We are also writing letters to Katie Morag as we felt this was the best way to get answers to the many questions we have about her life on Struay.

In PE, we have began learning Scottish Country Dancing!  The boys are being proper little gentlemen and asking the girls to dance.  We are learning a Canadian Barn Dance and next week we’ll try to music!

We have been having great fun in food technology lessons with Mrs Logan.  We have made toast and fruit kebabs so far and next week we’re making Katie Morag’s favourite – porridges!

We’ve definitely earned our October holidays!

We have had a wonderful first two weeks in Primary 3!  During this time we have been getting to know our new teachers and have had lots of fun doing different “Getting to know you” activities.  We have also been learning all about The Four Capacities, and are beginning to understand what it means to be a Successful Learner, a Confident Individual, a Responsible Citizen and an Effective Contributor.  This has seen us presenting our summer reading photographs or holiday postcards to the rest of the class in “Show and Tell” sessions, taking part in teamwork challenges and identifying our own literacy targets for this term to take responsibility for our own learning in writing.  We have also been revisiting our Rights and have been learning all about the difference between “need” and “want” and what the words “family” and “home” mean to us.

We have also taken the time to discuss expectations in Primary 3 and have come up with class Golden Rules for this year.  We were then asked to focus on a particular rule for our whole school assembly last week.  We were looking at “Looking after property” and identified that this meant our own belongings, things we borrow from our classmates and things that belong to the school.  We made posters that showed the difference between property that is looked after and property that is damaged and wasted and presented a selection of these to the rest of the school.  We enjoyed being able to be part of assembly for the first time in P3.

Here are our posters that we presented at assembly: