Happy New Year! We have had a busy start to the year already!

We are taking part in a project to rear Brown Trout. This project is in partnership with Forth Fisheries and Murieston Environmental Group. This week our tank was delivered and set up by Amy and we are now awaiting the arrival of the fish eggs in a couple of weeks. Amy from Forth Fisheries also gave a talk on Brown Trout and how to look after them.

In Maths, our new number topic is multiplication and division. We have been making array patterns and using concrete materials to help us understand these processes further. We should practise our times tables at home so that we have quick recall of times table facts. We will be multiplying and dividing bigger numbers soon and solving problems. Our new maths topic is time and we have started by learning about the calendar – days, months etc.

In Health and Wellbeing, we have started a new project on yoga, meditation and mindfulness. We will be working on this over the next few weeks – to try to improve our focus on learning and to help us relax more. We have also revised the SHANARRI indicators and are making a display about these. SHANARRI helps us to think about our physical and mental health and wellbeing.

We enjoyed sharing our Ziggy road safety storybooks with our P1 friends recently. We also played the road safety board games that we had made with them.

We are still working on our water topic. We are making posters and presentations about saving water that we hope to share these with our partner school in India. Also, we are learning about causes of water problems around the world. We are realising how precious water is and how lucky we are to have running water in our homes and school in Scotland!

In French, we have begun covering pets and how to say if we have one or not and also how to say whether we like something or not. In Science, with Mrs Cameron, we are conducting water experiments. This week we looked at filtration in more detail. We also started lessons with Miss Trotter this week – she will be teaching us art and design this term.

We have a new pet called Flash who is a little puppy. He is helping us to think about how to be caring and kind to others. We are looking forward to moving seats soon….

P4a have been busy with lots of fun and exciting Christmas activities. We really enjoyed watching the P1 Nativity dress rehearsal – we thought they were fabulous! We are nearly finished making our Christmas cards which feature a symmetrical Christmas tree. This was the second time we did this activity – some of us found it tricky before – so we did it again to help grow our brains and learn from our mistakes! Thank you to the PSA for treating us to the cinema trip to see Moana – we thought it was great, amazing and exciting – we give it 5 stars! We have been learning more about Christmas in France and some French Christmas words. We have made French Christmas cards too.

In RME, we have enjoyed making video dramas of parts of the Christian Christmas story. These were in the form of news reports. We did such a good job that one will be shown in the school Christmas Service. We have also been thinking about Christmas traditions and customs and identifying which are religious and which are non-religious. We have also been learning about Christmas songs and films and the values that they show. We created surveys to find out everyone’s favourite Christmas song and film – Jingle Bells was our top song and Elf was our top film.

In Language, we have finished transforming our Ziggy road safety stories into books and we look forward to sharing these with our P1 friends in the new year. We have read some more of The BFG and completed character descriptions and comparisons of Sophie and the BFG for our I-JournAL folders.

In Maths, we are getting more confident with identifying and naming 2D and 3D shapes. We have created a shape table with objects we have brought in from home. We have also been practising subtraction strategies and sharing how we solve problems.

Well done to those who received Achievement Certificates – Ross, Josh, Aiden and Kyle.  It has been a great term  in P4a! We hope you have a lovely holiday and we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

We have all enjoyed Book Week! We have been busy planning, designing and making props with a Roald Dahl theme and had great fun using junk modelling to create these. Paired Reading with the Primary 1 pupils gave us the opportunity to use expressive voices when reading aloud. We took part in a drama workshop with the One Day Creative company. The workshop was based on The BFG, our class novel, and we acted out different characters and parts from the story. We made waves and mountains for the BFG and Sophie to journey through and we took on the roles of the giants, the RAF and the army. The book readings on the tannoy were funny and we voted on our favourite book. The most popular in our class was “Shark in the Park”. A 20 minute Silent Reading time was a bit of a challenge for us – but we are pleased to say that we did it! We learned about the First Minister’s Reading Challenge and had a look at our new Reading Passports. We took part in a quiz to find out what types of books are our favourites and we will use this information to help us choose books in the future. We each made a sticker showing our favourite book and took part in the Book Week assembly by singing a song from The BFG film.

The NSPCC visited us on Wednesday and held a special assembly to inform us about children’s rights and how children should be treated by adults and other children. The NSPCC mascot “Buddy the Speech Bubble” helped to give us the message that if you are in trouble or worried about something, that you should speak to a trusted adult. They also told us how to contact Childline if we need help or support. Remember “Speak Out. Stay Safe.”

In Maths this week we have continued with our addition topic. We have been practising doubles up to double 20 and playing games to help us remember these. We have been thinking about all the addition strategies that we can use and recording these in our Maths Diaries – strategies such as making the nearest 10, drawing a number line and using number bonds to add bigger numbers. We had the opportunity to practise these skills to solve “Chilli Challenges” involving addition and subtraction problems – we could decide what level of challenge we felt we could do – mild, hot or spicy. We look forward to sharing some strategies and activities with you at the Numeracy Curriculum Evening on 29^th November.

It’s been a quick week in P4a! Our student teacher Mrs Knowles, has been helping us with our learning a lot.

In Language, we have been writing fireworks poems as not only is it Bonfire Night soon, but it was also Diwali last weekend – both occasions where fireworks are popular! We learned about onomatopoeic words that sound like the sound that they describe. This was very useful for writing about fireworks. We also started a new listening activity to help improve our skills in listening for instructions – hopefully we will get better and better as the weeks go on! Some of us completed character studies on characters from Stanley and the Magic Lamp and these are displayed in our classroom.

In Maths, we have been continuing with our Number Talks – where we discuss calculations and our strategies for finding the answer. We are focusing on addition and subtraction at the moment. We need to know our number bonds to 20 really well – please help us practise these at home with games and quizzes- as these will help us to add and subtract bigger numbers. We have also started a new maths topic on symmetry where we have been investigating shapes, pictures and patterns to find a line of symmetry. We also have made our own symmetrical pictures and patterns. We could look at home and in the environment to see if we can find any symmetrical objects or pictures – we could even take a photo and bring it in to school to show our class.

In RME, we have been finding out about the practices and traditions of the Hindu festival of Diwali. We heard the story of Rama and Sita. We made Diwali cards and a display about the festival. In Health, we discussed how to be safe on Bonfire Night and studied the Firework Safety Code. We then worked in a group to make a poster to tell others how to stay safe. In Music, we have begun to learn how to read and write music notation and had fun clapping out our rhythms.

This term we have a grid to complete as the main part of our homework. Some activities we are to complete weekly as usual – spelling, reading, maths – and the others we can complete in any order and should be returned to school by 9th December.