Welcome to our P3/4 class page for 2019-2020 where you can find out about what we are learning this year!
Term 3 (January – April)
*Important Diary Date – Class Assembly – Friday 24th April 2020*
Literacy-
Our active Literacy programme will continue as normal this term.
Spelling: Primary 3 will continue to learn a new phoneme and set of common words each week, whilst Primary 4 will be following on their 4-week phoneme family programme.
Reading: The Blue group will continue to progress with the Stage 4 reading programme and comprehension activities based on their novels in class.
The Orange group have moved on to short novels, working through a book over 2 weeks instead of 1 week this term.
All other groups will have a new reading book each week and will continue to read and analyse the texts using a range of comprehension strategies to show their understanding.
Writing: We will be doing a whole school Talk for Writing block this term. We will be learning how to write a journey story and learning the story of ‘Little Charlie’. In keeping with our Scottish theme for January our stories will have a Scottish twist with our characters visiting landmarks, meeting Scottish animals and trying Scottish food along the way. We will be working alongside Primary 2 on a variety of activities, including drama and story cubes, to help the children embed the story and also give them ideas for creating their own story. The block will end with the children doing short burst daily writing, to create their own story.
Other writing this term will be related to our topic, covering both fiction and non-fiction pieces.
Numeracy- Primary 3’s will be focusing on subtraction to 100, Primary 4’s will be focusing subtraction to 1000.
Everyone will also be focusing on multiplication and division, learning new strategies to cope with both concepts.
Maths – A typical maths lesson will involve a mixture of both practical and written activities for all groups. This term’s focus will be on Money and Time.
Health and Wellbeing- There will be a whole school focus week on internet safety and cyber bullying for Health and wellbeing this term.
In class we will be looking at Substance Misuse and Mindfulness in the classroom. Our wellbeing indicators for this term are achieving, responsible and active.
In P.E, we will be focusing on gymnastics, where we will look at movement and balance to create sequences and routines to perform to our classmates.
Other Learning-
In January, our IDL focus will be Scotland. We will be learning about famous Scots, and Scots words, as well as looking at the art of Charles Rennie Mackintosh to create our own version of the stained glass window.
Our topic this term is Ancient Egypt. There is scope for lots of practical and written activities through this topic. The children will be using an atlas and a globe to locate Egypt, and will engage in fun activities related to mummification and the pyramids.
The focus in R.M.E is prayer this term. We will be finding out more about the practice of prayer and its importance to followers of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
In science we will be looking at the human skeleton and naming the main bones in our body. We will also learn to describe the position and function of the major organs in our body.
At the beginning of this term, each child was given a famous Scot to research ahead of the Scottish assembly, where they had the opportunity to tell the whole school what they had learned.
As part of our Egyptian topic, we will using I.C.T to research and create a timeline of technological advances, and will learn to create an email to send to an Egyptian God.
There will also be opportunities to work in groups to make a model of a shaduf or construct a 3D boat for a journey up the river Nile.
Our expressive arts will be covered through our topic, where we will be creating and making our own Egyptian jewellery, and pieces of artwork inspired by scenes from inside an Egyptian tomb. Our drama will include taking part in role play and hot-seating, taking on the role of an Egyptian Pharaoh.
In addition to this we will be learning songs and practicing for our class assembly after the holidays.
Term 2 (October – December)
Literacy- We will be continuing to use the Active Literacy programme this term.
Spelling: Primary 3 will continue to learn a new phoneme and set of common words each week, whilst Primary 4 will be following on their 4-week phoneme family programme.
Reading: The blue group are doing really well with their novels and will continue to progress with the Stage 4 reading programme and comprehension activities. All other groups will have a new reading book each week and will continue to read and analyse the texts using a range of comprehension strategies to show their understanding.
We have just completed our first Talk4Writing block, creating stories based on ‘The Enormous Turnip’. These worked really well and the children enjoyed using their creative minds! We will be doing plenty of writing this term based on our Topic, which will be a great stimulus for working our writing brains!
Numeracy- Primary 3’s will be focusing on addition and subtraction to 100, Primary 4’s will be focusing on addition and subtraction to 1000.
Maths- The whole class will be learning about 2D shapes and 3D objects, as well as a block based on tessellation (tiling).
A typical maths lesson will involve a mixture of both practical and written activities for all groups.
Health and Wellbeing- In class this term we will continue with our growth mindset focus as this proved extremely beneficial to our class last term. We will also focus on fire safety, in conjunction with our wellbeing indicators for this term: nurtured, included and safe.
During PE we will be doing dance, where we will complete a variety of dances and ceilidh dances nearer to Christmas to practise for our party!
Other Learning-
In RME we will be looking at Special Journeys this term.
Our topic this term is Polar Regions. The classroom has been transformed into an arctic scene and we are really looking forward to finding out all about all things polar! There is scope for lots of practical and written activities through this topic, and we will be monitoring the weather in Carnwath to compare it with a daily weather report from the Arctic and Antartic.
Our expressive arts will be covered through our Polar Regions topic, where we will role play to explore the role of a Polar Explorer, create short polar animal dance sequences and create a picture of the Northern Lights.
This term is very busy with lots of exciting things in the lead up to Christmas! Primary 3 will be taking part in the school nativity play too!
Term 1 (August – October)
Literacy – We have completed our book study on ‘ The Hodgeheg’ by Dick King Smith this term. This is largely a literacy based topic and the class have been provided with a variety or information books about Scottish Wildlife and are being encouraged to read these as well as using the internet to do their own research during ICT. There were ample opportunities for discussing and analysing the text using the Active Literacy strategies to demonstrate our understanding of characters, setting and plot.
We are now working on our school reading books, with daily writing tasks to develop comprehension of the texts. Reading groups are given a new book each week to enhance fluency in their reading.
Primary 3’s are consolidating Stage 2 phonemes from Primary 2 and are about to move on to Stage 3 phonemes after the September break. They will have new spelling words and common words each week related to their phoneme sound.
Primary 4’s have started Stage 4 of the Active Literacy programme. This is set out slightly different to Stage 3, where they will work in 4 week blocks. Weeks 1 and 2 focus on their new phoneme family spelling words. Week 3 focuses on the common words for that block, and week 4 the children are introduced to a new spelling rule eg. ‘q’ is always followed by ‘u’.
In writing this term we have already looked at and completed a diary entry based on our book study. We will complete a Talk 4 Writing block based on ‘The Enormous Turnip’ by Nicola Baxter.
Numeracy- We have started the term with Place Value, looking at numbers to 1000. The children have been using a variety of concrete materials to demonstrate their understanding of Hundreds, Tens and Units. In addition to this we will be looking at ordering numbers to 1000, identifying more than/less than and larger/smaller. Our next topic in numeracy will be Estimating and Rounding.
Maths– In maths we have looked at Symmetry and are about to start work on 2D shapes and 3D objects.
Each day we complete a small Number Talks problem as a class to enhance children’s thinking and problem solving skills.
Health and Wellbeing- Through our book study have been looking at Road Safety.We have and will be continuing to do a lot of work on Growth Mindset and have also been focusing on the health and wellbeing indicator – Respect.
In PE we started the term with Team Games in order to promote teamwork. We have now moved on to Ball Skills with a focus on football and basketball.
Other Learning-
In RME, we are learning about respect and being thankful through harvest.
Our topic this term is an enterprising topic based on ‘Ollie the Enterprising Octopus’. Through this topic the children have the opportunity to develop skills in creativity, problem solving, teamwork, communicating and responsibility.
In I.C.T we have been looking at Microsoft Word and some of its key functions such as changing the font and size of text, inserting pictures and creating posters.
We have already learned to count to 100 in French, and are now moving on to learn French greetings.