Welcome back to term 2

Welcome back to school everyone, what a lovely long holiday we have had I hope you are all refreshed and ready for the challenges of the new term.

For your information here is what we will be working on this term:

Language:

We will be continuing our work on reading comprehension – more written work this term. Looking further at persuasive writing and advertising. Continued work on accuracy, fluency and expression when reading aloud, more work on taking notes to help us remember information and reuse it, understanding the difference between primary and secondary sources when we research a topic, beginning to look at theme and genre in more detail, learning about Burns and Scottish poetry how to read it, understand it and recite it. Continuing to enjoy making choices about the books we read and what we enjoy about them.

Writing will be a mixture of poetry – mainly Scottish, personal   imaginative response, imaginative and functional (beginning with a letter to our friends in Malawi) and report writing for science and topic work.

I am putting a heavy emphasis on attention to detail this term, this means more careful consideration of handwriting and spelling.

Talking and Listening – we cover all our talking and listening through our extensive group work and Critical Skills challenges. Our poetry work and singing of Scottish songs and presenting them will play their part here too.

Mathematics

In number work we will be revising our skill on counting on and back from a variety of large numbers in ones, twos, tens, fives etc. We will continue to work very hard on all our times tables and there might even be a special challenge here. Addition and subtraction both mental methods and standard written method will also be revised. Division and multiplication will continue to be explored together. New work will be on decimals and fractions and percentages, BODMAS, negative numbers, equations, number patterns and sequences, measure, shape and angles. Data handling will be part of a challenge we will do on with the Gullane Day Centre.

RME

We will complete our work on Christian stories and begin to think about other religions and similarities and differences. We will explore our own ideas and debate what we think about the religions of the world. We will cover Islam, Judaism, Hindu and Buddhist.

Social Studies

Highland Clearances will be completed it was interrupted by snow and Christmas so we still have a bit to do.

We will also look at helping a group in our community and we will be completing a challenge to help the Gullane Day Centre advertise what it does for our local community. The plan is to have the children work with the people who run the centre and find out what it does and then help them “drum up business” through an advertising campaign.

The Aztecs will also make an appearance towards the end of this term and the children will have to find out as much as they can and then present their findings as a museum!

Health and Wellbeing

The children will be completing a challenge about “Keeping Myself Healthy”. In this they will have to consider all aspects of their health and safety.

We are hoping to have our community officer come and speak to us about how to deal with an emergency and what action could safely be taken in different circumstances.

We continue to work together to promote a secure and safe working environment where people are listened to and respected.

Science

Mrs Cunningham has got lots more science for you this term and it will link with some technology work we want you to get involved with. The work begun on John Muir will now continue as a science project linked to conservation and biodiversity. There is our trip to the Botanic Gardens the week after next and then an adventurous day out with the ranger in the local environment.

Expressive Arts

We have the brilliant Mrs Barclay to keep us going with PE and as a class we are doing a dance that the children are making up to Run Rig’s “Dance Called America” which links with our Highland Clearance work.

I have a lovely little drama book with load of different activities for us to do and we will be working through a number of these and covering many conventions.

Music will be delivered as always by the talented Mrs Roberts and we have a special surprise for something a bit different this term.

And last but not least we still have to stage our Gullane Primary 5 Art Gallery. You have done a marvellous job of your pictures – with a little help from Mr Connell. He and I have been discussing some more unusual art work for the new term……..wait and see.

Remember our art gallery is now 18th January at 6.45 – 8.45pm in Gullane school hall.

Anyway, I hope this gives you a flavour of what a hard working term it will be, but I am sure we will have loads of fun too.