Hello and welcome back to another half term of fun and learning in P3! I hope everyone had a restful and relaxing half term break.

Topic

This half term the children will continue their topic learning about the Amazon rainforest but they will also be learning about the Celtic Rainforest here in Scotland and the animals that live in it. In Science we are continuing our experiment on what plants need to grow. So far none of our plants have shown any signs of growth! We are also learning about food chains and how energy is transferred along the food chain. This week we learned a lot of new vocabulary including the words producer, consumer, predator and prey. Next week we hope to look at food webs which are more complicated food chains.

Literacy

This half term the children will resume reading their fiction books and they will be focussing on the questionning strategy. We really want to encourage our children to be active readers and to ask themselves questions about the text as they read to help them make sense of what they are reading( eg I wonder why Kipper did that?…maybe because he was angry.) In writing this term we will be looking at story writing. The children will be shown how to structure a story using story mountain. The big focus will be on getting all of the basics of writing right (finger spaces, spelling, handwriting etc) while writing a longer piece of writing which can be trickier than it looks!  This week in writing we looked at using commas in a list.

Maths

This week we have continued to learn about time. Many of us are now confident reading oclock, half past and quarter past and to on an analogue clock. We have also started looking at reading these times on a digital clock. Some of us have even started working on elapsed time and working out how long events last. We will be moving on to reading calendars later in the week before we return to focusing on number work in our SEAL program next week.

PE

This half term we will be working on our gymnastic skills. We started this week by looking at balancing and how we can balance on different parts of our bodies.  We learned how to perform two new balances, the dish and arch hold. Next week we will continue to learn new balances and we will be challenging ourselves to balance on smaller pieces of equipment!

Scots Gaelic or Gaidhlig 

The children have now had 3 lessons and are really enjoying themselves. They can now greet people at different times of the day, introduce themselves and ask people who they are. Next week we will be moving onto asking people how they are and feelings.

Reminders/Notices

PE days are now Mondays and Tuesdays.

Library books- Library books get changed every Tuesday. Can children please have Library books in school on Tuesdays.

Next Friday is World book day! Time to start planning that costume. If you are anything like me it will be a last minute rush!

 

That’s it for another week. If anyone has questions or concerns please get in touch in the usual way by emailing FAO Miss Groarke to presadmin@prestonstreet.edin.sch.uk. Until next time.

Take care,

Miss Groarke