In Literacy, the children have seized opportunities to develop their reading, writing and listening and talking skills across a range of contexts.

In reading, our recent focus has been on note taking. This has been a great way for the children to consider the key information from the text and to create prompts that help them remember details of what they have listened to or read.

The children have loved the 'Katie Morag' series of texts and it has been lovely to see them apply this learning across a range of contexts. Our floor book planning has informed the direction of learning with this context and it has been lovely to see the children take leadership in what they are learning about.

In writing, the children have recently used the characters of Grannie Island and Granma Mainland to compare and contrast different characters. This is enabling them to create detailed character descriptions of their own - including describing family members. There have been lots of very detailed (and entertaining) descriptions from Primary 2 Bravo - I have loved reading them!

The children are continuing to developing their tools for reading through our Daily Literacy Learning (DLL) programme. I have been really impressed with the children's continued efforts in blending their sounds, their efforts in the associated DLL activities and their continued resilience as they approach the reading of trickier texts. Thank you, as always, for your support with developing your children's tools for reading at home.

In Number Talks, we have extended the 'bridging to ten' strategy to 'bridging tens'. This is allowing the children to extend their mental strategies and begin to attempt trickier calculations with their Number Talks learning partner. For example, where considering 27 + 25, 3 of the 5 units in 25 would be bridged to turn 27 into 30. The 23 would be partitioned into 20 + 2, so 30 + 20 + 2 = 52.

The children continue to develop their knowledge across a range of new and familiar concepts. Our recent topics include fractions, time, place value, measurement and addition. We are continuing to use concrete materials to support us in our maths activities to ensure we are gaining a real understanding of the mathematical process, rather than learning how to simply 'solve the calculation'. In the next few weeks, we will be looking at continued ways to support the children's mental agility through introducing some new mental maths games. The children have loved recently learning how to play 'Guess the Number' and love the challenge this provides!

In PE, the children have been enhancing their fitness across a range of different exercises. We have recently been looking at different ways to jump, changing our stance and movement to achieve the appropriate distance that we need. The children continue to embrace the excitement (and the blustery Maidenhill weather) on a Thursday afternoon PE sessions with Mrs Allan and Primary 2 Bravo!

Through our Katie Morag context for learning, the children have continued to learn about life on an island and how it is different to life on the mainland. We will continue to develop this as we consider life in Scotland and the importance of different services in our everyday lives e.g. doctors, shops, fire service etc.

In Art and Design, the children have been continuing to develop their use of different colours, textures and other media to create their art. Our recent Katie Morag inspired island scenes are of an excellent standard and reflect the huge creative talent within this class.