Primary 3

Term 4, Week 8

We had a fantastic week last week and the week before when we went on our class trip to the Highland Folk Museum. Thankfully, the weather was great for our visit and we were able to explore the full site, got to play in the park and had a lovely experience of old fashioned schooling when we visited Knockbain School. We even did a handwriting lesson using dip pens. Thanks so much to our parent helpers for attending and giving up their time to join us on the trip.

Sports day was a great success and what a super job all of our pupils did of participating in the different activities across the day, despite it being rather cold. You must have all been exhausted after the Baillie Cup, Sports Day and then our class trip! 

This week we revised place value in numeracy, were learning about contractions in spelling (I'm, she's, he's didn't etc), wrote thank you letters to the Highland Folk Museum and continued with our work on similarities and differences. 

Term 4, Week 7

Homework

In keeping with the rest of the school, there will be no homework sent home during the month of June, however, I will continue to send reading books home to allow your child to practise reading at home. We will continue to work on spelling within class as normal.

Class Trip - Thursday 6th June

We are very excited about the class trip and really hope the weather will be nice for us. Please remember to send in a packed lunch with your child (unless you specified on your consent form that your child would be ordering one from school), a water bottle, appropriate clothing and footwear for the weather, sunscreen, sun hat and that they come to school dressed in their school uniform, so they are easily identifiable on the trip. As noted in the letter home, we will not be visiting the gift shop or cafe, so please don't send money in with your child. Please also note that we plan to return to school by 3pm, but if there are any anticipated delays, this will be communicated via the parent school app.

Sports Day

We look forward to welcoming parents and guardians to come and watch our sports day tomorrow morning. There will be potted sports from 9:30-10:45, followed by a break and then races will commence at around 11 until 12noon. Fingers crossed the rain stays away for us! Please send your child to school wearing their house colour (they were reminded of these today in class) and with a snack and water bottle.

Baillie Cup

Well done to Ness Castle pupils for their hard work during training and today at the event. We look forward to hearing all about it. Thank you also to Miss MacIsaac, Mrs Ewen, Miss Munro and Mrs Mudie for running the training, organising the event and attending on the day, and all the parents/guardians who kindly took their children to the event. 

Term 4, Week 6

We moved onto Volume and Capacity in maths, learning about making sensible guesses and estimating and checking measurements in ml, litres and half litres. We learned that there are 1000ml in a litre, 500ml in half a litre and had lots of fun exploring and getting a little messy in the water tray. In literacy, we continued to practise our spelling through various games, worked hard on our Learner's Statements ahead of them going out with reports this Friday and developed our listening and talking skills with our IDL topic, where we looked at Similarities and Differences between ourselves and others.

Thanks to those of you that have sent baby and family pictures in with homework. These are being kept very safe and I will make copies of them and return the originals into next week, once we have more photos from children who would like to participate. As the homework said, we will do a matching activity, looking for similarites and differences between family members and talk about inherited similarities. This should be a fun activity and I have already enjoyed seeing the very cute baby photos that have come in so far! Thank you!

Mr Thomson returned to lead the Kodaly music sessions and will meet with us every Thursday  until the end of term. 

Term 4, Week 5

This week we have been learning about weight in class and estimating and checking the weight of objects within the classroom, recording our predictions and results as we go. We have explored balance to see which items weigh the same and have been looking at reading scales. We also learned that there are 1000 grams in 1 kilogram.

Nessie came to join us for our learning this week, but with the P7s going on their residential to Loch Insh, they kindly asked if they could borrow Nessie to join them on their adventure and promised to return them to us. We have been hearing all about the activities and the fun they all got up to. Thank you for taking Nessie with you.

We have continued with our Well-being Wednesday lunch time club and have opened it out to all P3s and P4s. Your child is welcome to attend on a day that they feel like joining. We have learned some relaxing yoga, some calming breathing techniques and are continuing to enjoy our mindful colouring. Mrs Ewen and I are noticing just how calm and relaxed everyone is in these sessions and how much the children are enjoying chatting and asking each other about their day and how they feel. 

This coming Friday (24th May) will be Mr Munro's (our student teacher) last day with us in P3. We will be sad to see him go, as he has brought lots of energy, fun and of course, wonderful learning experiences. We do hope he will keep in touch and we wish him all the very best as he goes on to become a qualified teacher.

Thank you for continuing to send your child into school with suncream on/in their bag. Please also remember to send in a bottle of water so that they can stay well hydrated throughout the school day. 

Mrs Tulloch

Term 4, Week 4

We held our Nessie Natter Groups on the Tuesday, instead of the usual Friday slots. I was lucky to join the Outdoor Spaces Nessie Natter group, where Mrs Ewen had arranged for a special visitor to come and join us to help us hunt for bugs in the playground. We then used special brushes to gently brush bugs into see-through pots with magnifying glasses on the lids, to examine mini-beasts that we found in our playground. It was lots of fun and fascinating. It was a joy to see younger children being supported by older children and all had such big smiles on their faces!

In P3, we continued to work on fractions in numeracy, playing fraction snap, doing some textbook work to consolidate learning and using play-doh to create fractions. We looked at characters in writing and used a picture to spark our imagination and help create a main character who was going to go on a special adventure. These were super, well done. We have continued to develop tennis skills in PE and learned about Piet Mondarin in art and created one of his bold art pieces.

Wellbeing Wednesday

P3 and P4 have a new lunchtime club until the summer holidays on a Wednesday. In this club, children are invited to play games, do mindful activities or colouring, learn relaxation and breathing techniques and have a nice time in a relaxed environment with their peers. We trialled it with a small group last week, but going forward, I would like to offer it to all of P3 to attend as and when they wish.

Mrs Tulloch

Term 4, Week 3

Just a wee reminder that there will be no additional homework sent home this week, with in-service day and holiday giving us 'shorter weeks'. Your child's reading book will be the same this week, for the same reason. I hope you all made the most of the lovely weather during the long weekend.

Mrs Tulloch

Term 4, weeks 1 and 2

We hit the ground running in the first week back, focussing on revising time, days of the weeks and months of the year in numeracy and in literacy, we were taking notes under headings. In IDL, we continued our Charlie and The Chocolate Factory/Healthy Living topic and learned about the human body. We learned about organs and their functions and worked in groups, taking notes under our assigned heading/organ, then shared the facts we found with the class.  We have continued to improve our fitness in PE, working in teams and encouraging each other to try our hardest!

In week 2, we moved onto persuasive writing, playing games such as 'Would You Rather...' and 'Two Truths and a Lie' to develop our vocabulary around persuasion, to help support out writing. We will begin working on fractions in numeracy and continue to work on learning about health and families within IDL.

Baillie Cup - well done to all the children who worked so hard and tried out for this. The teams have now been selected and letters sent home on Friday. 

Homework and Reading Books - homework was sent home on Monday along with the current book your child is reading in class. These will be sent home everyday with your child, but please remember to send them back into school daily, as they are used most days during literacy lessons. It would be helpful if you could keep the books in the plastic sleeves I provided, to protect them from getting damaged. We understand accidents happen, but please ensure water bottles are secure, so the books don't get water damage in school bags. 

If you could read with your child at home, this would have a great benefit to them in their literacy. Ask them questions about their book, support them with tricky words and if you have any questions, pop a wee note in for me.

PE days - please ensure your child has their PE kit on a Monday and Tuesday.

Please see above some photos of term 4 so far and some photos from the last week of term 3.

Mrs Tulloch

Term 3, Week 10

Thank you so much for all of you who were able to attend parents' evening this week. It was lovely to meet with you and discuss your child's learning. 

We have been continuing to learn about divsion in numeracy and have been practising sharing equally between 2, 3 and 4. We have learned the link between multiplication and have looked at the inverse operation and fact families. Lots of excellent strategies being used in P3. 

We continued with ball skills and throwing/rolling in PE and team games to get our hearts pumping and healthy. We have been learning about healthy eating and will continue to explore what is healthy and why.

P3 got very creative and made Oompa Loompa's with a difference, look closely at their faces! We are really enjoying all the creative opportunities with our IDL topic, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! See the pictures below of our learning this week.

Mrs Tulloch

Term 3, Week 9 - World Book Week

What a busy week between class/individual photos and World Book Week. There were lots of activities planned for the whole school to participate in. We had DEAR (Drop Everything and Read), paired reading with P7, reading outside, Author's Live, a Book Hunt and much more. Not to mention, Read Your Way on Thursday, when you could come to school dressed in your PJs, onesie or as your favourite book character. I was sad to miss that!

Thank you for returning you Parents' Evening appoinment slips. I sent out your appointment time on Tuesday and I look forward to meeting you all and talking about your child's learning. 

Here are some photos from World Book Week.

Mrs Tulloch

Home Learning

Just a wee note to say that going forward, homework will be given out on a Monday and should be returned on a Friday. Apologies for this being a little inconsistent over the last few weeks, with school closures etc, it has been a little bit muddled. Sorry for any confusion.  

Term 3, Week 4

Last week, we enjoyed buddy reading, being mini-teachers and marking each other's work (green for go, pink to make you think), we visited the Nessie Nook and enjoyed improving our fitness during circuits in PE. We also played team games to get ourselves moving and active. We enjoyed building some great 'wee' houses and explored different textures in the class by using paper and rubbing a crayon over different surfaces we found in our classroom.

We also wrote an excellent adventure story about a 'Little Boat'. Some people's boat went on an adventure to a far away jungle, filled with monkeys and wild animals. We have been focussing on improving our punctuation in writing, remembering capital letters, full stops and finger spaces.

Mrs Tulloch

Term 3, Week 3

After all the excitement of our school closure days due to the snow, P3 returned ready and raring to go on Monday. It was a fantastic week of learning the Scots' language poem 'Dentist', by JK Annand, ahead of Burns Night on Thursday 25th January. P3 did an astonishing job of memorising this poem. So much so, that it was too hard to choose which three P3 pupils would perform it at assembly on Friday. We had to choose randomly using lollipop sticks. P3 did very well to learn the words of the poem but also the meaning. We translated the Scots' language from the poem in pairs and then as a whole class. 

P3 have been enjoying building and discovering in class. Have a look at some of their 'builds'. Mr Connon taught P3 how to make tartan kilts - great job! We visited the Nessie Nook and read some books and also got messy painting our spelling words. A very busy week!

Mrs Tulloch

Home Learning - Term 3, Week 2

This week for home learning, I would like you to learn/memorise the Scots' Poem 'DENTIST', by JK Annand. As it is Burns Night on the 25th January, we are celebrating this at Ness Castle School by learning a poem that has been written in Scots' Language. 

Your task is to remember this poem, and 3 children will be picked as finalists to perform at assembly next Friday. Here is the link to the poem: Dentist, by JK Annand.

We will be learning more about the poem and what it means in class over the next week.

No spelling words will be sent home this week.

Mrs Tulloch

Dates for the Diary/Letters gone home

• Friday 26th January - Dress Down Day - A Touch of Tartan/Scottish theme

• Monday 19th and Tuesday 20th February - Holiday

• Wednesday 21st February - In-Service Day

Celebrating Achievements

We love to celebrate all of our achievements in P3 - both in school and out of school! If your child has any successes in out of school activities such as swimming, dancing, or any type of extra curricular feel free to send in a photo to go on our class Wow Wall and Nessie Novel. 😆

Extra Information

P.E days - Monday and Tuesday. Please ensure your child has a sensible change of clothes on these days. This could include a change of t-shirt, shorts, leggings, socks, or shoes.