Term 3

Week Beginning 23rd March 2026

Hello everyone,

This might be the last blog of the term as I will be heading off straight after school next week. While it has been a long term, it is incredible how quickly it has passed. Time really does fly in P3/4!

We have been working on all the magic e sounds in spelling and encouraging the children to break longer words into syllables. In handwriting, we continued with our joins, linking l to a. This was a little tricky at first, but with practice we are almost all there.

We completed our Magic Box poems, and that fabulous imagination was evident again this week.

In maths, we continued our work on fractions, finding ¼ by using concrete materials to make four equal groups.

We had our last hockey session in PE, and I am delighted to say we have had next to no knocks. The children were fantastic, using the hockey sticks in a safe and controlled way.

We listened to the Easter story and talked about the significance of the cross in Christianity, then made a cross on a hill in art. We also started painting blossom trees—you can see us busy in the photos. They really are a class of fantastic artists.

I am really looking forward to hearing the talks next week. Apparently, some have jokes in theirs!

I hope you all enjoy the weekend.

Ishbal Reid

Week Beginning 16th March 2026

Hello there,

This week turned out to be busier than expected, with a couple of exciting visitors coming into school. The children took part in taster sessions for Kung Fu and tennis, and they enjoyed both experiences. Information about these clubs has been sent home.

In maths, we began learning about fractions. We explored wholes and parts, learning that fractions are always made up of equal parts. The children learned to recognise a half and a quarter and discovered that the denominator shows how many equal parts the whole has been divided into.

In spelling, we have been working on magic e, where the ‘e’ at the end of a word changes the vowel sound to its name. For example, in rat → rate, the ‘a’ changes to the long A sound.

We read and listened to The Magic Box, a poem by Kit Wright, and then began writing our own versions. The children’s imaginations were in overdrive—our boxes contained everything from tutus to flying cars!

In art we made trees using shape.  The patience and care the children showed, paying close attention to detail, was quite incredible, and the results were amazing, as you can see.

We also enjoyed some lovely time outside in the sunshine for PE today, which was very welcome after another busy week.

I hope you all enjoy the weekend,

Ishbal Reid

Week Beginning 9 March 2026

Hello everyone,

STEM Week has been busy, with lots of exciting activities for the whole school. We started the week by building a LEGO Ness Castle City. As we were first in, we had the pick of the bricks!

Rae’s dad came in to talk to us about his job as a structural engineer. We drew very tall towers and then had a go at building our own using spaghetti and marshmallows. This led to a big clean-up operation — we were still finding small bits of pasta on Friday!

We took part in a Senses Workshop with Ana from UHI. She led some great activities that showed us how our senses take in information, sometimes giving us a distorted view of the world around us.

We also carried out our own experiments to test which materials were waterproof. We learned new vocabulary such as transparent, opaque, waterproof, and absorbent.

P7 demonstrated their drones, which was exciting to watch. They made it look very easy to fly them in and out of various obstacles. Our visit to the Planetarium was very special — we were able to lie back and be taken on a journey through the night sky, looking at different constellations. We also learned about the first moon walk by Neil Armstrong.

Alongside all of this, we fitted in maths puzzles, reading, and time work — a very full week indeed!

I hope you all have a great weekend.

Ishbal Reid

Week Beginning 2 March 2026

Hello there,

This week has been all about our class assembly and a little of World Book Day! Thanks very much to those who were able to come along to the see the children. We have been busy practising all week and it was worth it to see the children’s excitement when they saw their audience.  

We did a lot of work on speaking clearly so I was really proud of them today – especially as some were apprehensive. Frankie nailed it when she wrote ‘I was nervous at the start, brave in the middle and happy when it was over.’

We fitted in a little bit of our usual routine around rehearsals with more hockey games in PE, some work on time where we were counting the minutes past in 5s and handwriting.

With STEM week coming up, the class helped sort huge quantities of Lego which had been donated to Highland Hospice. We are running a Lego workshop next week to build Ness Castle City and children will hopefully have the chance to buy the models they make with any money raised going to the Hospice.

World Book Day was bright and colourful. We did a few book related activities (and an assembly practice) and Mr Ross come in to read a story with them.

Parents’ night appointment slips went home on Wednesday so please make sure you have retrieved them from the school bags. There was only one left on the cloakroom floor! Please do let me know if you can’t find your time.

There is a photo of 2 parent bubbles which had no name: please let me know if you recognise them.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend,

Kind regards,

Ishbal Reid

Hello there,

It’s been another good week in P3/4. We have started practising our class assembly, which will take place next Friday, 6 March, at 9:30am. We hope to see you there. This week, we had the chance to be an audience for P4’s rehearsal and saw and heard how important it is to speak loudly and clearly. We will be working hard on that next week.

We have been doing more work on time and are becoming very confident with o’clock, quarter past, half past, and quarter to, on both analogue and digital clocks. Sometimes we get tricked by the change on a digital clock when it is quarter to the hour. For example, quarter to 9 is 8:45, rather than 9:45. I have explained that this is because it is 45 minutes past 8 and not yet 9 o’clock.

Clocks and pens went home for homework this week; I would really appreciate it if any that are still at home could be returned on Monday.

We have been recapping our digraphs and common words, and we wrote stories about getting lost. Our joined writing is coming along nicely, although it can be quite tricky to get those joins in the right place.

In art, we used watercolour paints and wax resist to create some beautiful spring flowers—please see the photos attached. They look amazing on the wall. They really are a great class of artists.

It is World Book Day next Thursday; please check the school app for details.

Please make sure your child has indoor shoes suitable for PE. I sent them all home over the long weekend for size checking, and not all children have brought them back yet.

Please also return response sheets for parents' nights as we will be allocating appointments next week - thank you. 

I hope your weekend is off to a good start.

Kind regards,
Ishbal Reid

Week Beginning 9 February 2026

Thank you to everyone who was able to attend our open afternoon. It was a fairly quiet session in our classroom, as many of the children were at OJ, which I understand may have made it more difficult to attend.

This week was Children’s Mental Health Week, during which we explored feelings and ways to support our mental health through stories and activities. We spent an afternoon with P4 and Mr Ross sharing ideas about what helps us when we are feeling sad, upset, or cross. The children then wrote or drew strategies that work for them on leaves, which we added to our class tree. It was lovely to spend time sharing ideas with the other class.

In phonics, we focused on the ‘ear’ blend and completed spelling assessments. We also practised using past and present tenses, particularly irregular verbs. Building on our setting descriptions of the school at night, the children wrote imaginative stories about being in school after hours. As I write this, I am really hoping there was no wandering off after the Valentine’s disco!

Miss Adair was in class on Wednesday morning and began work on the water cycle. In PE, we played games to practise our hockey dribbling skills.

And we have made it to the long weekend! I hope you all have some time to relax and enjoy a well-earned break.

Kind regards,
Ishbal Reid

Week beginning 2 February 2026

I hope you have all had a good week. It has been a quick one here, even though it has been a full week for me. We have packed a lot into our week: phonics, reading, handwriting, art, PE and more.

The Scots Poetry competition was apparently great – I was sorry to have missed the performances. Well done to Rae, Elliot and Archie for making it through the heats – it was very hard to choose just three.

We have been practising our expression with the poem The Sound Collector, and it is sounding great. We have also started learning a new song to add to our repertoire. You may already have heard it at home, as we all agreed it is very catchy! Some of the girls have even performed clapping rhythms to accompany the music.

In literacy, we have been focusing on using verbs in the past and present tense and applying this learning in our writing. The class wrote fantastic descriptions of what our school would be like at night. All our work on sentence structure and vocabulary is really paying off.

In maths, we have been working on addition, exchanging ones for tens and tens for hundreds. This has been a little tricky, but with practice we are getting the hang of it. We have also been practising telling the time on both analogue and digital clocks.

In art, we continued exploring shade and tone, as well as different sketching techniques such as cross-hatching and stippling. The children are learning to use the full range of drawing pencils effectively.

In RME, we discussed the basic tenets of Hinduism and compared them with aspects of Christianity. The gold and silver pens came out as we added detail to our work on Brahman.

Primary 3 also enjoyed a multi-sports lunchtime session led by Sports Leaders from the IRA. There were plenty of red faces returning to class after lunch on Thursday!

Can you please ensure that your child has suitable shoes for PE.

I hope you have a good weekend,

Kind regards,

Ishbal Reid

Week beginning 26 January 2026

Dear Parents,

It was a short week for me. Mr Connon and Mrs Maclean are covering the class tomorrow, and Mrs Beaton will be back in on Friday.

The children did a super job with their Scots poems – thank you for all your support at home. Most of them were very nervous but managed to push through and perform extremely well. There was, of course, some disappointment, as not everyone could progress to the next heat.

In PE, we played a variety of team games. We are focusing on fair play, even when it means we don’t do as well as we hoped. This can be a tough lesson for some, but it will be a common thread going forward.

We returned to our work on addition this week and found that we needed a little more practice with setting out our work clearly in our jotters.

In art, we began learning more about our drawing pencils and how to use them in different ways to create tone, including cross-hatching, stippling, and short dashes. Tomorrow, the class will use these skills to shade a line drawing of Robert Burns. I’m looking forward to seeing the results next week.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend,

Ishbal Reid

Week beginning 19 January 2026

Dear Parents,

We have had a great week in class. We read and have put actions to The Sound Collector by Roger McGough. ( Roger McGough reads 'The Sound Collector') It is one of the poems we hope to learn of by heart this term. We have also been practising our Scots poems which are really coming together. I would encourage everyone to continue practising over the weekend to ensure the children are as confident as they can be to recite them in class next week.

The class put all the work we did last term into fantastic story settings. Please do highlight interesting vocabulary to them as you read together as it all feeds back into their literacy tasks.

We have finished our work on 2D and 3D shape; it can be a little tricky to remember the difference between edges and vertices, but we will come back to that before the year is out.

The children really enjoyed the session with Highland Ballers. They are planning on running an after school session at Ness Castle; please check their website for further information: www.highlandballers.co.uk.

The class have spent most of Thursday with Mrs Beaton to allow me to have planning time. She really enjoyed her day. It is lovely to get a really positive report from supply teachers – she thought they were great! She is back next Friday as I can only do my usual days next week. I will be back to a full time week the week after.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend,

Kind regards,

Ishbal Reid

Week beginning 10 January 2026

Dear Parents,

Happy new year to you all; I hope you all enjoyed the festive period. We have hit the ground running and have had a busy week. We have a few loose ends to finish in maths as I didn’t appreciate how much time the nativity would take up when we were planning last term. We have been finishing our shape work looking at the properties of 2D shapes and lines of symmetry.

We wrote fantastic descriptions of settings using imaginative vocabulary: we had phrases like ‘towering gloomy trees’; ‘trees swaying gently in the wind’; ‘the path was curving left and right’. I was very impressed at the effort everyone put in.

In PE, we started a unit on hockey skills learning how to use the hockey sticks to control the ball.

We have started a new art piece – some of us did get in a pickle with the masking tape! We will be bringing out the paint next week. I have included photos of our snowmen from last week 

I am going to be with the class full time for the next few weeks while staffing is being arranged to cover Ms Traill’s days; this will make things consistent for the children. However, I have had to leave today to attend a funeral so Miss Bell is in this afternoon and there is a supply teacher covering tomorrow.

Have a lovely weekend when it comes,

Ishbal Reid