Welcome to Primary 3

We hope you had a lovely summer! We know that the children will be looking forward to seeing their friends again. We will be doing lots of activities which will help your child settle back into routine again. We will regularly publish information and pictures via Seesaw, so remember to keep looking out for these updates. It’s a good way of keeping in touch with your child’s learning and progress.

We also welcome our new team members Miss McPeake (P3CM), Mrs Blaney and Miss Campbell (P3CMC).

Please ensure that your child has everything they need for their school day.

• Healthy break in a disposable bag (name on the bag)
• 2 sharpened HB pencils
• 1 Pritt stick (white)
• 1 rubber
• 1 sharpener
• Pencil case
• A 12 pack of colouring pencils
• Box of tissues

Homework

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights the children will have:

• Reading
• Spellings
• Tables

Written Homeworks:

Monday: Literacy homework (game or written activity)

Wednesday: Numeracy homework (game or written activity)

Thursday: Make a special effort to revise tables and spellings for the Friday Test the next day.

We thought you might appreciate these Homework Hints.

Preparation

Your child will need:

• A quiet place
• A flat surface
• A sharp pencil, a rubber
• Time-don’t leave homework until it’s late

Once your child has completed his/her homework, please make sure you sign it.

Tips for learning spellings

1. Look at the words
2. Say them
3. Cover them
4. Write them
5. Check them

Have your child spend some time learning spellings for him/herself. Teach them to use these steps.

Ask your child to write down the words as you call them out.

Make sure they have completed the spellings section in their Spelling Booklets.

Learning Tables

• Have your child say or write tables at least 3 times
• Jumble up the order of the tables
• Ask some ‘quick fire’ questions to develop good mental maths skills

Reading

It is important to practise reading aloud. Choose a few pages to read aloud, focusing on fluency and expression.

Discuss what your child has read and sign the reading log book.

Jan - Feb

We hope you have had a wonderful Christmas break and that Santa was kind to all of you!

Here are some of the things we plan to do until Easter.

Our new theme is called ‘Time for a Change’ and within this we are going to discuss and decide on

• Personal changes that we can all make (yes, those dreaded New Year’s Resolutions)
• Changes in weather- making weather charts, writing and presenting weather reports and learning about wicked weather- tornadoes, tsunami etc.
• Changes in animals- how they grow and develop – lifecycles and metamorphosis
• Changes in plants as they grow.
• Changes in substances – steam to water to ice
• What happens when we cook food? – E.g. baking, toasting, melting, freezing etc.

Please send in anything you think might ‘link-in’ with this theme – books, pictures etc.

Numeracy

This term we will be continuing to learn tables each night so children have quick recall of number facts. We will focus on subtraction in our number work and incorporate a good deal of practical work to develop good understanding initially. We will then use our knowledge of subtraction to then find change from amounts of money e.g. 10p, 20p and 50p.

We are aiming to know our numbers to 100. We should be able to count to this number and recognise all numbers in written form. We will use little ‘word problems’ to help your child develop problem solving skills and decide whether to add or subtract to get the correct answer. Please help them with this at home by giving them little puzzles to work out for themselves.

In measures we will do some activities involving weighing things (hopefully not the teachers!) and measuring liquids. They will become more familiar with terms like ‘heavier’ ‘lightest’ and ‘half-full’ ‘empty’. We will also measure lengths and use non-standard measures to do this. From this the children will see the need to have a standard measurement and we will introduce terms such as ‘shorter than a metre’ and ‘longer than a metre’.

Please help your child learn the months of the year and if you want to teach them the little rhyme:

‘30 days has September,

April, June and November.

All the rest have 31

Except February alone,

Which has 28 days clear

And 29 in each leap year.’

Time - we have already learned how to tell the time using the analogue clock so now we will move on to introduce reading time on a digital clock. Encourage your child to read the time from a digital clock e.g. an alarm clock.

 Literacy

We continue to learn about alphabetical order- putting lists of words into alphabetical order and how to use a dictionary. Continue to check that your child knows the alphabet and can use a dictionary to search for words.

In Grammar, we will revise terms such as adjectives and nouns. We will learn what verbs and adverbs are and how to use and recognise them in sentences. Good punctuation and handwriting are both essential as always in every piece of written work.

Please continue to check your child is using these skills properly in their written homework.

Our literacy focus this year is ‘writing’. Read to your children, encourage them to read independently as this helps to develop their creativity, gives them good examples of how to write in a way that effectively communicates their ideas and helps with spelling.

Thank-you for your continued support,

C. Montgomery and C. McConnell