William Pinkerton Memorial Primary School

PRIMARY 4 & 5

CLASS OF 2024-2025

Class Teacher: Miss Marshall 

Classroom Assistants: Mrs. C McCaw and Mrs. L McNeill

Welcome to Primary 4/5!

In P4/5, we are taught by Miss Marshall and our Classroom Assistants are Mrs. McCaw and Mrs. McNeill. We have a busy year ahead and lots to learn!

Happy New Year! In World Around Us our Term 2 class topic is 'Winter Survival.'  What an interesting topic where we will learn all about how different animals survive through the winter.

We will:

• Explore our seasons and find out why we have different types of weather throughout the year.
• Look at seasons around the world - the northern and souther hemispheres and polar day/night in arctic regions.
• Explore how and why some animals hibernate and create a class art project based on this.
• Learn about animals who migrate - why do they do this and where do they go? We will be espeically focusing on the swallow's journey.
• Learn about the continent of Antarctica and learn about the greatest story of survival - the Emperor penguin.
• Create some winter-themed artwork e.g. using chalk to sketch the southern lights and use watercolour paints to paint some winter landscapes.
• Develop our ICT skills by using Just2Easy, Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, BookCreator and create some videos using Apple Clips.

In Literacy this term, we are enjoying reading our class novels, 'The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark' and 'The Penguin Who Wanted to Find Out' by Jill Tomlinson. We have based our Literacy learning around our class novel and our topic 'Winter Survival.'

We will:

• Write some winter haikus and exploring a variety of poetic devices such as alliteration and personification.
• Developed our creative writing through using resources such as Pobble365 - learning how we can write 4A sentences and use adverbs and verbs effectively
• Carry out some topic-based research using fact books and online resources
• Write a report about the swallow's migration
• Explore procedural writing and write instructions for building a snowman
• Write a report about the life cycle of the Emperor Penguin
• Write a diary entry based on the journey of Ernest Shackleton

We are also continuing to build on our understanding of a variety of grammar and punctuation rules such as exploring a range of homophones, speech marks and adverbs.

We have set new Accelerated Reader targets and are working hard towards these.

In Maths this term, we will be exploring money, multiplying and dividing, area and perimeter, fractions, time and data handling.

Some of the activities we will be completing:

• Exploring pounds and pence, converting between these and solving a variety of money word problems.
• Continuing to work on our multiplication and division facts, explore fact families and begin to use written methods for multiplying a two-digit number by a single digit number.
• Learn how to calculate the area and perimeter of rectangles and squares using the formula area=length x width.
• Explore fractions of shapes and numbers - halves, quarters, eigths.
• Tell the time on an analogue and digital clock to the nearest 5 minutes.
• Read, interpret and create a variety of graphs linked to our class topic e.g. bar charts, pictograms and pie charts and use Just2Easy to create our own.

In World Around Us our Term 1 class topic is 'Mighty Me.'  What a fun and exciting topic where we will learn all about our bodies, how they work and how to keep them healthy.

We will:

• Appreciate and celebrate how we are all unique.
• Create some lovely art pieces celebrating ourselves such as self-portraits and looking at the work of Keith Haring.
• Explore how we grow from babies to adults and understand how we change and become more responsible as we get older.
• Explore how our bodies function and learn the names and jobs of some key organs such as the brain and heart.
• Learn about our bones and write a report on the human skeleton.
• Learn how to keep our bodies healthy - our physical and mental health. - through food and exercise.
• Identify some of the key nutrients our bodies need to survive.
• Understand the importance of looking after our teeth,
• Understand the importance of using medicines safely.

In Literacy this half term, we are enjoying reading our class novel, 'George's Marvellous Medicine'. We have based our Literacy learning around our class novel and our topic 'Mighty Me.'

We will:

• Write a description of ourselves - 'I'm Special'. 
• Developed our sentence writing by using adjectives.
• Explore acrostic poems and write our own using our name.
• Explore our five senses and write a sensory poem about Autumn.
• Explore the features of writing a character description based on characters from our class novel.
• Read the short story 'Funnybones' as a springboard for narrative writing.
• Write a report about the human skeleton.
• Explore procedural writing and write a recipe for fruit kebabs and healthy pizzas.
• Design a new medicine

We are also learning how to identify and use a variety of grammar and punctuation rules such as: identifying nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs, capital letters, full stops and commas, apostrophes and plurals. 

We love having opportunities to use the Accelerated Reader programme to enhance our reading and comprehension.

In Maths this term, we will be exploring place value, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, length, 2d/3d shape and calendar work. 

Some of the activities we will be completing:

• Recognising numerals, words and solving problems with numbers up to 9999.
• Rounding to the nearest 10,100, 1000. 
• Use Base 10 to explore carrying over and exchanging when adding and subtracting. 
• Play a variety of times table and division games such as, TT Rockstars, Hit the Button, table splat and other board games. 
• Explore methods for written multiplication and P5 will learn how to multiply by 10 and 100.
• Go on a shape hunt around school and use the BookCreator app to showcase our learning. 
• Design a wanted poster for a 2D shape of our choice.
• Use a variety of tools such as, a metre stick and trundle wheel to measure length within our classroom. 
• Measure our height in metres and centimetres.
• Learn a variety of rhymes and methods to remember the months of the year and solve problems involving our calendar. 

Some of our other classroom routines include:

• Multisensory spelling carousel activities to help us learn our weekly spellings.
• Using Accelerated Reader to develop our reading and comprehension skills. 
• Daily mental maths and literacy practice to improve retention of concepts covered in class.
• Philosophy4Children lessons and activities to develop our thinking skills and talking and listening.
• Children have access to our class 'Calm Corner' and MoodTracker tablet. 

Other areas of learning include: ICT, PDMU, Community of Enquiry (P4C),  P.E., Handwriting, Art, Technology and Design, Music, Drama and R.E.

Here are some photos of what we have been doing in P4/5 recently.