Year ahead

2. Daily Routines
• Know and Grow
– This is a time to build relationships with the pupils. It is not a time
for play.
– Know and Grow will have a focus each day.
• Playtime– please makesure children have suitableplay
pieces. Try to encourage healthysnacks.
• Children are encouraged to bring water.

3. WeeklyRoutines
• Wehave a variedtimetable, including all areas of the curriculum, with links made
between different areas.
• Music with Mrs Brockie –Wednesday
• PE – 2 hours of quality PE – Tuesday (class teacher)and Wednesday (Miss Power– PE
specialist)
• P6/5 will also have involvement from Cricket Scotland beginning Tuesday 31st October
running for 4 weeks.
• Art with Miss Cairns- Friday
– Pleaseensure pupilsarefullypreparedwith fullgym kits(Shorts,T-shirts,indoorgym shoes)
– Jewellery shouldnotbewornongym daysandhairshouldbetied up.
– Children couldbring in apaintingt shirttokeep uniformclean.

4. Family Time
• FamilyTime is the last Friday of every month.
• 2.15-2.45pm
• Pleaseensure you leave on thebellat 2.50pm as this allows
pupils to get organised for theend of theday.
• Fire Safety (fire drillprocedures- children to lineup without
parents- children out first.)

5. Class Rules
• Class rules have been decided with the pupils who created them through
discussions in class.
• Theyare displayed in the classroom and all children are awareof and
reminded of rules.
• Traffic lights are used throughout the school as Behaviour Management.
We also use a restorative approach.
• Children should have traffic lights marked in homework diaries at the
end of each day.
• Group points, house points can be earned by positive behaviour.

6. Absences
• Althoughwe encouragepupils tobe in school every day weknow
absencesare inevitablethroughout a school year.
• If your child isabsentpleasecontactthe schoolto letthemknow
why.
• Once your child returns toschoolpleaseprovide a writtennoteto
explaintheirabsence.(Pleasedateandsign- can bein diaries)

7. Communication
• I hope you can approach me if you have any concerns or
commentsabout your child’s timein school.
• Pleaseuse the home school diaries as the first approach to
communication.
• It is not possible to speak to all parents at theschool door at
9/3 o’clock.
• Letters are now electronic and sentto e-mails.

8. Literacy
• Literacyis a bigpartofthe curriculum.
• Weareusing activeliteracythroughouttheschool.
• Phonics/Spelling –Childrenworkonspelling daily.4 week spelling blocks(1 and2basedarounda sound,3
and4arecommonwordsandspelling rules)
• Handwriting –forming lettersis SOimportant!!.
• Writing (imaginative,personalandfunctional).
• Listening and talking….ALLTHE TIME!!
• Word of theDay
• Reading –Will comehome withchildren. Workingin groupsusing activeliteracyforcomprehension.
Comprehensionis asimportantasfluencyandexpression!
• Bookswill comehome weekly orsometimesover a fewweeks depending on thereading stageandlength of
book.
• Free reading andwriting -during knowandgrowtimes.

9. Maths
Inmaths wehave differentfocus areas.
- time,shape,money, datahandling,measure,andofcourse
number,additionand subtraction.
All numeracylessons begin with MathsBlast.
The children willhavetimes where theyarewritingandusingtext books,buttheywillalsobe
using thecomputer,playinggames (boughtand made),usingmagneticnumbers,whiteboards,
bingoetc. The list is endless!
• Thinking Thursday-Problem solving activities ona Thursday.Children have tohave agrowth
mindset!
• Wordof theweek- Mathsvocabularyis important.Discussed anddisplayedforchildren tosee.

10. IDL (InterdisciplinaryLearning)
• IDL is a context for learning across the curriculum.
• The children are involved in choosing what they would like to learn and
how they would like to learn it.
• We have started the year with a novel study, we are reading “Gangsta
Granny” as a class. This is a great way to develop literacy skills as well as
many other curricular areas.
• Next term children will choose IDL from outcomes.

11. Homework
• Activity and skills grid for upper school.
• 74.2% of pupils and 80% of parents preferred skills grid.
• Tasks can be differentiated.
• Links withGraeme Clusterskills progression.
• Children can share with theclass.

12. Our Goals in P6/5
• Encouraging independence.
• Building resilience.
• Taking responsibility. (catching up on work if absent)
• Be confident in our own abilities.
• Work hard and have a growth mind set.
• LearningPartners

13. Class Twitter
• As a class we have a twitterpage where thechildren’s
learning will be shared.
• Username: P6/5 and MrsCraik
• @WestquarterP5_4
https://twitter.com/Westquarter P5_4
• Our school twitter is
• https://twitter.com/WestquarterPrim
• @WestquarterPrim

14. Glossary of UsefulTerms
• phonics – another namefor the learningof “sounds”
• phoneme – a single unit of sound, e.g. ‘c’ incat.
• grapheme – the written letter
• blending – stretching out each individual sound so that it almost runsinto the next, e.g. c-a-t= cat.
• number bond -two numbersthat go together to makeanother number,e.g. 6+4=10 (this is called a ‘number
bond of 10’)
• Metalinguistics – using the rest of a sentence to makemeaning of unfamiliarwords.
• Assessment- Teacher,peer or child markingtheir own workagainst success criteria.
• Learning intention – the purpose of our lessons
• Success criteria – the things weneed to do to meet our Learning intention
• VCOP– Vocabulary, Connectives ,Openers, Punctuation

15. Thank you for coming
I lookforward to a successful year
workingwith you and your child. 
Therewill be a survey available via twitter
for you to evaluate the effectiveness of
this evening.