A message from Ms MacDonald:

As you can imagine there is considerable pressure on Highland Council bandwidth so Head Teachers have decided to stagger registration to see whether it makes an impact. Our school is 11am for registration from tomorrow. As you can imagine there is no precedent for this and there will be a great deal of trial and adjustment ongoing.

I am hoping that you have all had a chance to read Ms MacDonald’s message on the main school blog about the use of Google Classroom.

The only expectation for this week was that the children should register. I am just posting a short activity each day to gauge which children can confidently access the classroom.

The invite to comment should not be treated like a chatroom. Once your child has registered and had a quick look at the task, please encourage them to leave the classroom and do something else. Ms MacDonald has a host of good ideas, and don’t forget the Learning Hub at https://www.digilearnhighland.co.uk/

Thanks for your understanding.

Dear Primary 3,

I know you will all be feeling differently about being away from school for a bit, because you are all individuals and that is what I love about spending time with you. I am going to miss seeing your cheery faces, but Miss Gray will be in touch with you every school day through our Google Classroom. I am excited about being able to work on my computer and technology skills with you! I’ll pop some fun tasks on for you to try next week until we all get used to our new classroom.

Dear Primary 3 Parents,

Please keep up to date with the main blog posts, which will keep you informed of all current developments and how we are working together to best support your child in their learning at home. As staff we will be communicating with Miriam, and each other, daily.

The children were given the chance to access our Google Classroom yesterday – many thanks to Miss Earnshaw and Primary 6 for supporting us with this. Please don’t worry if your child was absent, as all the instruction and information you need will be available later today on the main school blog.

The children should register their attendance by 9.30am each day next week. I will pop a fun task on each day to allow the children to get used to accessing and using the Classroom. As Miriam has indicated, there is a wealth of learning activities available to you on the Highland Digital School Hub to keep things going next week. Class generated Literacy, Numeracy and Health and Wellbeing tasks will follow after the Easter holidays.

Please be assured that your children, and their learning, remains my absolute priority.

Many thanks for your continued support; my thoughts are very much with you all at this time of uncertainty and change.

Many thanks for all your kind donations of tissues and handwash, it is really appreciated.

We have had a very creative week! We junk modelled toys from the Victorian era, made peg dollies and designed our very own optical illusion thaumatropes.

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In an effort to keep our classroom as germ free as we can, we would appreciate any donations of antibacterial hand-wash and/or tissues.

Thank you in advance for your support.

I’m really looking forward to hearing our next group present on their chosen famous Victorian. Remember to come prepared if you put your name forward last week.

As this is Careers Week we were looking at ‘Retail and Customer Service’. We had great fun modelling amazing customer service and practising our garment folding skills. We also learned how to deal with tricky customers with a smile!

Why not let us impress you with our folding skills at home?

Here is a look ahead to our Big Learning for this week!

In Numeracy we will continue to work on Multiplication and Division. Children making good progress in learning times tables facts will be moving on to multiplying 2 and 3 digit numbers by a single digit and division with remainders.

We will also be continuing our work on telling the time.

Our focus sound for spelling next week will be the long ‘u’ sound using the graphemes oo, u-e, ue, ew. Your child should have their group words copied into their Home Learning jotter which came home on Friday. The children can practise their words in any way they like, there are plenty of ideas on our Spelling Menu

In Science we will be looking at magnetic forces; any children with magnets at home are invited to bring them in for our experiments on Tuesday afternoon.

There will be a Technologies focus this week as we junk model our own Victorian toys which use push/pull forces on Wednesday.

As part of Careers Week we will be looking at Retail and Customer Services. It would be great if each child could bring in three different items of clothing and a shopping bag for Thursday afternoon. We also have a visit from the SSPCA to look forward to next week.

I am looking forward to our next group of personal presentations on ‘Famous Victorians’ on Friday. Your child should know if they are presenting this week and should come prepared.

We enjoyed a really fun day today; here are some of the characters who turned up in P3 this morning!

We then spent the afternoon with our P7 buddies creating our very own online books. Thanks P7, we had an amazing time!