Category Archives: All Classes

Primary 3 Homework – Week from 20^th February

Our topic on the North and South Poles is really taking off now as we think about what these amazing places are like and what kinds of animals can survive there.

Please see below my note on written subtraction methods.

Best wishes,

Mr Buchan

Reading

Pages from class books to be read at home will be written down in the grids as usual.

I am going to stop writing down when children have been heard reading aloud on these grids because it has proved impossible to keep this up to date. All the children are heard three times a week on average – sometimes twice or sometimes four times depending on what else is happening. From now on I will only write notes on the reading grids if there is something specific to raise. I hope that is OK.

Spelling

More common words that people have been finding tricky.

taking                          cold

walked                         there

called                           their

Please could we practise them using our usual look, say, cover, write and check method and then write sentences using them?

Numeracy

As you help the children with columns subtraction, please be aware that there are some slightly different ways of doing these written sums and it will be helpful if we can all use the same method. For example, the way I was taught is different from what I would now teach. The reason is that the decomposition method (shown below) reflects most closely the underlying concepts of place value and subtraction. The other ways work fine but they can be a bit confusing for some children.

6 5                 Take 4 away from 5 to get 1 in the units column.

 – 3 4                 Take 3 away from 6 to get 3 in the tens column.

____

You can’t take 5 from 2, so you decompose the

  ⁵6 ¹2                6 tens to become 5 tens and 1 ten moves across.

 – 3   5               You now have 12 minus 5 which gives 7 in the

___­__­              units column. In the tens column you then take 3

away from 5 which gives 2.

Our motto is:

          If it’s too big on the floor… steal one from next door.

This goes with other golden rules:

– Start with the units

– Never take the top number away from the bottom

– When you write a sum, line up the columns correctly

To practise at home:

43 – 22                     87 – 62                     63 – 28                   91 – 72

86 – 39                    364 – 226             506 – 262                544 – 245

All pupils have to finish their reading novels to the end for next Mon.

Pupils have a decimals worksheet for maths (due on Fri), we have been working on multiplying and dividing decimals by 10, 100 and 1000.

I have set a personal challenge of no screens after 8pm- this is not compulsory but a good talking point given that the class have screen obsessions.

We have been learning to tell the time in French – pupils would benefit from revising this.

For the parents organising the day out. We chatted about it and pupils voted on their top 3. See below.

Primary 3 Homework – Week from 13^th February

Our homework will be a bit different this week because of the half-term days off. I hope everybody has a good break.

Best wishes,

Mr Buchan

Temperatures Around the World

In class we have been talking about the temperature each day, linking to our topic on the north and south poles. We have also been making globes to help us investigate why temperatures vary in different places and at different times of the year.

Please could you help the children to find out the temperature in some different places around the world? This information can be found online (e.g. BBC Weather) or in most newspapers.

In class we have talked about the seven continents. We have also considered how places are usually warmer if they are near the equator. We are starting to talk about “north” and “south”.

What I have in mind is a list of about 5 places with:

– the daytime temperature in ^oC

– which continent the place is in

– if the place is near the equator or north / south

E.g. Cairo (Egypt), Africa, 19^oC, north of equator but quite near

It might be best to start with places the children have already heard of. Otherwise capital cities would be good to use.

Numeracy

I will not set a new Sum Dog challenge, but the children can still get good practice on this if they would like.

Aside from this, it is always helpful to practise our Learnits for Big Maths. If anybody needs replacement flashcards then please let me know.

Reading

We won’t have new class reading books this week.

Spelling

I have picked out some words that lots of people in the class have been struggling with recently.

staying                        suddenly

dream                         doing

going                           thought

caught

Please could we practise them using our usual look, say, cover, write and check method and then write sentences using them?