My name is Mr McKenna and I am very much looking forward to teaching P4/5 this year, hopefully in the classroom, but should we have to return to teaching remotely we will use SeeSaw, as the children are now all familiar with this software. 

In Literacy we will be working on lots of different genres of writing, although we will mainly be focussing on Persuasive, Narrative and Explanation texts this year, having looked at Instructional, Reports and Recounts in depth last year. Within our writing we will also be focussing on handwriting, punctuation & grammar. We will be kept very busy with our spelling programme (Soundswrite) and we are excited to complete the different activities within it. We will look at a variety of narrative and non-narrative texts and read a variety of fiction and non fiction books by lots of different authors, like Roald Dahl and Julia Donaldson. We will also participate in the Accelerated Reading Programme.

In Numeracy, we will be learning lots about Processes in Maths, Number, Handling Data, Measures and Shape and Space. We will have opportunities to use ICT in Numeracy, including the use of laptops and iPads to access a range of Numeracy Apps, including Mathletics.

In World Around Us this year, we will be concentrating on three main areas. The first topic we will be studying from September until Christmas will be - Rainforests. We will complete lots of cross curricular activities that will incorporate Art, ICT, Literacy, Maths and PDMU, while learning about what a rainforest is, where they are located, animals that live in it, how these amazing habitats are being destroyed and ways in which we can help to safe them. In our second topic title 'Prehistoric World' (From Stone Age to Iron Age) we will be learning how archaeologists find out about the past, exploring cave men of the early Paleolithic period of the Stone Age, exploring the lives of people in the Mesolithic period of the Stone Age, finding out what fossils are, how they are formed and what they can tell us about dinosaurs and much, much more all in a cross curricular way. Finally our third topic will be titled 'Reach for the Stars', where we will be defining the solar system and what it contains, examining the different objects within a solar system, exploring how the rotation of the Earth around the sun creates day and night, exploring the phases of the moon, finding out the names of the planets in our solar system, finding out about the Space Race between the USSR and USA and space exploration, exploring the details of the Apollo 11 mission of 1969, the moon landing and much more besides.

For religion, we follow the Grow in Love scheme of work. For PDMU, we will be following the Living and Learning Together scheme and we will aim to do PE every Tuesday and Friday. 

We are always very proud of all the work that goes on in our class - so please keep an eye on this page to see what we are getting up to!

Finally, if you have any queries, wish to meet with me or discuss any concerns please contact the school office and I will do my utmost to respond to you as soon as possible. Alternatively, you may wish to email me and again I will try my best to respond to you as soon as possible. My email address is gmckenna707@c2kni.net  

Here's to a great year ahead!