Welcome to our Primary 3 and Primary 4 class Page!!

We hope you enjoy having a look through our page to find out about all the great fun learning that takes place in P3/4 throughout the year. 

Sports Day Presentation 🥇🥈🥉

The boys and girls had a great day receiving their medals and certificates for Sports Day. Congratulations to our winners and everyone for taking part! 🙂 Thank you to the Friends of Holy Cross for organising Brennan’s Ice Cream van to come into the school and give ice cream to everyone, it was delicious! 🤩 

End of Year Trip to Streamvale Farm 

We took a trip to Streamvale farm in Belfast for our end of year trip! We had the best day looking at all the different animals. We enjoyed feeding the animals and petting Willow the puppy. A great day was had by all 🤩

Our Place in Space 

We had a lovely trip to the Ulster Transport Museum to see their new attraction, ‘Our Place in Space.’ We went on a journey from the Sun to Mars visiting our inner planets along the way. Our tour guide Robert told us a lot of interesting facts about the planets and space and was very impressed with how much we already knew about space!🚀 We couldn’t believe how tiny the planets are in comparison to the Sun! A great day was had by all. 🤩

Congratulations to the boys and girls in Primary 4 who made their First Holy Communion on Saturday 20th May 2023. We hope you and your family enjoyed this very special day.

It was lovely to see everyone together as a school community. We thank all the staff that made this possible. The children were beaming with pride and love.  

Thank-you to everyone at home and in school who helped prepare the children. Our thanks also to the wonderful Friends of Holy Cross who provided the wonderful refreshments.

Such a  beautiful First Holy Communion Day to remember

May is the month of Our Lady

In Grow in Love this week, we spent some time refelcting on Mary, our mother as it is the month of May. We created a beautiful May altar in our classroom and throughout the month of May, we will be saying the Hail Mary as part of our morning prayers. Everyone is welcome to bring in flowers or other items to add to our May altar and we encourage the boys and girls to create their own May altar at home. Primary 4 are working hard to prepare for their Holy communion at the end of the month. Please take time to learn the prayers and readings each evening.

Finding all the possibilities P3

The P3 boys and girls are enjoying solving problems where there is more than one answer... they are like puzzles. They had to follow the rules to come up with all the ways 5 different letters and numbers can be arranged. Great wok!!

The writing doctor... 

On Wednesday we had Ashley from RISE NI in to introduce our new writing programme called 'The writing doctor'. We had great fun learning all the exercises which help to warm up our muscles for our fine motor work such as handwriting. We are looking forward to doing the exercises in class throughout the rest of the programme :) 

Paper Free Day 

Today, we had a Paper Free Day in school to raise money to support the purchasing of plants to promote Biodiversity around our school. We had a great day using the laptops for Numeracy and literacy and we even made bird feeders to hang outside the school to attract more birds. 😃

Movement & Direction 

For Numeracy we were learning how to use a programmable device to explore movement. We really enjoyed using the BeeBots on our Space themed mats to explore right and left quarter turns. It was great fun!

Using sorting diagrams in handling data

We had great fun exploring Carroll, Vern and Tree sorting diagrams this week. We used the diagrams to sort for 2 criteria such as a number being less than 20 and even! We then had to use what we had sorted to make statements about our findings.

P3 Problem Solving 

The P3s worked very hard on a problem solving task where there were lots of possible answers. They used different strategies including practical money to try to find all the answers... great work!

P4 Vertical Subtraction 

We are learning about the vertical written method for subtraction.... we really enjoyed testing our new skills by playing a game called ‘Journey across’ 😀

Space and Movement 

We had great fun today learning how to follow and give instructions for turning movements using language such as quarter, half and whole turn. We used the lines outside to move around and followed our partners instructions to make certain turns left or right. 😁

PSNI Visit 

We had an exciting visit from the PSNI on Monday, who reminded us how to keep safe in school and outside of school. 

A huge well done and congratulations to our Primary 3 pupils who received the sacrament of reconciliation for the first time today. They read and sang beautifully through the service. Our Primary 4s were a super choir. To celebrate we had a party in school. 

Thank you to Fr. Sean for such a lovely service. Thank you to all the mums & dads for preparing the children and coming to support them all today on their special day 😀

Mini Feis 

Well-done to all our boys and girls for taking part in our class Feis this week… super stars ⭐️

Well done  to all the boys and girls who attending the Warrenpoint Feis from our class and Congratulations to Emma on coming 3rd. 

All about AREA!!

We are continuing to learn about AREA and are able to calculate the area by the number of square cms a drawing/object takes up!!

WORLD BOOK DAY 2023

We celebrated world book day by creating a prop to represent our favourite book and by having DEAR (drop everything and read) time! We had a great day and loved seeing all the creations the boys adn girls came up with as part of their special World Book Day homework!

Ash Wednesday and Lent

As we begin the Lenten season we reflected in class on the 3 ways we prepare for the celebration of Easter; Praying more, fasting and good works. We talked about how Jesus spent 40 days and 40 nights in the desert preparing for the great sacrifice he was to make for all of us. 

After attending Ash Wednesday mass, we shared some of the ways we were going to mark the Lenten period through our Lenten promises. We created a beautiful cross wth our Lenten promise written on it to remind us of why we do this. 

Calculating Area

 In P3/4 we are looking at area. We had great fun using cubes, counters and other objects to measure the area of different objects around the class and by drawing shapes on our whiteboards. We then progressed to counting squares inside shapes and introducing cm2. We also enjoyed testing our knowledge with an area Kahoot quiz. 😀

Happy Valentines Day 

Love was in the air in P3/4 💕 We wrote lovely acrostic poems and beautiful cards to give to our loved ones. 

Children’s mental health week 2023 

The theme of Children’s Mental Health Week was “Lets Connect.” We discussed different ways that we can keep connected in class. We had great fun playing team building games and playing friend Bingo 😁

Identifying and recognising paragraphs 

In class, we were working hard recognising and identifying paragraphs whilst reading. We enjoyed working in pairs to find out the key point in each paragraph. 

Saint Brigid's Day

Today was the feast day of Saint Brigid, the Patroness of Ireland. We celebrated by listening to the story of how Saint Brigid wanted to bring the faith to the people of Ireland. When she wanted to set up a convent she went to the king for some land. He asked how much and her response was, as much as is covered by my cloak. The king was amused and agreed. To his surprise when Brigid spread out her cloak, it grew and spread as far as the eye could see. Brigid thanked God and was able to build her convent. We also learned the history of the saint Brigid's cross and how she used it to teach about the Holy Trinity. 

We had a go at making our own St. Brigid's crosses... it is tricky but we really enjoyed it. These will be blesed on Friday and we can take them homw to display in our homes to bring St. Brigid's blessing to all those who enter. 

We always 'sing a song to Brigid' as St. Brigid's day is known to mark the beginning of spring. We hope to see some of the warmth and growth of spring in the weeks to come :) 

Investigating colours found in visible light

We learnt that light from the sun is known as ‘white light.’ White light contains all the colours of the rainbow. We also found that the 3 most important colours are blue, red and yellow because with these colours we can make any colour in the rainbow. We enjoyed using these 3 colours to create secondary colours for our own rainbow wheel. 🌈

Making sets of 20/50/100

In Numeracy we had a very enjoyable and practical lesson. We created sets of 20/50/100 from bits of Lego, blocks and counters, to have a feel for the size of a set of objects. 

Light and the impact on our vision

Our topic on Light and sound linked with our PDMU and we discussed our senses which help us to see and hear. We talked about what it would be like if we didn’t have those senses and what would become easier or harder. We then had an activity to experience what it would be like to not be able to see and what we need to help us. We were very supportive of one another in helping overcome obstacles.

Library trip number 3

We had our last trip to the library on Monday. We have really enjoyed our visits and are excited to continue going, when we can, from home. 

Handwriting hero and star award

Well done to our star award winners this week who missed assembly because of the library visit. 

We are working on our handwriting as a whole class target in P3/4, being careful to form our tall letters, small letters and fall letters on the line and with finger spaces. Each week we will pick a handwriting hero who has made a great effort in their target throughout the week. Last week’s handwriting hero was Ronan… well done Ronan 😊

We had our second visit from RISE (NI) this week… we were learning how to help ourselves with our attention and concentration through lots of fun exercises and activities. 

Visual problems 

We were learning about how visualising or seeing a problem can help us to find the solution. P3 helped Mrs Maw sort out the mix up with the cherry cakes by using images to ensure they all had equal cherries, while P4 helped granny with her quilt design… all the shapes in each row had to have sides totalling 12… it was tricky but having the pictures to use and rearrange definitely helped 😊 great work everyone!! 

Adding commas to a list 

We have been looking at commas and how we need to include them when we are writing lists. We enjoyed writing our lists using the Just2easy app on the chrome books. At the end of the lesson we put our knowledge to the test with a Kahoot Quiz!! We love getting to play Kahoot 😀

Fiction versus non-fiction 

We have been exploring the difference between fiction and non-fiction as we have started to explore a new non-fiction text type in our writing.. explanation. 

We used the features to sort the book titles... we really enjoyed some kahoot! quizzes to test our knowledge too!! :) 

3D shape

We have been learning all about 3D shapes and their properties. We discovered we can describe 3D shapes using 3 things; faces, corners and edges. We had great fun building 3D shape models to help us recognise these features :) 

A visit from Rise NI 

Today we were very lucky and had a visit from Angela, who works for Rise NI. We learnt techniques to help keep our concentration levels and to improve our listening skills. We got to play fun games which help our bodies to wake up or slow down. We had great fun ⭐️ 

Our first trip to the Library!

On Monday, we made our first visit to the Library. We learnt a lot about how the Library works and how to take books from the Library. We had a great time relaxing, reading and completing wordsearches. We can't wait until next week to go again!! 

Making Christmas Cards 

Our Trip to the Chocolate Factory

As part of our topic 'chocolate' we got to take a trip to a nearby chocolate factory... 'Neary Nogs'

We were super excited and loved every minute! We got to hear all about how chocolate is made, right from when it is grown to when it reaches the factory at Neary Nogs. We were pleased to hear how the cocoa beans are fair trade from a cocoa farm in Western Africa. We were lucky enough to get to sample different types of chocolate... the favourites were definitely the fudge and the peppermint. We finished off our trip with a lovely hot chocolate... just what we needed on such a wintery day!!

What a great way to end our topic :) 

Instruction Writing 

Today we made 'santa hats' in preparation for some instruction writing. We had lots of fun... the best bit was probable the 'taste test' at the end. 

While we were working we thought of the equipment we needed, the bossy verbs we would use and some other 'tips' that we discovered from our experience... We are well prepped now for writing our text. 

Irish ☘️ 

All of us in Primary 3 and 4 would like to say a huge go raibh Maith agat to Alice Doyle from CnaG Boirche Íochtar. We thoroughly enjoyed learning Irish vocabulary, such as numbers, the weather and much more, over the past 6 weeks. We have learnt lots of vocabulary which we hope to continue to use day to day. 

Slán go fóill, Alice 😀

Using Diagrams

Our writing focus this half term is instructional texts. We looked at the importance of diagrams as a feature of instructional texts. We used diagrams to create a pirate’s hat and discussed how the pictures help when the written instruction isn’t clear. We then worked together to create instructions for making a cup of tea. Once we had agreed the steps, everyone created diagrams to go alongside their instructions as an aid.

In literacy, we focused on prefixes. We learnt that they are a group of letters that come before a word to change its meaning. We had great fun playing, ‘prefix snap’ and matching prefixes to their root word. 

🎃👻A Spooktacular Class today!!!👻🎃
 

What a fabulous turn out of everyone in their fancy dress today! We had great fun… we especially enjoyed our Halloween parade, disco & party! 
 

Have a safe and fun Halloween everyone 🎃👻

Spooooooky writing with our 'oo' sound

This week our focus sound was 'oo'. It linked in nicely with our Halloween theme. We brainstormed some spooky words with the 'oo' sound and everyone created a short 'oo' story. As part of our talking and listening, some of the boys and girls came forward to share their spooky stories with the class. They were fab!

Inverse operations 

We were working hard on our number bonds, using our mental maths skills to add. We then looked at how we can reorder our sums to make our subtractin calculations, becuase addition and subtraction are linked. We had fun playing 'Number triangles' to find all the adding and subtracting sums. 

MATHLETICS MATH'S WEEK SUCCESS!!

A huge 'Well done' to the boys and girls who worked super hard on their mathletics this week and earned their bronze certificates. 

Goodbye and Good luck to Kerri!!

We created a beautiful card for Kerri to say goodbye and wish her luck in her new job. It was lovely to have her back on Friday so we could present her with her card and gift.

Math's Week 

Our fabulous P7 boys and girls created some amazing maths games for us to try for math's week. It was such good fun!!

Science fun!!

We had such good fun on Wednesday carrying out an experiment linked to our WAU topic… We created super spooky skeletons and then watched as they disappeared and reappeared in water!!! AMAZING. We used our experiment to explore ‘time order’ further by recalling all the steps we followed in the correct order, when planning our newspaper recount about our experiment… it was great!

Time 🕒

Primary 3 and 4 have been working very hard on the reading the analogue clock. We have had great fun this week playing “Time Bingo” and “Show me” activities using our small clocks. We even used our small clocks to help us complete our work. 🤩

More 'Selfies' of our great work for our WOW wall... Look at the proud smiles!! 

Recounts!!!

We have been learning all about the recount text as our half term writing focus. We have discovered that a recount is a text that recalls an event that hs already happened... something that is in the past. We are learning that the verb is the part of the sentence that changes to make it past tense. The verb is the doing word. We also discovered that recounts are in time order and we use time connectives such as after that, later on etc to link our writing. 

To be able to write in the past tense, we need to be able to speak correctly in the past tense, paying attenton to how the verb changes. We worked with our partner preparing a spoken recount. We worked on our talking and listening skills. It was great to listen to everyone's recount and to give them some feedback on the great things they remembered to include!! 

Playing the Boomwhackers for the Education Minister

We had great fun fine tuning our attention and listening skills using the 'boomwhackers' in preparation for the Minister's visit on Wednesday 5th October. We had lots of fun and worked really hard, concentrating on the note we were playing to play as a group. Our version of 'Twinkle, Twinkle little star' really impressed the minister and all our visitors. 

P3/4 were extremely happy to see Fitness Freddie arrive on Wednesday. The Primary 4s really enjoyed learning the importance of mental well-being and the things we can do to keep ourselves strong 💪……not just physically. They explored the people around them in life who help them on their journey and were reminded they can overcome any obstacle with help. Primary 3 enjoyed getting active outdoors with Freddie, they had great fun. 😀

OUR BODIES ARE MIGHTY!! 
P3/4 had great fun working collaboratively as a team to put their knowledge of their bodies to the test. They drew around a team members body and had great fun placing all the bones and organs in the correct places. They did a super job! 

Our Sponsored walk

On Friday 23rd September, we took part in our first whole school charity fundraiser of the year. We were raising money for the Mourne Community First Responders. We were super excited when we found out we were getting to go to Mourne park on a DOUBLE DECKER bus!! For some of us this was our first ever experience of a double decker bus and it was really fun. We really enjoyed our walk around Mourne Park, it is beautiful and it was fun to try and spot some wildlife, even the creepy crawlies. We were glad of the rest by the river for our snack. It was a great day for a great cause. 

WOW!!!!

We have a 'Wow' wall in our classroom, it's a very special wall where we celebrate all the great things our class have achieved, individually or as a class. As a part of this wall we have 'selfie' pegs. When we feel we have worked really hard and excelled in a task we can select the 'selfie' peg and attach to our work to request a photo for the wow wall. It is great to celebrate a sense of achievement when WE feel we have worked hard and done well. Look at some of the great work so far :)  

Getting to know you... 

We have been enjoying getting settled into our new classroom, with our new teachers, some new pupils and certainly new routines. We had lots of fun on our first week back, learning more about one another, all our likes and dislikes and talents. We are looking forward to a happy, fun school year in our P3/4 class.