Welcome to Primary 7! Our teachers are Mrs O'Hare and Mrs Gartland

We are very busy throughout our final year of Primary School and work very hard every day. We go on lots of trips during P7 to Science Fairs, Technology and Design workshops, Castle Ward, Parliament Buildings at Stormont, Radar NI and we even go on a special end of year trip to celebrate our time at St. Joseph’s!

MATHS:
Number: Revision and consolidation of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Read, write & order to 1,000,000 and beyond. Rounding off to the nearest 10, 100, 1000 and estimating with calculators. Vulgar fractions, decimal fractions, percentages and the link between them. Knowledge of mathematical language e.g. doubling, halving, equivalences, square, prime, cube, factor, multiple. Number patterns and sequences. Four rules of number and the links between them. Square & triangular numbers, simple function machines. Problem Solving. Calculator work.    

Measures: Length, weight, volume/capacity, time, area, temperature, estimation. Knowledge of measure language e.g. metre, gram, litre & ability to choose appropriate measuring language. Relationship between units e.g. 125cm = 1m 25cm = 1.25m. Temperature & negative numbers. Area of squares, rectangles and triangles. Volume of cubes and cuboids. Perimeter of single shapes and composite shapes. Scale in maps and drawings. 12 hour clock/24 hour clock & timetables. Duration of time.    

Shape and Space: Recognition of common 2D shapes/regular & irregular. Angles/compass points/clockwise/anti clockwise. Bearings. Line Symmetry & Rotational Symmetry. Reflection along vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines. 3D shapes and their properties. Nets of 3D shapes. Knowledge of languages e.g. vertical, horizontal, perpendicular, parallel, acute angles, obtuse angles & reflex angles. Co-ordinates.  

Handling Data: Interpret & construct graphs, tables & diagrams. Probability. Ratio and proportion. Mean/average, median, mode and range.

LITERACY:
Reading: We read a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction texts during guided, shared and independent reading tasks. We have a class novel as well as group reading books and a class library. As part of our home reading activities we complete chapter summaries and a weekly reading log. We celebrate World Book Day every year by taking part in lots of Reading activities with the whole school! We took part in the 2015 Blue Peter Book Award and some of our pupils did book reviews on the Blue Peter show!

Writing- In P7 we do lots of different types of writing, narrative, persuasive, procedural, recount, descriptive, personal, report and creative writing with lots of poems and stories. We develop our grammar, punctuation and spelling and use dictionaries and Thesauruses during writing tasks.

I.C.T: In P7 we have topic based I.C.T learning using PCs, Laptops and iPads to develop our I.C.T skills in Animation, Presentation, Moving Images, Spreadsheets, Researching and Programming.

World Around Us:Our Topics this year are: The Victorians and their BUZZY Bright ideas, Natural Disasters, Our Planet and The Solar System. We also learn about our local city of Lisburn and enjoy going on the Lisburn City Trail.

THE ARTS
Art: We love to learn about different artists like Andy Warhol and William Morris! We create work related to our topics: clay models of Victorian Doorways, 3D models of Victorian inventions, volcanoes using junk art and we have pottery lessons. We take part in an accredited Arts Award programme which allows us to develop our artistic talent!

Music and Drama: We revise all the different families of musical instruments in an orchestra and learn to recognise the sound of each one through BBC NI Music for Schools. We create and perform sound stories and we also study Mozart, Evelyn Glennie and John Leits, We use BBC Ten Pieces and BBC Music for Dance to create dance sequences related to some of our topics. We use the iPad app ‘Garage Band’ to explore a collection of ‘touch’ instruments and a full featured recording studio so that we can play, record and edit our performances. We take part in hot seating activities related to topics and develop our musical theatre skills for the school show!

PE: We enjoy taking part in all areas of the PE curriculum, including dance, athletics, games and gymnastics. We go swimming for one term every year and have badminton and Squash lessons at Lisburn Racquets Club.

Religion and PDMU: Using our 'Alive O' books, The Wonder of My Being programme, The CHOICES programme and through our PDMU activities, we learn how to show care and respect, for ourselves, for each other and for the World Around Us. We enjoy showing what we have learned through our assemblies too! We work very hard in preparation for our Confirmation and enjoy taking part in school masses and religious celebrations throughout the year.