P3 – Return to school

P3 have returned to school and I am so impressed with the way the children have settled back into the school routine! We have been catching up with one another and working hard over the last week.

In Literacy, we have been focusing on instructional writing. The children have explored examples of different sets of instructions and have identified the important key features: title, equipment needed, method, bossy verbs etc. We then created our own set of instructions for growing sunflower seeds – which have now begun to grow!

Now we are back to school, we will continue to focus on a new sound each week. Our spelling words for homework will be uploaded to Google Classroom weekly, as well as a new spelling activity grid to be used for the remainder of the term.

Children will continue to read in class and will receive a book home each week. We will focus on different reading targets each week.

In Maths, we continued our topic we started during remote learning – Time. Some children are working on consolidating their understanding of o’clock and half past, whilst others have been learning about quarter past and quarter to on digital and analogue clocks.

We are revisiting our Multiplication topic we begun learning at home too. We have revised the 2, 5 and 10 times table, and we are starting to learn the 3 and 4 times table. The children are using different materials, such as Numicon and cubes, to aid their learning.

During the first week back in Health and Wellbeing, we focused on Mental Health and how we can keep our minds healthy. The children had lots of great discussions! We have been doing some daily mindfulness too, which is a big hit! Next in Health and Wellbeing, we will be focusing on Safety.

Habitats is our new topic this term! The children were very enthusiastic in sharing their ideas of what they would like to learn through our topic. So far, we have discussed what a habitat is and have looked at some simple food chains. We will learn about different habitats, such as: woodland, desert, artic and ocean!

P6-7 Blog Update

Literacy: The class are continuing to read Wonder by R. J. Palacio and are working on different reading strategies in line with this. They have used the novel to inspire a diary entry, do some research around health conditions and are answering comprehension questions as we go.

The children are also doing some creative writing using different images as stimulus for this. I love that all of the children go completely in their own direction with this while at home!

 

Numeracy: Primary 6-7 are working on decimals and percentages at the moment and did a little revision of time (the fractions and decimals are tough!!). Next we are moving on to Money. The children will use real life contexts to add, subtract, multiply and divide money, with some working out profit and loss. The class are working on probability with Mrs Casasola.

Other curricular areas: The children have a Scottish themed booklet by Miss Davie to work through instead of the grid activities for their afternoon work. There is also a separate booklet of activates for ‘Wellbeing Wednesday’ for some screen-free activities to break up your week.

I am thoroughly enjoying our video conferencing chats. I really appreciate the children coming on to chat to each other and engage with me about their work. It almost feels “normal” when I have lots of the class looking back at me!

 

As always, if I can do anything more to help or you need anything at all, email me on jodi.riley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk or contact me via Google Classroom. Stay safe! Miss Riley.

P4/5 Online Learning Update

Maths,

We continue to consolidate our work from term 1 in addition and subtraction.  The children are working very well and considering how to carry-over / use number exchanges when the value in a column adds to more than 10.  We are looking at representing values pictorially to help visualise the numbers in addition and subtraction sums.

For example:

The chimney sum is written at the bottom of the page and the visual representation of these values are written in pictorial form above. This method can support children in ‘seeing’ the values or numbers that they are working with.

Carrying over or number exchange is when the number is each column adds to more than 10 and 1 unit or a ‘one’ needs to be added to the next column.

 

Literacy:

All the children have received reading books to read at home and have been invited to join a weekly reading meeting on Teams.  We have also just finished reading our class novel, ‘The Nowhere Emporium’.  We will start our new class novel which is the sequel to the Nowhere Emporium, The Elsewhere Emporium on the week beginning Monday 8th February.

We will be focusing in on our creative writing skills in February with weekly writing tasks aimed at building confidence in writing.  We will build on the class criteria for writing skills which include:

Layout – Date and title.

Grammar – Punctuation, Use of quotation marks as appropriate, capital letters and full stops.

Expanding vocabulary – Using wow words appropriately.

Awareness of writing – To be able to re-read or redraft work, looking for and fixing mistakes.

There have been fantastic examples of creative writing handed in so far, I have been very impressed with the standard of work and incredible imagination of the children!  Keep up the good work.

Fettercairn Nursery Activities

Dear Nursery Parents and Carers,

We hope you enjoyed last weeks activities and had fun recording the weather, going on a sensory walk and making the delicious chocolate mousse for greedy goose recipe. If you took part in the RSPB Garden Birdwatch on the weekend of 29th January, we would love to see photos of any birds you saw in your garden and the data you collected. We love seeing all the activities and learning you are getting up to at home, so keep sending in your photos!

Click on the link below for more Home Learning Activities.

08.02.21 Home Learning Nursery

 

P3/4 Online Learning Update

Thank you for all the hard work you have been doing at home. I am so impressed by the amazing effort made by all during home learning. Seeing the children’s work and pictures of the activities they have been doing has been fantastic.

This week we will begin offering live sessions for the children to take part in. These sessions will have a different focus each day. In P3/4, Monday and Friday’s session will focus on Health and Wellbeing. On Tuesday there will be a maths drop-in session, and on Wednesday a Literacy drop-in. On Thursday, we will have a playtime chat on Google Classroom. Please make use of these sessions if you require any support or have questions about any of the work provided.

In literacy, our focus on Scots Language in going well. This week the children have listened to The Gruffalo in Scots – I hope they enjoyed the story. The children have created Gruffalo flashcards in Scots to describe the Gruffalo’s features. These are being used to help us write a detailed character description of the Gruffalo using lots of adjectives and Scots words. We will complete a comprehension task based on The Gruffalo in Scots later in the week.

 

This week we have continued with our Multiplication topic in maths. The children did a fantastic job of learning the 2 and 10 times table, and this week we are starting to learn the 5 times table! To help the children with this, I have provided some dice dot patterns in the learning packs. This allows the children to see the groups of 5 as they count forwards. This should help the children visualise the abstract concept of times tables! You can see how I use these in my video on Google Classroom.

Other curricular areas: I have uploaded a new learning grid to Google Classroom. Here you will see a wide range of activities for your child to choose from – including baking, music lessons, and creating a golf course in the garden! I hope you have fun with these, and don’t forget to send Miss Robbie pictures of the activities you have been doing!

Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you need anything at all.

Take care and stay safe,

Miss Robbie

P6-7 Remote Learning Update

I hope you are all safe and well as we begin remote learning and teaching again. I trust the packs provided with learning materials have been beneficial and that they make home learning a little easier for your family.

 

Literacy – P6-7 have started a new whole class novel ‘Wonder’ by R J Palacio. The children are enjoying the theme of ‘kindness’ running through and answering questions based on the book. It is lovely that they all have something in common to chat about while they can’t be together.

The children wrote Scots Poem’s with a COVID theme – and I have to say I was so impressed with them! We are continuing to practice our spelling using different strategies and doing some French with Mrs Casasola.

Numeracy – Primary 6-7 are working on concepts with fractions. They have been changing improper fractions to mixed numbers, adding and subtracting fractions and multiplying and dividing them!

Next, we are moving on to decimals and then a little breather with some revision on time. In the children’s home packs there are help sheets and some concrete materials to aid with this. There are also links to YouTube videos and BBC Bitesize to help support the children.

Other curricular areas: There is a grid on Google Classroom that is refreshed every two weeks with a multitude of activities for the children to choose from covering Health and Wellbeing, Drama, Art and Science.  Our topic this term is Light and Sound, with the children doing some research around this at home, as well as the opportunity to do an experiment.

I will use the timetabled slots for the next fortnight to meet with the children via Video Conferencing wherever possible. This is to help and support the children with specific questions regarding their work or just to have a chat. The timetable is available on Google Classroom and in the next packs.

As always, if I can do anything more to help or you need anything from me, please do not hesitate to email me on jodi.riley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk or contact me via Google Classroom. Stay safe, Miss Riley.

P1/2 Home Learning

The first 2 weeks of Remote schooling were very busy in P/2. We are very proud of the tremendous effort by all.

We continued to learn new sounds and spelling patterns. P1 started learning their number bonds and doubles. P2 perfected their subtraction skills and will begin numbers to 100 and beyond.

P1/2 enjoyed the topic about Food. We investigated how bread is made and where milk comes from. Some even went for a walk near a dairy farm and lots of families got inspired to make their own bread!

We also got really creative using objects at home and in our nearest environment for practising taking notes, writing, doing number work and making art.

Primary 3/4 – Online Learning Update

I hope you are all doing well as we begin home learning again.  As you know, packs were provided with work for 2 weeks. This included textbooks, jotters and reading books. I hope you are finding these useful and makes preparing for learning at home a bit easier for you.

Literacy: During home learning, we will continue learning a new spelling rule on Mondays. The children will be sent video links of our sound and will complete different spelling activities each week.

At the start of this new term, we will be focussing on Scots Language in our writing and comprehension tasks. We will be using The Gruffalo in Scots as a stimulus for our writing. We will learn about Robert Burns through our comprehension lesson. The children have been sent some Scottish poems and songs to learn as part of our focus on Burns and Scots Language.

Maths: We are beginning the term by starting our Multiplication topic in maths. The children will focus on learning the 2, 5 and 10-times table initially. So far, we have learned to use arrays to help us with multiplication. This gives children a meaningful way of visualising times tables, which can be an abstract concept to understand.

 

We will use video clips filmed by Miss Robbie, as well as clips from BBC Bitesize to help us with multiplication. In your learning packs you were provided with counters, ten rods, dice patterns and 100 squares to aid learning in maths.

Other curricular areas: A new curricular grid will be posted on Google Classroom every 2 weeks. This grid consists of plenty of activities covering Health and Wellbeing, Science, Art, Music, Drama and French. I love seeing pictures of the children completing grid activities, so please email these to me at: erin.robbie@aberdeenshire.gov.uk

New packs will be ready for collection on Friday 22nd January. This will include work for weeks 3 and 4 of home learning. Please return all reading books children were provided with in their first pack. A box will be provided for this. Please return these in a poly-pocket or envelope with your child’s name on – this is for us to keep track of books returned.

You may wish to return worksheets the children have completed during weeks 1 and 2.

As always, if you require support or have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me via email or Google Classroom. Take care and stay safe.

Welcome to Term 3 for Primary 4/5

Overview and Home Learning

We are again back to home learning and I hope the home learning packs given out to your child will help to support their learning alongside the work on google classrooms.  In literacy we will continue with reading, comprehension, imaginative writing and grammar.  In maths, the majority of the subjects were covered in the first two terms with the view of re-visiting them in more depth in terms 3 and 4.  Therefore the work set for your child will be familiar to them and we will look at each topic in more depth to consolidate their understanding.

Literacy:  In literacy we are continuing with our weekend news on Mondays, new weekly spelling words and related spelling activities.  For the next two weeks we will be finishing off the reading books given out ready for a new book(s) on Friday the 22nd January. This fortnight we continue with comprehension lessons and a comic book style story.  I will be adding recordings of our class novel next week for the children to listen to on google classrooms.  If anyone is struggling to access google classrooms please can you let me know and I can email a recording to you instead.

 

Maths:  In maths we will be looking in more detail at Number Processes.  The children have been given worksheets to complete and there are links on google classrooms to on-line maths games and relevant sections on BBC Bytesize.

Curricular Grid:  The children have been given a grid with various activities from across the curriculum to complete in the order of their choosing.  I will be adding more topic related activities for the grid in week 3 and 4.

General Note:  Please upload your children’s work to google classrooms if possible. Otherwise please email their work to me at yvonne.baddeley@aberdeenshire.gov.uk or you can hand-in the work on Friday 22nd January when you come to collect the new work pack.  If you have any queries or questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Many Thanks, Mrs. Baddeley