We read The Lighthouse Keeper’s Breakfast this week.  In this story, Mr and Mrs Grinling were pretending to be pirates!

We have been finding out a lot about Mr and Mrs Grinling and so we wrote our own stories about Mr Grinling.  We thought of fantastic ideas and our illustrations were super too.

Thank you to everyone who has managed to bring in materials for our junk modelling project.  You still have time to look for any at home and bring it in to school.

We have  been learning more about number in maths this week.  Some of us used Education City games on the laptops.

The next two weeks are “No Homework” weeks.  Your child will not have any written homework home however if you have time please keep going over the letter and word cards.

Have a lovely weekend.

We are almost at the end of another busy week.

We are looking forward to non -uniform day tomorrow (Friday 20th).  If you can, please bring in an item for the Parent Council tombola.

We have have been continuing to learn about letter sounds.  On Wednesday we were learning outside to practice our letter formation and were also reading words and drawing pictures to match.  Miss MacLean had a sneaky look outside her office window to see what we were up to.  She said everyone looked like they were having fun.

This was just one of our jobs during our Literacy time on Wednesday.  We were also doing reading, spelling, sorting letter sounds and had time in our class library.

We read The Lighthouse Keeper’s Rescue this week.  We loved the story, especially the happy ending.  (We don’t want to give too much away in case you want to read it at home.)  During writing this week we thought about the cheeky seagulls Tom, Bert and Fred and wrote speech bubbles for them.  We are going to put them on display so look out for them the next time your are in school.

Also linked to the Lighthouse Keeper’s stories we were learning about floating and sinking in Science.  We had to predict which items would sink and which would float then we tested it out.  we also learned a new word – density!

Finally for this week, congratulations to Ethan who was chosen to be our Pupil Council member.  We hope you enjoy your new role!

2019-2020

Class Newsletter: Term 1

Mrs Given (P1/2G)

Dear Parent/Carer,

I hope you find the following information useful. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

General Information:

I hope you all had a lovely summer holidays. Children in P1/2G have made a great start to the year, and are working hard.

Brand new Red Communication poly pockets have been distributed to every child. We ask you look out for these in your child’s school bag as it will have information about homework be used for other school communication.

You will be able to follow what we have been doing in class each week by looking at our class blog.

Homework will be issued on a Monday and should be completed by Friday. There will a selection of Numeracy and Literacy (spelling and reading) activities and occasionally topic related tasks.

Please ensure your child has an appropriate snack kept separately from their lunch.   Your child should also have a clearly labelled water bottle everyday which is filled prior to arriving at school.  Please ensure your child has a labelled weather appropriate jacket as there will be outdoor learning opportunities.

P1/2 will have Music and Art this term. Please provide a painting shirt for your child for messy activities. (Old t shirts are great)

Class Dojo

To promote positive behaviour Primary 1/2 are using Class Dojo. Please note we cannot access the messaging aspect of Class Dojo. Should you need to contact us please do so by telephone or in writing.

PE days

P1/2G have PE on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Please ensure that your child has a full gym kit, to include a t-shirt, shorts and gym shoes, which will be left in school. Where appropriate, please remove or tape over earrings.

Learning focus this term:

Through our topic ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch’ we will be learning about:

• Describing characters and settings in the story
• Floating and sinking
• Healthy eating
• The purpose of a lighthouse
• How to react in unsafe situations and emergencies

If you have any experience in this area, please let us know. We would love to have some ‘experts’ come in to share in our learning journey.

Core Literacy:

Primary 1

• RWI Speed sounds.
• Letter recognition and letter formation.
• Sounding and blending with the help of Fred talk.
• Our writing lessons will focus on a variety of personal and imaginative tasks with some being linked to the Lighthouse Keeper stories.
• We are working on our listening and talking skills through Show and Tell, Book Blessings and sharing our news at circle time.

Primary 2

• We are continuing with our Read, Write Inc literacy programme for phonics. ‘Fred’ will help us to sound and blend words to help us read and write.
• Our writing lessons will focus on different genres to include letters, lists and imaginative stories. We are developing the use of connectives within our sentences, such as ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘because’ to extend our writing. We will also be developing our handwriting skills.
• We are working on our listening and talking skills through Show and Tell, Book Blessings and sharing our news at circle time.

Core Numeracy:

Primary 1

• Number rhymes 0-10

• The children will continue to build on their knowledge of numbers 0 – 10 (and beyond). They will learn how to form the number correctly and will learn about value.

• Number sequencing and number ordering
• 2D and 3D Shape

Primary 2

• Ordering and sequencing numbers to 100 and beyond

• Properties of 2D shapes and 3D objects

 

We will also be learning about Christianity in RME.

 

Health and Wellbeing:

As a Health Promoting school we actively encourage and teach our children to make healthy choices, to enable then to become healthy, active and emotionally resilient young people of the future.

We are delighted to be able to continue to deliver 2 hours of PE a week as well as opportunities for children to be active in our fabulous new grounds.

We would appreciate your support in promoting a healthy and balanced diet, both in your child’s morning snack and in their packed lunch. We would discourage any type of fizzy juice in school or energy drinks.  Children are encouraged to bring in a water bottle, which they can use during class time.  There are water fountains situated throughout the school for daily use.

Please encourage your child to participate in the Active Sports Clubs that are on offer at lunchtimes and after school, as well as any school based clubs that take place throughout the year. Keep looking in school bags for further information.

A reminder that all children who cycle or scooter to school must wear a safety helmet and ‘walk’ their bikes whilst in the playground. There are bike racks available.

 

Class Birthdays

We always celebrate if a member of the class has a birthday however we would request that birthday cakes are not brought into school to share with the class. In school, we have children with allergies who may be at risk from some ingredients. The cutting up and distributing of birthday cake also cuts into valuable learning time.

 

Playground toys:

We have a playground equipment for children to play with during lunchtime. Please do not bring in your own toys – except for Golden Time on a Friday – so that we can be sure that all toys in the playground belong to the school.  Many thanks for your support.

 

Golden Time toys:

Children can bring a ‘toy’ to school on a Friday to play with during Golden Time. Please remember that the school cannot take responsibility for the safety of these toys and therefore we request that your child does not bring in expensive/ electronic items without your consent. We appreciate your support with this matter.

 

Yellow Wing Cuddle on the Couch:

Please help us to promote reading by joining us for Cuddle on the Couch. Come along to the Yellow Wing and spend some time reading with your child.  Dates have been issued. If you require further information, please ask a member of staff.

 

I look forward to working in partnership with you this session.

Kind regards,

Mrs Given

We had a visit from Sharon from the Childsmile Team at NHS Forth Valley yesterday.  Sharon was telling us about the importance of brushing our teeth and showed us how to do it properly with the help of her friend Elvis the dragon.  We will  start brushing our teeth next week so look out for sparkling smiles.

We have lots of reasons to smile this week.  We have been working really hard to learn our letter sounds and tricky words.

During one of our writing lessons this week we had to think of amazing adjectives to describe Hamish the cat from the Lighthouse Keeper stories.  We though Hamish was a cute, fluffy, ginger and lazy cat! (Plus many more adjectives).

We have been continuing to learn more about number during maths lessons.

Thank you for your support with homework this week.  The children were very proud handing their work in.

Finally please put plain water in your child’s water bottle for class time.  Thank you for your cooperation.

We have been working on our Class Charter.  We  discussed our school values which are respect, resilience and friendship and then thought  about how we can show this in our class and school.

We had great fun in Art with Mrs Barron this week.  We were drawing self portraits.  Mrs Barron was very impressed with our art work.

We are enjoying reading about Mr and Mrs Grinling and their cat  Hamish in the Lighthouse Keeper stories.  During writing this week, we made a list of what we would like to put in our picnic basket to send over to the lighthouse.  Our tummies were rumbling by the time we had finished.  We have also been learning about healthy and unhealthy food this week so we remembered to put lots of fruit in our baskets and just a little treat.

We are looking forward to Golden Time tomorrow.  Please look out for Golden Diaries in your child’s red folders and please sign them.

Thank you for your help and co operation.