Nativity:

This week has been non-stop rehearsing for the Nativity, The Innkeeper’s Breakfast. All tickets are sold out and I am sure that you will enjoy the performance.

We have been working hard to perfect our lines, speak clearly and to remember our stage directions. A small group of us have been learning a simple dance to accompany one of our songs.

Literacy:

This week we learned a new digraph.

“We learned the ai sound’   Summer

These words have ai in them

“hair” April

“aim” Celestan

“train” Callen

“rain” Hana

The children are becoming very confident at building words containing their digraphs.

“Mrs Cuthbert, can you challenge us and give us a 5 letter word?” Kristofer

Kristofer came out and correctly built the word ‘train’

Numeracy

This week in Numeracy we looked at ordinal numbers:

1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th etc

This is a new concept for the children and they have done very well.

“I found that really easy Mrs Cuthbert. I am going to self-assess my work green”  Andrew

Next week we will continue to build on this knowledge

With Miss Elizabeth we investigated Carroll Diagrams. We were able to identify the different criteria on the diagram and sort the elves accordingly.

Nativity

This week we are in full flow with Nativity rehearsals. The children are working hard to learn all the songs and actions and narrators are practicing their lines. Please find time to go over these with your child at home.

There are still some families who have not asked for tickets for the Nativity. If you would like to come to our Nativity performance there are still some tickets available so please hand in your request form asap.

Numeracy

This week we focused on reading number words. Given that we have not covered lots of the sounds that can be found in the spelling of these words Primary 1 are doing really well. We played teddy bear counting on the SMARTboard and working in pairs to complete a matching game.

Using number to 10 flashcards the children showed their understanding of the language of maths. Show me number before/after/in-between, 1/2 more than/less than.

Literacy

Our focus for writing this week was looking at sentence structure and punctuation. Initially the children read through a series of words and then put them in the correct order.

After discussion around what a sentence needs to have the children identified that sentences need a capital letter at the start and a full stop at the end.

We then looked at a text about Kipper. Using skimming and scanning the children identified full stops in the text, these were highlighted in yellow and then they identified all capital letters. These were highlighted in blue.

We then used our knowledge of punctuation and played the punctuation thief game.

‘I loved scanning the bag looking to see what the thief stole’ Miley

In Numeracy, we learned how to read and write the number 20 and made this amount in different ways, for example by stamping 20 times, identifying 20 on the number line, counting out 20 using the tens frames etc. We continued to develop our addition skills and used a variety of active strategies to find different ways to make an amount. 

“I went to the book fair and saw different books. I liked the Lego book with toys.” – Misha

“20 has a 2 and a 0. “ – Abigail

“10 and 10.” – Jorgi

“We learned to write 20 using two and zero.” – Zack

“4 and 4 makes 8.” – Lucas

In Literacy, we consolidated all of the sounds we have learned so far. We were able to learn through various literacy activities, for example building CVC words on whiteboards, identifying rhyming words and playing matching games. We also wrote a set of instructions for the first time and it was called ‘How to make a spell’. This linked in with our new fairy tale, Cinderella.

“We wrote about the witch’s spell. Mine had spiders in it.”– Finlay

“I put in 1 spider into my potion to make a spell.” – Oliver

“I put 2 mice in to make my spell.” – Faith

In IDL, we read the story of Cinderella and based much of our learning around this. We took part in drama activities to help us understand the characters and we made predictions on what we thought might happen next in the story.

“We did drama and Cinderella sat on the hot seat. She answered questions from the story.” – Faith

Another busy week in many ways in Primary 1EC this week. The children have been consolidating concepts in Literacy and Maths/Numeracy and have also started the Nativity. This year our Nativity is called ‘The Innkeeper’s breakfast’. We will have more information to follow shortly.

Health and Wellbeing: PE

P1EC have been working hard in PE to develop their core stability and strength as part of our Gymnastics block. We have been discussing the importance of control, quality and safety.

This week we have been Learning to hold a variety of different ‘Balances,’ by holding our bodies ‘strong and still’ for 5 seconds. We are also beginning to link our skills together with the rotations we learnt last week.

Tooth brushing:

Everyday Primary 1EC brush their teeth after lunch.  We are getting very good at keeping the toothpaste in our mouths and not making a mess. We have to brush our teeth for 2 minutes.

 Numeracy:

This week we have continued to look at numbers to 20. We used active games and ipads to consolidate our learning.

When we have to draw a big number of objects we know that we have to draw them in a line and then count them slowly to make sure we have drawn the correct number. Mrs Cuthbert has been very impressed with their understanding and the strategies they have been using.

In Data Handling we have moved on to looking at bar graphs. We are able to gather information using tally marks and then colour in the right number of boxes to show the amount of items.

Literacy:

This week we continues with our whisper reading. This is where we all read our reading book at the same time. We choose a small pet to read to (whisper). We don’t have to worry about others listening to us and we read at our own pace. Miss Elizabeth and Mrs Cuthbert come round to hear us and help us if we need it.

In Numeracy, we learned how to read and write the number 19 and have had many opportunities to count within 20. We became more familiar with the part, part, whole method for addition and used this, alongside our cubes, to find different ways to make 6 and 7. We also continued to develop our data handling skills by going outside to find out the colour of the cars in our staff car park. We then made a bar graph to display these results.

“We walked in the class and had to shake people’s hands 19 times.” – Jessica

“We were finding different ways to make 6. 3 and 3 makes 6.” – Jorgi

“We were outside looking at cars in the car park. We counted how many red, blue, black, white or other cars there were.” – Abigail

“We made a bar graph.” – Finlay

In Literacy, we learned the sound ‘j’ and consolidated the sounds we have learned so far. We had opportunities to write  our taught sounds through an activity called ‘roll and write’. We also wrote an account of our soup making from last week and had to draw a detailed picture to match.

“I enjoyed rolling the dice and writing the sounds because I wanted to learn them.”– Lily

“I wrote about peeling the carrots and putting them in the pot and putting the bread in the soup.” – Faith

“I used the word ‘delicious’ in my writing because I made the soup and then sat down on my chair to enjoy it.” – Oscar

“Jam starts with ‘j’.”– Phoebe

In Health and Wellbeing, we continued to learn about different ways to be a good friend. We discussed ways we could make others happy and were able to identify people who we had made happy that day.

“Playing with them.” – Misha

“I make Finlay happy by reading him books.”– Zack

“I share and play with the puppets with my friends.”- Nicholas

In Numeracy, we have been continuing to develop our skills in addition and were introduced to the ‘part, part, whole’ method. We really enjoyed using this as a different way to add numbers together. We also continued our work on data handling by carrying out another survey and then displaying this using a bar graph.

“We made a bar graph to show how people get to school.” – Phoebe

“I enjoyed doing the survey in Primary 2.” – Lily

“We were adding. You put a number in the two small boxes and the answer in the bottom box.” – Jessica

In Literacy, we learned three new sounds: l, f and b. We watched Geraldine the Giraffe and then created our own word wall for each sound. We also created a poster to encourage people to be safe around fireworks, making sure we used a full stop and finger spaces in our writing.

“Stay way back from fireworks.” – Lucas

“We made a poster about being safe around fireworks. I liked writing it.” – Abigail

“We were learning ‘b’. Swinging a bat. Ball starts with ‘b’.” – Finlay

In IDL, we read a fairytale called The Enormous Turnip. We stopped at a particular point in the book and had to predict what might happen next, using the clues from the book so far. We also had great fun making and tasting our own turnip soup!

“We were predicting and had to draw the turnip and the people.” – Faith

“We made turnip soup because we read the book called The Enormous Turnip.” – Jorgi

Numeracy and Maths

This week was a few firsts in Maths and Numeracy. The children progressed to reading number sentences such as ‘4 + 3 =’ They used their new manipulatives to help them show their understanding of the number sentence. All children showed a super understanding and some were able to complete the addition sums mentally.

On Thursday the children developed their understanding of data handling. In small groups they completed a survey with another class. The survey was all about eye colour. The children used ‘tally marks’ to gather the data and when they went back to class added up the total number for each eye colour. Then they created pictographs showing their results.

‘I enjoyed going into the other classes, it was fun!’ Callen

‘The little lines were called tally marks’ Cooper

‘You count up all the pictures to work out how many people are in the class’ Milley

After the graphs were created we discussed what the most popular eye colours were, what was the least popular as well as identifying how many people had green, brown, blue or grey eyes.

Literacy and IDL

In writing this week we created wanted posters about the wicked witch from Hansel and Gretel. We had to think about her appearance and what her crime was.

We also showed our understanding of the story by retelling the story with sequencing cards.

The children are really enjoying bringing in their picture books from home. We have been talking about books that we would recommend to our friends. We then discuss our likes and dislikes, patterns and connections and puzzles.

This week Ellie brought us in her favourite book ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and Cooper brought us in ‘Stan and the Little Red tractor and the Big Bang’. Thank you for sharing your favourites with us!

Circle Time

In Circle time we have been discussing friends and how to be a good friend. The children were able to talk about friends that they have out with school and why they have them as friends. We have been investigating the different qualities friends can have.

In Numeracy, we have been learning to count, recognise and correctly form numbers to 20. We introduced the numbers 15 and 16 and used our new counting stick to count forwards and backwards from a given number within 20. We have also been learning to add basic amounts and have had lots of opportunities to use concrete materials to support this e.g. cubes and tens frames. We enjoyed carrying out a survey in other classes around the school to find out people’s favourite type of fruit and we recorded this on a tally chart and pictograph.

‘We know that 2 and 3 makes 5.’ – Oscar

‘We tried to count all the way to 20 using our number stick. We missed out some numbers to get to 20.’ – Abigail

In Literacy, we learned two new sounds: o and u. We had lots of opportunities for word building and had to say, make, read and write CVC words, using our initial sounds. We also had various opportunities to discuss our likes and dislikes from the stories that we read, as part of our 3 Sharings, and even identified some things that puzzled us. In writing, we created a WANTED poster to help find the wicked witch from Hansel and Gretel. We also made our own sweetie houses from the story and used adjectives to describe them.

‘We wrote a poster to let people know they need to find the witch.’ – Phoebe

‘We read Hansel and Gretel. I liked when there was a sweetie house because I love sweeties.’ – Jessica

‘I used the word ‘tickly’ to describe my sweetie house from Hansel and Gretel.’ – Oscar

‘Turn on the light and turn it off for ‘o’.’ – Logan

‘Umbrella starts with ‘u’.’ – Finlay

‘When we read the Hansel and Gretel story, I liked when the witch pretended to be nice to them.’ – Phoebe

In Health and Wellbeing, we read a story called You Be You. This story is all about celebrating our differences and recognising that we are all unique. We designed our own fish using different lines and patterns, just like the ones from the story, to represent our differences.

‘I enjoyed colouring our fish to go with the story You Be You.’ – Faith

‘We all like different things.’ – Oscar