We have continued to work hard and explore the Poles by building igloos this week in P1/2S. Who know how we have found the time to keep learning new sounds, words and number strategies? Let us tell you all about our learning this week…

Literacy:

P1 have been learning the qu sound this week. We have now learned all the sounds in the whole alphabet and so have been practising reading lots of words since we can now read all the sounds! We are excited as we could now read any word in the whole wide world!

P2 have been practising the ow sounds again this week. You can say ow in 2 ways – you can say ou and oa. We have been reading this word and thinking which sound fits best.

Numeracy and Maths:

We have all continued to practise our addition and subtraction skills. We have also been learning to use balance scales. If the balance scale goes up, the item in it is light and if it goes down it is heavy. If both sides of the balance scale float in the middle, then the things in each side weigh the same.

IDL:

We have been learning to not be a lazy log or hefty hog when working in a group. You need to listen to everyone in your group, take turns and join in. We have been learning to do this by building igloos in groups.

We are back! Well, we have been for a while, but we are back with our blog to fill you in on all our learning over the past week!

We are loving being back learning, working and playing in our classroom with one another.

Let us tell you what we have been doing this week…

Literacy:

P1 have been learning to read words with x, y and z sounds. We are so proud that we have very nearly learned all the sounds our alphabet letters make! We have been learning the songs that go with them and the actions to help us remember these sounds, using these to help us blend sounds together to read words like box, yes and zip.

P2 have bee learning ow sounds. This is a tricky digraph as it can sound like ou and oa. We have been practising reading and spelling words with these sounds in it, thinking carefully which one sounds right. Words like row and bow make it tricky as they can use both sounds meaning we have to think what sentence they might be used in. We will keep practising these two sounds next week.

Numeracy:

In Numeracy, we have all been practising our adding and take away skills.

We have been using Numicon, our maths packs, iPads, number lines, draw pictures and cubes to help us. Next week we are going to begin to think which strategies work best for us.

We have also been learning about weight. We have been practising using a balance scale to see if we can find out if things are lighter or heavier than each other.

IDL – Polar Explorers:

We have been learning about the Inuit people who live in the North Pole/Arctic.  We have learned that they catch and eat fish. They don’t eat many fruits and vegetables as things can’t grow in the North Pole as it is too cold.

They built tents in the summer and igloos to live in the winter. Today, many live in villages.

Their favourite animal is the polar bear. They think it show strong and resilience – things we learn about at assembly with Miss Belford.

We have begun recording what we have learned in our polar explorer books which we are excited to show you when they are full of information!

What a Christmassy week it has been!

We were very excited to write our letters to Santa.

We all told Santa what we wanted for Christmas by either drawing, labelling words or writing sentences.

We made sure that we sounded out please (plees) and added this to our letters because we make sure we use our manners in P1/2S!

Some of us asked for technology like x-boxes or playsations, some of us asked for a great story to enjoy, some of us asked for racing cars, some of us asked for guitar pics and other goodies!

Some of P2 made an effort to think about Santa this Christmas since he is so busy! Some asked him what he wanted for Christmas, whether the elves were working hard and some of us even told Santa a joke!

Why does Santa wear a black belt?
Because he is so good at karate – I bet he will love that one!

Today, we posted our letters to Santa at the post box. We had to make sure we wrote the address in our neatest handwriting and put the stamp on the right way.

In Maths, this week we have been leanring all about shapes – some of the shapes we have been learning about include circle, octagon, square, rectangle, triangle, rhombus, hexagon and pentagon.

We were describing them by talking about the number of edges and vertices the shapes have.

We also had an amazing time at our party – we danced, laughed, danced and danced some more! All of the children and adults had a brilliant afternoon – well done to all the children for really embracing the Christmas spirit!

Primary 1 wish to share our weekly evaluation of learning this week for our Glow Blog.

What’s gone well?

• Identifying 2D shapes and describing their properties.
• Cutting and sticking activities.
• Reading The Magic Paintbrush and using paint to complete pictures that we had coloured in.

What do we need to do better?

• Counting backward from the number 15.
• Spelling CVC words using the ‘Say, Make/ Break, Blend, Read, Write’ strategy.
• Creating our own pictures using different 2D shapes.

What do we want to do more of?

• Playing more tig games in P.E.
• Painting pictures with the thin paintbrushes and using fine motor control to stay in the lines.
• Solving alphabet jigsaws during Literacy stations.

Star moments

• Geraldine the Giraffe visited our classroom and watched us learning the ‘u’ sound.
• Going on a shape hunt around the class.
• Watching the storyteller Christmas special video for our assembly.

The holidays are coming… and we are SO excited in P1/2S! This week we filmed our assembly and can’t wait to show your our efforts! We have also been working hard on our whisper reading, let us tell you more…

This week we were so excited to finally put our pyjamas because we filmed our assembly! We look like we are ready for bed on Christmas Eve. It was very exciting as we got to visit the gym hall which we don’t get to do very often. There, Mr Mathis filmed us saying our line. We had to speak slowly and clearly, looking at the camera and speaking into a microphone. If someone else was saying their line, we had to sit super quiet so they could be heard!

In the classroom, we filmed our songs. It was great fun! We had to sing loudly and clearly AND do the actions! We can’t wait until you can see it all pieced together soon!

This week we have also been working hard on reading more and more by ourselves. To do this, we have been using our Animal Reading Friends. Eagle Eye helps us to remember to look at the pictures for clues. His best friend is Lips the Fish who likes to use the first sound of words to help us work out what it might be. We have also been using Stretchy Snake who helps us stretch sounds to read and spell words. We are trying to use these friends more and more by ourselves!

Primary 1 wish to share our weekly evaluation of learning this week for our Glow Blog.

What’s gone well?

• Learning our speaking parts for our Nativity.
• Setting up our Nativity scene.
• Sequencing The Christmas Story.

What do we need to do better?

• Writing the numbers 11, 12 and 13.
• Knowing when to talk and when to listen e.g. when watching something on the Interactive Whiteboard.
• Speaking in a loud and clear voice in front of an audience.

What do we want to do more of?

• Learning numbers within 20.
• Learning the words and actions for our Christmas songs.
• Read more Julia Donaldson books for our topic.

Star moments

• Making our Nativity video.
• Working really hard to achieve Superstar Certificates at our assembly.
• Decorating our Christmas tree.

It has been a very exciting week in P1/2S as we have been rehearsing for our assembly! We can’t wait to film this next week and show you all our hard work soon. Let us tell you a bit about our rehearsals (but not too much as we want to keep it as much of a surprise as we can!) and some of our other learning this week…

We have been excitedly rehearsing our assembly! We have been practising our songs and have included some jazzy actions too! We are very proud that we know most of our lines and have been trying very hard to use a big loud (but not shouty) voice. We can’t wait for you to see our assembly soon.

We have also been working hard to tell the time in Maths. We have been learning about digital clock this week and have been practising reading o’clock and half past times. We have been noticing digital times everywhere – on the iPads, on Miss Smith’s computer and the whiteboard.

We have enjoyed reading Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book this week. We have been talking about our favourite books and have enjoyed trying to remember the order that the books are read in the story and the characters in them.

We have been enjoying exploring ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’ this week in P1/2S! It has certainly been ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’ to fit everything in as we have been so busy but somehow we have managed! Let us tell you all about it…

In Literacy we have been exploring our book of the week by writing about it. P1 were drawing and writing the name of the characters. We were very proud that some of us could write ‘man’ and ‘hen’. All of us managed to label our drawings with the start letters for words with sounds we have learned. Meanwhile the P2s were writing the story out using Stretchy Snake to help them spell their words and using openers like ‘First’, ‘Then’ and ‘Next’.

To help us learn more about ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’, we built houses for the lady from Lego, with room for all the animals, told the story using puppets, drew out story maps and created our own farm.

In Maths, we have been learning to tell the time. P1s have been reading o’clock times and making these on their own mini clocks. P2s were working hard to remember o’clock times from last year as well as making half past times on their clocks. We loved listening to this song to help us remember o’clock times – feel free to listen and join in at home! WARNING: It WILL get stuck in your head!