Tag Archives: Active Learning Zone

Things That Go Vroom…

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This week in the Active Learning Zone we have been learning about things that go and what makes them go. We started with a mind map of the things we knew about moving and what makes them move.

On the Science table we have been investigating lots of toys that move. We have the BeeBots, the remote control cars and toy cars. We have talked about the things that make them move eg. batteries and chargers which need electricity.

We have had lots of opportunities to find out about things that go and how they go through lots of activities. At the art table we have been painting a truck.

We designed a road for our cars and garage and lots of us helped and added to it.

At the Promethean Board we have been thinking about what things need to go. We have been drawing lines to match up the car with petrol, the hair dryer with electricity and the remote control cars with batteries.

At the playdough table it has been invaded by trucks and lots of rocks! We have been creating a bit of a construction site.

Last but not least we have been answering some blooms thinking questions. We had some super answers and have great knowledge about things that go and how they go. We are going to continue to explore things that go more in the Active Learning Zone.

Week Beginning Monday 15th April 2013

  • Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).
  • HOMEWORK – Please send it to school every day but any tasks should be completed by Wednesday. The teacher will collect in the weeks work on Wednesday. Each week there will be a Yellow Book Challenge to do but you can pick which challenge you want to do from a list of 3 each week. There will be no homework on a Wednesday night.
  • Gym is on a Monday and Thursday. Please remember long hair will need to be tied back and no jewellery. This means all earrings must be removed. Thank you.
  • Fruit money for this term is £1.40 please place in a named envelope.
  • Please return your child’s trip form and money as soon as possible (these do not have to be sent in together).
  • The first week back we will be learning about Spring.

    • It’s a New Term – Lost and Found

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    Our new topic is going to be Lost and Found.

    If you want to watch it again at home you can find a link for it on this page…

    http://www.literacyshed.com/the-picture-book-shed.html

    In the Active Learning Zone this week…

    we have been practising our adding stories with a little help from some penguins.

    We have been looking for a penguin with a number on his tummy and he helps us with the numbers that go together to add up to that number. We will have lots more practise of this.

    Also in the ALZ there is an igloo where we have been fishing.

    And there is also Antarctica with lots of penguins.

    At the making table we have been creating some wonderful penguins.

    At the playdough table we made some snow dough. We had to mix together cornflour, vegetable oil and glitter. It is very messy! We have been learning to use the dustpan and brush to clean up after ourselves. Mrs Munro says it’s a good skill to learn!

    Week Beginning Monday 14th Janurary

  • Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).
  • HOMEWORK – Please send it to school every day but any tasks should be completed by Wednesday. The teacher will collect in the weeks work on Wednesday. Each week there will be a Yellow Book Challenge to do but you can pick which challenge you want to do from a list of 3 each week. There will be no homework on a Wednesday night.
  • Gym is on a Monday and Thursday. Please remember long hair will need to be tied back and no jewellery. This means all earrings must be removed. Thank you.

    • Witches, Wizards and lots of pumpkins

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    In the Active Learning Zone we have been practising measuring too. We had Funnybones bones and we had to compare them with each other, order them and decide which was the longest and which was the shortest. We talked to Mrs Munro about how we did during the activity and decided ourselves how we thought we did too.

    We also played with orange Playdough and made our own spells. We had to make minibeasts and creatures to go into our cauldron. We even got to wear witches hats to help us make our spells.

    In the classroom we did lots of pumpkin measuring activities. We had to use cubes and see how many cubes it was to the top of the pumpkin. Once P1/2 were finished with the pumpkin it is now on the Autumn table. We will be watching it’s progress as it begins to decay. This will be our next Science experiment. We will need our gloves and goggles on for this one!

    In the ICT suite we have been learning how to use a program called Pivot. This is a first look at animation. We learned how to move the stick man, change his colour, make him smaller and bigger, add a background and add other stick characters. Some of us needed more practise at this as it is really hard to grab hold of the Pivot stickman and make him move. We are getting really good at practising these skills in the Active Learning Zone too. Lots of us have been trying out Pivot on the Promethean Board and the computer to get better at moving the stickman. Well done us!

    We made it to the end of term!

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    This is our last week of term and it’s been a busy one.

    We have been learning about data handling. We have been looking at how we gather information and then put it into a pictogram. We started with talking about our favourite Oxford Reading Tree character. We all stuck on our favourite onto the graph and then looked at which was our favourite character. We practised this every day in maths and at the end of the week we talked about our favourite fruit and made a pictogram on the Promethean Board. Mango was our favourite!

    Ms Gauld came to our class on Friday. She brought with her lots of fruit. We have fruit every day in school as part of being a Healthy school. But Ms Gauld brought lots of different types of fruit. She brought lime, watermelon, pineapple, mandarin, tomato, mango and apricot. Mango was our favourite. Lots of us liked it.

    In the Active Learning Zone we have been going outside with Mrs Munro to find some signs of Autumn. We had to collect lots of leaves, twigs and fir cones from the playground to put on our science table so we can investigate further. Mrs Munro brought in lots more fir cones from her walks in Tentsmuir forest and a great big bit of tree trunk. We have been using the magnifying glasses to investigate signs of Autumn further.

    We made patterns in the playground too with leaves we found. We had to look for lots of other patterns. We found lots of stripes on the fences.

    At the Cat in the Hat area we have been writing three letter words again but this time the Cat had taken some of the letters away! This meant we had to work out what the first sound was and write it down. We took a photograph of our Hat and Mrs Munro printed it off so we could add it to our folio. We have been listening to the story of Cat in the Hat on the iPad. We listen for words that have three sounds and then sound them out. We also noticed all the question marks and exclamation marks too.

    We look forward to learning more through Cat in the Hat and other stories in the new term. I think that Cat may have taken more letters away!

    Week Starting 22nd October 2012

    • Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).
    • HOMEWORK WILL RESUME ON THURSDAY 25TH OCTOBER.We will send homework out on a Thursday. Please send it to school every day but any tasks should be completed by Wednesday. The teacher will collect in the weeks work on Wednesday. Each week there will be a Yellow Book Challenge to do but you can pick which challenge you want to do from a list of  3 each week. There will be no homework on a Wednesday night.
    • Gym is on a Monday and Thursday. Please remember long hair will need to be tied back and no jewellery. This means all earrings must be removed.
    • ICT is on Wednesday afternoons.

    Our project is …….

    This week we will be learning ;

    • Jolly Phonics sounds x and y

    Getting Into Shape in P1

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    Primary 1 are getting into shape!

    Well, what a busy week we have had this week! On Monday we had gym with Mrs Paton, it was lots of fun and we have been learning to throw different sorts of balls using an underarm throw. We have also been practising using our bodies to move in an energetic way. We have gym on a Thursday too and our focus then has been to move around in a space safely and energetically. We have been playing lots of games with our teachers to help us keep fit and we check our heart rate and show our teacher using a fist every time our heart beats.

    In number work we have been learning all about shape. First of all we looked at 2D objects- a triangle, square, rectangle, circle and hexagon. We all took turns to pull out a 2D object from the feely bag our teacher had brought and we had to carefully feel it. Then we had to try to describe it, we had to think about how many sides and corners it had and count them and finally we had to name the shape. After all that we took it out of the bag and showed it to our learning group and they told us if we were correct. It was lots of fun and we were so good our teacher called us the Super Shape Sorters!

     

    After we practised drawing all the 2D objects on a whiteboard we completed a sheet for our folios. We all tried really hard to match the features of the shapes to the objects we have been ‘playing’ with and our sheets were fantastic! Here are just three of our fantastic sheets (by Kayla, George and Josh).

    We have also used what we had learned about in 2D objects when we looked at 3D shapes on Thursday. We had lots of fun and learnt some new words too. We found a square based pyramid, a sphere, a cuboid, a cone, a cube, triangular prism and a hexagonal prism. It was lots of fun and we found out that shapes have faces (lots of us found that very funny but helpful when trying to describe the shapes).

    We are still counting our days at school and we have been practising these as one of our choosing tasks- we are getting really good at forming our numbers.

    In language this week we have been learning the sounds r, m and d. We have also been being to sound out some words and read- we are very proud of ourselves because a few weeks ago we didn’t even know the sounds and now some of us can read words like and, cat and even monster!!! It’s very impressive!


    As part of our topic we decided that we would make our own puppets to use in the puppet theatres in the Active Learning Zone and our classroom. We had to think about who the characters were in the story and then think about who our puppet could be. We did really well and they are all very different. Here are three that were made by Billy, Maddison and Carys.

    We are going to use our puppets to write about characters.

    Our homework keeps getting better and better and our teachers are very pleased with us. One of our tasks was to find out about local castles. We did really well and lots of visited different castles and took photos at them. Magnus made a photo story of his visits to Broughty Ferry Castle and St Andrew’s Castle, Molly looked them up on the computer with her mummy and Leyan found out lots of facts about Glamis castle. These are just some examples of the wonderful work that we are doing with our families.

    The star of the week this week was Demi for her super shape work and positive attitude. Well done , Demi!

    In the Active Learning Zone we have been learning to choose where we play. We put our picture up beside the area we want to play and then go and play there. When we want to change we have to move our picture. We have to think carefully where we would like to play and who we would like to play with.

    We have been doing of lots of learning about Sleeping Beauty in the classroom and in the Active Learning Zone. We have been telling the Sleeping Beauty story at the puppet theatre, pretending to the characters from the Sleeping Beauty story in the role play area, building castles in the brick area and drawing castles at the writing table. We are going to put all our learning in the classroom and Active Learning Zone in our Sleeping Beauty book. Some of us worked really hard to make our book to put everything into.

    We have our learning up on our Learning Wall too. Here we have pictures of the books we have been looking at, the pages from the books where we found the letters we have been learning, a picture of the movie we watched and pictures of our castles we draw with Textease Paint on our first visit to the ICT suite.

    At the creative area we have been making lots of different things this week. Some of us have loved making kites and we have make lots of them! But we were learning to make dragons just like the ones we have at our story table. Kayla made the most amazing dragon. She worked on it all morning whenever she was out in the Active Learning Zone. What an amazing job  Kayla, well done!

    Week Starting 17th September 2012

    • This is our third week of full time. We come to school at 9am and finish at 3.15pm. Remember we will need a packed lunch or money for lunch. If you are going home for lunch, then lunchtime is from 12.15pm till 1.15pm.
    • Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).
    • We will send homework out on a Thursday. Please send it to school every day but any tasks should be completed by Wednesday. The teacher will collect in the weeks work on Wednesday. Each week there will be a Yellow Book Challenge to do but you can pick which challenge you want to do from a list of 3. There will be no homework on a Wednesday night.
    • Gym is on a Monday and Thursday. Please remember long hair will need to be tied back and no jewellery. This means all earrings must be removed.
    • ICT is on Wednesday afternoons.

    Our project is Sleeping Beauty.

    This week we will be learning ;

    • how to plan our own learning in a mind map
    • Jolly Phonics sounds g, o and u
    • how to change the paint shade and brush size when using Textease Paint
    • the Swahili song ‘Jambo’ so that we can sing it for our visitors on the 20th September.

    We’ll cast a spell on you!

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    Well, what a magical week we have had in Primary 1 this week. As part of our homework tasks some of us made magnificent magical wands! There are all very different and our teachers and classmates think that they are fantastic!! We had to think of what spell we would cast with our wands because in the story of Sleeping Beauty the good fairies and the bad fairy cast spells with their wands. Some us would cast a spell to give us princess dresses, some of us would cast a spell to make us run fast, some of us would cast a spell to give us presents whenever we wanted and some of us said that our wand would turn the lights on and off when we waved it. They are all wonderful and our teachers are very proud of us and our families for such fantastic work!

    Also, as part our homework over the last two weeks some of us have been drawing pictures of Sleeping Beauty, her castle, the fairies and even the spindle that she pricked her finger on and fell asleep for 100 years! Mrs Mackay thinks that we might be famous artists when we grow up they are so good. Here are few for you to see.

    In number work, we have been learning all about sorting. We used the Promethean Board to help us play different games where we had to sort bears into different circles depending on what colour they were. Then we had to sort flowers, this was trickier because we could sort them by colour or height or by how many leaves they had. Lastly, we had to sort kangaroos but they made us think hard too because some had matching t-shirts on and some had matching hats so we could sort them two different ways. We really got the hang of it and soon we were sorting using different materials. We got lots of colourful buttons. Some of us wanted to sort the buttons by shape and some of sad we would sort them by colour. We also had some animals which we said we could sort by species or colour. We recorded our sorting results by taking a photo of our work. We all did very well and used super thinking!

    In Language and Topic, we have been learning more Jolly Phonic sounds. We did ‘e’ and ‘h’ this week and we had lots of fun finding them in different pieces of work on the board so we decided to all take a page from the story of Sleeping Beauty and we highlighted some of the sounds we have been learning. Some of us were able to colour exclaimation and question marks that we recognised!

    On Friday Ms Gauld, our Healthy Eating Assistant, came to visit half of our class to talk to us about how to keep our teeth healthy. First of all WALT, our ‘class crocodile’ told us what we would be learning and WILF, our ‘class pink rabbit’ told us how to succeed and how to make our teacher smile. Then Ms Gauld showed us how to brush our teeth and how much toothpaste to use. Next we met Buzzy who showed us his teeth and Ms Gauld told us what all the different teeth do when we eat. We all agreed that we should brush our teeth at least twice a day and Ms Gauld explained that in a couple of weeks we will all get to brush our teeth at school after lunch too – we are sure that that will make our smiles even more beautiful! We also looked at what foods were good for our teeth and what foods can be bad for our teeth. We even got to see some teeth which have not been looked after properly which we all agreed where a but yucky and so  before Ms Gauld left she gave everyone in our group a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste to use at home (and we were all very polite and used lovely manners to say thank you).

    In the Active Learning Zone we have been practicing making wands too. At the creative area we can cut, stick, draw and glue anything we like. We have make some wonderful things this week. Lots of wands and we had to design our own. Some of us made brilliant robots and learned how to staple with a little stapler.

    At the Science table we have been investigating shiny things. Glass beads, shiny materials and shiny letters. We are really good at finding all the shiny letters hidden in the shiny beads.

    At the playdough table we have been making sausages and making them into letters. We have to try and make the letters that we have learned about so far.

    At the story table we have been making stories from the felt shapes. We have been making knights and princess and dragons. Next week we are going to video our friends telling their princess stories.

    At the Numeracy table we have been making some fantastic shape pictures. Some of us have started finding our name, putting it beside our picture and taking a photograph of it. Well done!

    Week Starting 10th September 2012

    • We are full time this week. We come to school at 9am and finish at 3.15pm. Remember we will need a packed lunch or money for lunch. If you are going home for lunch then lunchtime is from 12.15pm till 1.15pm.
    • Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).
    • We will send homework out on a Thursday. Please send it to school every day but any tasks should be completed by Wednesday. The teacher will collect in the weeks work on Wednesday. Each week there will be a Yellow Book Challenge to do but you can pick which challenge you want to do from a list of 3. There will be no homework on a Wednesday night.
    • Gym is on a Monday and Thursday. Please remember long hair will need to be tied back and no jewellery. This means all earrings must be removed.
    • ICT is on Wednesday afternoons.

    Our project is Sleeping Beauty.

    This week we will be learning ;

    • how to plan our own learning in a mind map
    • Jolly Phonics sounds r,m and d
    • how to use the computer to make a picture using Textease Paint
    • the Swahili  song Jambo so that we can sing it for our visitors  on 20th September.

    Read all about it! Reading books are fun!

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    What a busy week we have had!

    We did another sound from Jolly Phonics. This week we did ‘c’ and ‘k’. Just like the sound castanets make. We learnt them together because they sound the same and they have the same action even though they look different. We were very good at writing them on the computer , on whiteboards and on the sound sheets. Our teacher taught us a song about clicking castanets and kites to help us remember the sound and action.You can practise our sounds by looking at the sound book in your homework pocket. We still practise all the sounds we have learned so far.

     We have been counting everyday and we been at school for 14 days. We can’t believe it because it’s flown in so quickly! In numeracy we were writing and counting all the way from 0  up to 10. We were writing them in different ways. Some of us are amazing at writing them on them whiteboards!

    We had our photograph taken for the Evening Telegraph!  Read all about it!!! Primary one are going to be in the paper, Dundee’s Evening Telegraph! Look out for it appearing in their P1 editions. This week we had our photograph taken by a lovely man called Bob from D.C. Thomson. We had to arrange ourselves into three groups. The tallest people sat on chairs, the smallest people stood behind them and the medium sized people sa on the floor. We were very good at arranging ourselves into groups . We were super and all said cheese! We looked very smart in our school uniforms! Our teachers, Mrs Mackay and Mrs Munro are going to print two big copies to put on our door and wall.

    At assembly we practise our good listening. We like singing some songs and this week we learned some Makaton and sign language. Maddison got a star award this week for always trying her best especially with her sounds. Well done Maddison!

    We listened to three more Sleeping Beauty stories. We are getting very good at telling Mrs Mackay and Mrs Munro about all the different parts of the book eg. the front cover, back cover, title. We remember that the author writes the story and the illustrator draws the pictures. We are beginning to predict what might happen next in the story too. Next week we are going to plan what we want to learn about Sleeping Beauty and how we can do that in our classroom and Active Learning Zone.

    We have had our first reading books home! In school we have been finding out all about the Oxford Reading Tree family, Mum, Dad, Biff, Chip, Kipper and Floppy. The books we take home have no words yet but so we have to tell our families the story. We look carefully at the pictures to look for lots of detail. We really liked listening to the story and thinking about what is happening as well as predicting what we think might happen next. We all got a sheet with lots of games on it to play with our families  and we practised playing some of these with our teachers. They are;

    ‘Find the…’

    You and your child take turns to ask each other to find an object in the picture. This game can also be played after reading the whole book to revisit the story as well as familiar and unfamiliar vocabulary.

    ‘How many…’

    See how many of the same object you can find in the whole book. This game can be played when your child has worded books eg how many the’s can you find in the story.

    ‘I think that this is the story….’

    As your child to make up a new version of the story that fits the picture pages on the book. 

    ‘What’s going to happen next is….’

    Before you turn the page, ask questions to help your child recap what they have read via the pictures or what they have told you is the story. Before you turn the page, ask them to tell you what they think may happen next and also ask why they think that.
    ‘Sequence your story’

    Take a photo of each page of your child’s book, including the cover, print off the pictures and ask your child to put them in the correct order (photos do not have to be the same size as the book page).
    ‘MY Reading Book’

    Ask your child to make their own reading book to tell the story. This may have the same pictures or different pictures. Let them to read it to you as a bedtime / quiet time story.

    If you can think of other games to play which will help us learn all bout reading and using books please leave a comment and let us know what they are.

    We also used ‘Magic Page’ on the computer to read a book with our teacher. We all enjoyed it. Before we could read and listen to the story on the Promethean Board we got some clues to help us try and work out what the title was! Michael and Billy both got it right and guessed that it was The Lost Teddy. We are all looking forward to using magic page again!

    In the Active Learning zone we have been very creative. Our creative area has lots of materials, pens, glue and selotape to help us create. Some of us have made crowns just like the king and queen wear in the Sleeping Beauty story. We have also made lots of animals, pictures and lots more. What a creative bunch we are. We have also been using the iPad and an app called Hairy Letters. This helps us practise our letter formation. At the Promethean Board we have been learning to write our name. And at the role play area, which is Sleeping Beauty’s bedroom, we have been pretending to be a character from the Sleeping Beauty story.

      

    Week Starting 3rd September 2012

    •  We are full time this week. We come to school at 9am and finish at 3.15pm. Remember we will need a packed lunch or money for lunch. If you are going home for lunch then lunchtime is from 12.15pm till 1.15pm.
    • Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).
    • We will send homework out on a Thursday. Please send it to school every day but any tasks should be completed by Wednesday. Each week there will be a Yellow Book Challenge to do but you can pick which challenge you want to do from a list of 3. There will be no homework on a Wednesday night.
    • Gym is on a Monday and Wednesday. Please remember long hair will need to be tied back and no jewellery. This means all earrings must be removed.

    Our project is Sleeping Beauty.

    This week we will be learning ;

    • how to plan our own learning in a mind map
    • how to use the computer to make a picture using Textease Paint
    • the Swahili  song Jambo so that we can sing it for our visitors next month.