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We have a ‘spring’ in our step!

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Well it has been a busy few weeks at school and we have all been having lots of fun and lots of visitors. Our new topics are the Spring and the Seashore.  Our class have been  very excited because we have had some people in filming us from Promethean Planet and we have been meeting with a lady from the BBC and CBEEBIES who makes Nina and the Neurons. We had to watch some clips of Nina and then we said what we liked. Next we used our listening ears to listen to a radio show that Nina had made and we carried our the science experiments that she was talking about. We had lots of fun and we learnt lots of new words. Best of all, Anne who was our visitor got lots of ideas. Here is a link to the Nina page to share it with your family. We listened to the Sticky Materials show.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/nina-and-the-neurons/

In numeracy we have been learning lots and lots of new things. We have been learning all about sharing (division). We used the Promethean Board to read a story called The Doorbell Rings. It is all about a brother and sister who’s mummy makes them cookies. Mrs Mackay gave us cookies just like the boy and the girl got and we had to solve the sharing problems in the story. It was lots of fun and we were really good at using our thinking brains to divide well. Some of us even managed to work it out in written form too!

Lots of us enjoyed showing our families what we have been learning about dividing. Maddison even made a picture/model of what she had been learning using pasta.

We have also been learning all about fractions in numeracy. We looked at some pictures of pies and and we talked about what would happen if we cut the pie into different pieces. We knew lots of fraction words and we didn’t even know that’s what they were! We all got a paper plate and we had to cut it into smaller fractions and write on each part to say what it was. Next we had to fit the plate back together to help us to see how different pieces fit together to make the bigger fractions.

We have also been helping to create a beautiful school garden in our P1 playground. We were given a big tub full of soil and we had to plant plants in it and try to create a pattern using them. It was lots of fun and we were able to apply what we had been learning when we were planting our sunflower seeds in class to planting the flowers and the lavender bush. The flowers had roots and we had to shake them to loosen them up a little so that they can spread out and help them grow. We can’t wait for all our and the baskets that all the other classes planted to grow even more!

We had been thinking about the sorts of skills people need to do different jobs. Since we had been planting our sunflowers and our garden basket we decided that we would make a list of all the skills a gardener would need. We worked with our learning partner and discussed what skills we thought a gardener might need and we wrote them on a whiteboard. Then we gave our answers to Mrs Mackay and we made a class list. Some of us even went home and made a list of what skills the job we would like to do when we grow up might need.

At assembly we heard a talk from one of the older girls at school. She told us all about her life, where she and her family were from and what her culture was like. It was really interesting and we were really impressed that she was brave enough to stand up in front of the whole school by herself and talk about her life. Mrs McDonald was so impressed too that she asked all of us to think about our families, our cultures and heritage and create a mind map with our families. We all did a super job and Mrs Mackay and Mrs McDonald were both really impressed. Here are some of the mind maps we made;

We were also set a challenge to solve another problem for Mrs McDonald at assembly. She asked us to think about of ‘how to get our families involved in school more’. We talked to our teacher and made a mind map about that too. We had some terrific ideas and we hope that Mrs McDonald finds them useful.

Each term we have a focus on one of the four capacities of Curriculum for Excellence. This term our focus is on us to be Responsible Citizens. We have been looking at one of the aspects of this each week and we have made a flipchart page to show us what each one means to us and to see if we are using any of these in our daily school lives. We have been looking at how we can be responsible and care about each other. This doesnt just mean in school but in our community too. Here are our ideas…

Since we are all son good at being Responsible Citizens our Eco Committe decided to have a Green Day. First of all our eco committee member told us all about it. He did so well that we all gave him a green assessment smile! Next, on Friday we had to come to school in something green. It could be green in colour or green because we had recycled it from someone else. We ALL made a huge effort and our teachers were very proud of us. Jamie Lee even made her own top with her family which was AMAZING because it was recycled from a school t shirt into an eco t-shirt and had a message on it! Well done her and her family!

In class we have been finding out who are our class champions. Class champions are people who have tried hard, shown good skills and can demonstrate to others how to do something well. At the moment we have 8 champions.

They are;

Responsible Citizen Champion – Corey

Reading Champion – George

Writing Champions- Carys (handwriting) and Wren (blending and sounding)

Listening and Talking Champion – Lara

Sports Champion – Kyra

Numeracy Champion – Becca (Number, Money and Measure (weight))

Technology Champion – Billy (design)

Friendship Champion – Edyn

We are still collecting our Monstor points using Class Dojo and we have been asked to talk to Mrs McDonald, the rest of the school and teachers about what we have been doing. We are still doing really well with hitting our targets but in order to create our presentation we had to work with our learning partner and note down some ideas that we thought would encourage other classes to use it. We made a list using these on the big board and we have been taking photos of our monsters, awards, champion of the day medal and head teacher stickers that we use along with our monsters. We are going to use all of these photos in our presentation at assembly… we are all very excited!

We have been trying to keep fit during our Fit Fridays and we have had lots of fun having a taster session of Karate. It was so much fun. We had to be in teams and follow the Sensei (the teacher). To make it easier to follow him we all wore a red and blue band on our wrists. This made it easier to work out which was our left and right hands and feet. It was great and we were really excited to hear that we could all join the after school club on a Friday. We all got a letter but if you are interested and can’t find your letter please phone the school or the sports development team.

We have been learning lots of lots in music this term. We have been learning all about tempo and beats as well as LOTS of new songs! We have been playing instruments and singing everyday! Keep an eye out for your invitation to our assembly where you will hear some of our new songs!

Edyn has enjoyed learning how to play the instruments so much that she and her family even made their own musical instrument- it’s a guitar!

We have some visitors in class… We have been learning how to care for not just our class fish but we have been observing tadpoles and helping them to grow big and strong into frogs! We will have some pictures of you next week but here is a video clip of them in the wild.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/green-balloon-club/watch/green-balloon-club-tadpoles/

Lastly, our teachers have been playing a very fun game with us to see what we know. Some of us have been practising this ourselves and have been making a sound sheet using all of the magnetic sounds we know and take a picture of it. Here are the sounds Wren knows.

Week Beginning Monday 20th May 2013

  • Remember to bring your filled, named water bottle with you every day (no juice please).
  • The sunny weather is here (sort of) – remember to bring in your own lotion (your child must put their own on) and sun hat on the sunny days.
  • 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 -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 half of the 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).
  • Our class topic is ‘The Seashore”.
  • PLEASE NOTE THE SCHOOL IS CLOSED ON FRIDAY 24TH MAY AND MONDAY 27TH MAY.

    • It’s all adding up in our new year!

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    What a busy time we have been having since we came back from our holidays! We have all been talking about what we would like to challenge ourselves to do for the new year. We even learnt the long word ‘resolution’. We all talked talked to our families about what we would like to write and some of us wrote it in our yellow jotters then we all wrote it on our resolution sheet to put in our folios.

    We also have some new friend in our class (thanks to Mrs Paton!). We have some pet fish but some went on holiday and never came back so our fish ‘Goldie’ was getting lonely. We were so excited when Mrs Paton said that she had two fish who she found out wanted to find a new home! We decided that we couldn’t just call our new pets ‘fish’ so we decided to name them. We all thought of a name we liked and put in on a flipchart. Some of the names were very unusual but some of us thought of the same names as our friends. We had so many names that we all took turns to vote for our favourite one – some of us even decided that we liked other peoples ideas instead of our own. Once we had all voted we counted the results and the top two won. Meet Goldie (our old fish), Meemo (our goldfish who is orange) and Twinkle (our goldfish who is orange with a golden tummy).

    In number work we are still practising our adding up. We have been using lots of things to help us work out the answer and some of us have really gotten the hang of it! We have been looking at finding the missing numbers in addition sums. It is tricky but we got there in the end!

    Our water tray turned into a magical science experiment. We were all amazed when Mrs Mackay said that a special box had appeared and it was full of snow. Lots of us thought she was kidding because it was not very big but she told us that it was a science experiment made with magic. She showed us what was inside and explained that this bag was full of snow. We didnt think that this was right because the bag was just small and the same size as her head. She asked us if we could think of what we might have to do. George had the idea that snow is made of water so maybe we needed water to make the snow so we tried and something magical happened…. we got cold, snow and lots of it… the white powder reacted with the water and got bigger and bigger until we had lots!!! We have all enjoyed playing with it and investigating what would happen and how it feels.

    We have been planning what we we want to know about our new topic ‘Lost and Found’. We watched the film which we thought was very sad but then we were very happy at the end (we even cheered!). We are really looking forward to learning more about the story. We enjoyed reading the book but were fascinated that some bits were the same and some bits were different. Some of us even noticed that there was a different illustrator because the way the pictures looked was different but the story was almost the same so it must be the same author.

    Each week Mrs MacDonald sets the whole school a problem to solve. This week the problem was- what should be do about Friday afternoon activities. We decided that the best way to solve the problem was to make a mind map because Carys told us that it was important to plan if we want to do it well. So we all thought very carefully and we made a map with all our ideas on it. Then we picked the three that we thought would solve the problem the best and put a tick. We are very excited to see if our ideas will solve Mrs MacDonald and Mrs Frasers’ problem.

    This term we are focusing on being Effective Contributors. We decided that the way to explain this is that we have to try our best, join in and be clear when we are explaining things. This week in our Folio Friday time we all looked at four of the ways we can be effective contributors. We looked at a picture for each one and thought about what we have done over the last two weeks that matched the picture then wrote it on the promethean board to record our ideas. We had lots of ideas. At the end we worked with our shoulder partner and shared if we each thought that we had been effective contributors. Then if we thought we were effective contributors we told our other shoulder partner what we thought we had done best from the four pictures we looked at.

    In the ALZ we have been busy with more penguins!

    We have made a tremendous Penguin adding wall to help with our adding stories.

    We have also been self assessing. We are getting really good at it. Not just putting a green smiley face on but really thinking about if we needed help or managed it ourselves.

    At the Promethean board we also have a flipchart to help us add. We need to find all the penguin friends that go together. Then write our name on it.

    Week Beginning 21st January 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 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. Please remember long hair will need to be tied back and no jewellery. This means all earrings must be removed. Thank you.
  • Fruit money will be £1.00 until the mid term break in February.
  • Next week is Scottish Week
  • Remember to practise you Nessie poem at home for our Scottish Poetry Competition.
  • On Friday we are having a Scottish themed dinner. Remember to fill in your form if you want school dinners that day. Packed lunches run as normal.