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.