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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.

    • 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.

    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.

    We read a story and everyone fell asleep for 100 years!

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    This has been our first full week of part time P1 and we are all feeling pretty tired but not as tired as Sleeping Beauty! This week  we started our new topic of Sleeping Beauty. We read three stories and they all had the same title of Sleeping Beauty on the the cover but we noticed that the illustrator was different on each one and the story was a little different too. We discovered that the first story had a forest grow up around the castle, the next story had thorny bushes grow up all around the castle and the third story was very special because even though its title was  Sleeping Beauty, it had Biff, Chip, Kipper, their Dad and their friend Wilma in it! We had to put our ‘thinking hats’ on  and talked with our teachers about the similarities and differences- they were very impressed with us!

       

    We are still counting our days at school every morning and some of us are getting very good at talking about the numbers that are before and after the number we are putting up. We were amazed to see that wewhen we counted our number on Friday morning we had been at school for 9 days! We checked it against our rabbit number line ( they bring us a carrot for every day we are at school) and it was right!! We are also getting very good at moving the hand on our classroom clock to show what activities we are working on. We like looking at it in the morning when we come in because it helps us to know what we are doing and we can talk about the exciting things we will be doing. Our teacher, Mrs Mackay, says it is helping us learn about time too even though there are no numbers on the clock but we are sure that we will find out more about that soon.

      

    Ms Gauld. our Healthy Eating Assistant, came to visit our class this week. She told us how to wash our hands properly to stay healthy. We were very good at listening to her and giving her ideas of when and why we should we wash our hands. We decided that there were five times we must wash our hands;

    1. After we go to the toilet.
    2. Before we eat anything.
    3. After we have touched an animal, even our pets.
    4. After we cough or sneeze.
    5. After we have been playing outside.

    After we made our list Ms Gauld introduced us to Handy. He was a Hand Washing Helper and he told us if our list was right- and it was! He showed us what to do and what we would need, just like Ms Gauld and he even taught us a hand washing song. After that we all had a practise and Ms Gauld and Mrs Mackay said we were good enough that we could get one Handys special stickers!

     

      

      

    We have been learning even more sounds this week. This week we learnt p, i and n and in the active learning zone and the classroom we have been practising using them to make words, finding them in words and writing them. We are getting really good and we even took our sound books home as part of our homework this week so that we can teach our families the sounds, their actions and their songs.We have also been enjoying using the iPad to play games all about our sounds.

      

     

    In the Active Learning Zone there have been lots of new areas to investigate and learn in. One of our favourites this week has been the science table. We have been investigating different objects and shiny things. We know what to do when we are there because Walt is there to tell us what we are learning.

    All through the week we have all had a shot at playing a really fun game called PIPs. It helps our teachers see what we know and we all thought it was lots of fun! We had to do some counting, say what some sounds were, find some items in a picture and lots more fun things!

    Week Starting 27th August 2012

    •  We are still in for mornings only this week 9.00am – 12.15pm
    • 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.
    • DC Thomsons will be coming to take our photograph for the paper on Thursday 30th August. We will let you know when it is going to be in the paper.
    • We are going to be in school fulltime from Monday 3rd September 2012

    Our project is Sleeping Beauty.

    This week we will be learning the Swahili  song Jambo so that we can sing it for our visitors next month.