Welcome back to the Primary 1 blog where you can find out what the children will be learning about as they continue to grow and develop throughout this final term.

Literacy

Primary 1 have become more and more confident when using initial sounds to word build. They will continue to work on word building this term, however, they will now focus on building CVCC as well as CCVC words (4 letters). Primary 1 will continue to use the Active Literacy strategy “say, make, break, read and write” to support them with this new learning. In addition to this, Primary 1 will continue to learn new common words every week as well as a new joined phoneme each week until they have learned all common words within stage 1. Primary 1 will continue to have lots of opportunities to practise word building and common words in a range of active ways in line with the Active Literacy approach to learning. A focus for Primary 1 during this last term will be using their knowledge of word building and common words to build sentences independently. The children in Primary 1 will have many opportunities to develop their independent writing skills this term through weekly news, free writing and sentence tasks linked to their spelling sounds. To support this new learning, Primary 1 will also apply their reading skills when writing. The children will have sentence building tasks linked to their reading books each week; this will ensure appropriate differentiation. In addition to this, Primary 1 will continue to focus on description writing this term, they will describe different objects in relation to their Spring topic as well as characters and objects from familiar stories. Primary 1 will continue to focus on describing number, colour, texture and size. The children will be encouraged, where appropriate to write independently.

Primary 1 will continue to develop their talking and listening skills; understanding when to listen and when to respond, taking turns and communicating with others. They will also continue to develop their letter formation through regular handwriting lessons/activities.

Numeracy and Mathematics

This term, Primary 1 will consolidate their understanding of the concept of addition within 10. They will focus on increasing their mental accuracy of number bonds to 10. The children will have many opportunities to develop their mental accuracy through mental math quizzes and number talks. In addition to this, Primary 1 will apply their knowledge of addition within 10 when working on missing number calculations as well as word problems. When Primary 1 are confident in their addition skills they will begin to focus on subtraction within 10. The children will transfer their skills to answer subtraction calculations and word problems. In addition to this, Primary 1 will consolidate their knowledge of numbers to 20 and beyond.

Primary 1’s beyond number focus this term will be time. The children will learn about both analogue and digital clocks. They will learn to tell the time using both types of clocks as well as match them. They will focus on tell the “o’clock” time on both clocks. Primary 1 will learn about what the hands (minute and hour) on the clock face mean (analogue) as well as the numbers on the digital clock (00). In addition to this, Primary 1 will revise the days of the week as well as the months of the year as part of this new learning. Primary 1 will learn about measurement this term with Miss Mulhern. They will work on developing their knowledge of length, capacity and volume. Primary 1 will develop this new learning through a hands-on approach.

Health and Wellbeing

Primary 1 will continue to develop their social and emotional skills through our whole school PATHS programme. The children continue to enjoy engaging with the puppets and love it when they visit our classroom. Primary 1 love giving and receiving compliments each day as part of “Pupil of the Day”. Primary 1 will continue to learn about their emotions through a range of activities and stories based around the PATHS puppets. The children in Primary 1 continue to engage enthusiastically with this programme.

In addition to this, Primary 1 will learn about how to keep themselves safe including what is meant by medicines and harmful substances. Primary 1 will learn to identify which substances may be helpful and which may be harmful in given situations as well as suggest ways to get help in unsafe and emergency situations, such as seeking out an adult and calling the emergency services.

Physical Education

This term Primary 1 will focus on athletics and orienteering. The children will practice running, jumping, and throwing both independently as well as part of a team. Once Primary 1 have developed their running, jumping, and throwing skills they will compete against each other in friendly relay races. In addition to this, Primary 1 will apply their ability to follow instructions within the classroom to giving and following instructions within the outdoor environment.

P.E. days will continue to be Monday and Thursday.

Religious Education

This term Primary 1 will learn about the beauty of God’s creation and how it is seen in them and all living things through God’s Loving Plan. The children in Primary 1 will reflect on the love that God instills upon them, giving thanks for talents and life itself. Primary 1 will think about Our Lady this term. The children will reflect on Mary as the mother of Jesus and the Mother of all of us. They will revise the nativity story as well as the Easter story to support their thinking. Primary 1 will also learn to pray the “Hail Mary”.

IDL

This term, Primary 1 will continue to learn about different materials through the science-based topic materials. They will explore a range of materials to enhance their understanding of the world. They will carry out different experiments which enable them to investigate and compare materials. In addition to this, Primary will explore the topic “Plants” this term. They will complete investigations about different plants through a range of field-based activities. Primary 1 will engage with this topic through a hands-on approach.

Thank you for visiting the Primary 1 blog, keep a look out for any further updates as term 4 progresses!

Thank you,

Mrs Dunsmore.