Hello and welcome to our very first blog post.  Primary 1 have been very busy settling into our new classroom.  Children have been working hard to learn our routines and curriculum areas whilst accessing the dining hall and other areas of the school.

UNCRC – Class Charter

Primary 1 have worked on creating a class charter, with rights that we will focus on as a class. Our class rules and procedures centre around these rights, as we agree that we should all have a right to be healthy, a right to learn and a right to play. We have used our Teddy Bear theme from the transition visits as our theme for our charter.

Literacy

Our focus in term one will be nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Through these rhymes and stories, pupils will explore rhyming words, familiar patterns in words and begin to examine initial sounds which will later support word building and recognition of common words. This will allow pupils to start to access early writing skills as they use their knowledge of sounds to word build and orally structure sentences.

Our reading and spelling activities will begin later in the term, and children will access early reading books, starting with textless books, and progressing to reading books with simple sentences and picture clues. As their knowledge of common words increases, children will be exposed to more books and rhymes to support these developing skills. We will be using our predictive skills to think about what may happen in books we read as a class, based on information on the cover.

Our focus in writing will be practising writing our names and formation of initial sounds. As we progress, we will begin with oral structuring of sentences with pictures, building to overwriting, underwriting, and finally writing a short sentence with support. This will extend into term two as pupils become more familiar with initial sounds and common words. As pupils’ skills increase and their motor skills improve with practice, we hope to have pupils write sentences with less support.

Numeracy

Our focus in numeracy will be number recognition, initially numbers to five, then increasing this knowledge to numbers to 10. Children will build on forming their written number figures, whilst subitising, recognising number patterns, sequencing numbers within five, then to 10, whilst being exposed to hands-on activities which will increase their knowledge and confidence in using numbers. Number quantity and how this is represented using concrete materials will then build to recognising quantity in pictorial and grid form.

We will look at numbers in everyday life, where we see them and find them, and this will link to 2D shapes as we learn about the properties of shapes and where we might find shapes in our environment.

Health & Wellbeing

Our Paths Pupil of the Day will begin soon, and our Pupil of the Day will receive lots of compliments.  All children will have the opportunity to be Pupil of the Day.  We will begin exploring emotions, building friendships and meeting our Paths animals who will help the children to navigate lots of different feelings we may experience.

In P.E, our sessions will happen on Mondays and Wednesdays, and our focus in term one will be developmental games and large and small ball skills.  Children will have the opportunity to partake in some fun activities which support teamwork whilst focusing on developing our listening skills and awareness of space.

R.E

Our focus during R.E. sessions will be on prayer, their meaning, the routines of the church and the celebration of Mass.  We will also spend some time reading and discussing Bible stories relating to friendship and love, whilst considering how each of us are unique and has our own God-given talents.

IDL

We will be doing a mini topic focusing on Fairy Tales, and a second topic on the History of Me. Fairy Tales will link directly with our literacy and numeracy focus for term one, and History of Me will allow pupils to learn more about each other as their friendships develop.

Modern Languages (French)

In French lessons, children will begin to understand basic greetings. We will learn songs and rhymes to help us retain this information.

Homework

Homework will begin in September. Please check your child’s homework bag weekly to ensure all homework is completed. Homework will consist of sounds/spelling, common words and number activities as the children’s knowledge and skills increase. It may be topic or R.E. related initially as we begin to build the children’s knowledge and skills in literacy and numeracy. Homework will be issued on a Monday and should be returned to school on Friday.

We hope this is the start of a very successful term and that the pupils are enjoying their very first term at school.

Take care,

Mrs Travers and Mrs Strachan