Happy New Year to you all! I hope you had a very enjoyable festive break with your families.

In Primary 1 we are ready for a new year of learning!! Please have a look at the information below to see what we will be focusing on in each subject.

Literacy

Phonics – We will learn the remaining letter sounds of the alphabet this term while improving our word building skills.

Spelling – Now that we can read and write our sounds, we will be writing as many words as we can! Some of our common words cannot be sounded out so we have to practise the spelling of these in lots of different ways to help us remember the letter order.

Writing – We are continuing to develop our skills in sentence building this term. We will be using our knowledge of the letter sounds to independently write words in a simple sentence for a variety of stimuli.

Letter formation and hand writing will continue to be a focus to allow us to showcase our spelling skills with ease.

Reading – Now that we are using worded texts, we will be developing our word attack skills, remembering to use our letter sounds to help us with unfamiliar words, while looking for our common words too.

We will also be developing our comprehension skills by answering questions about our texts. This term we will be looking at Traditional Tales, discussing character traits and sequencing the main events of the stories.

Numeracy

During our Mental Maths sessions, we will continue to practise counting forwards and backwards. We will also be seeing how quickly we can respond to more and less questions.

We will continue to focus on our addition skills, partitioning the quantities to 10 and learning the different ways to make each number. We will be learning about the doubling and halving of quantities.

Towards the end of term, we will be exploring Money, initially brainstorming our ideas about when and how we use it. We will be introduced to all coins up to £2, ensuring we can correctly identify these and as our addition skills develop, we will combine these coins to “pay” for goods in our class shop.

Through our topic work, we will also be exploring Data Handling; sorting a variety of objects into groups and recording and displaying the information that we have gathered.

Health & Well-Being (HWB)

During PATHS time, we will be learning to “Do Turtle” when things become stressful. We are going to be problem solving for Twiggle and his friends by helping them overcome difficult friendship scenarios. We are confident we have the necessary knowledge and strategies to help them!

In other areas of HWB, we are considering the impact of physical activity on our bodies and identifying the physical changes we feel after a period of exercise.

We will also be discussing the importance of personal hygiene; reinforcing our tooth brushing and handwashing techniques.

Keeping ourselves safe will also be a focus this term as we think about our road safety techniques and how to react in an emergency situation.

During our PE sessions we will be completing a block of gymnastics, reinforcing the skills from last term while incorporating these into sequenced movements.

Fun fitness will be our final topic, developing each child’s personal level of speed, agility, stamina and strength through fun activities and exercises.

GYM DAYS ARE MONDAYS AND THURSDAYS – PLEASE RETURN ALL GYM BAGS AND ENSURE EARRINGS ARE NOT WORN ON THESE DAYS.

RE

The first half of the term will focus on the Holy Family and how life would have been for Jesus as He grew up in Nazareth with Mary and Joseph. We will talk about the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist and revisit our own.

As we move towards Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent, we will talk about the meaning of this special time. During Lent we will take part in special prayer and reflection times to prepare ourselves for the special celebration of Easter.

IDL (Topic)

Our first topic this term will be “Weather”. We will be exploring and naming the different types of weather and discussing which of these are typically seen during each season. We will record the weather in different way and discuss the impact it has on our daily lives.

Our second topic will be “Senses”. We will identify and explore our 5 senses through a variety of practical activities.

Expressive Arts

Our art and music will be linked to our topics this term. Art will see us focus on the “design” aspect of the subject and within Music we will be using our senses to listen to excerpts, identifying the beat, pitch and tone of the music before exploring these on tuned and untuned percussion instruments.

We cannot wait to get started!

Mrs Duff.

Happy New Year to you all! I hope you had a very enjoyable festive break with your families.

In Primary 1 we are ready for a new year of learning!! Please have a look at the information below to see what we will be focusing on in each subject.

Literacy

Phonics – We will learn the remaining letter sounds of the alphabet this term while improving our word building skills.

Spelling – Now that we can read and write our sounds, we will be writing as many words as we can! Some of our common words cannot be sounded out so we have to practise the spelling of these in lots of different ways to help us remember the letter order.

Writing – We are continuing to develop our skills in describing this term as well as having a go at writing some words and sentences by ourselves.

Letter formation and hand writing will continue to be a focus to allow us to showcase our spelling skills with ease.

Reading – Now that we are starting to use worded texts, we will be developing our word attack skills, remembering to use our letter sounds to help us with unfamiliar words, while looking for our common words too.

We will also be developing our comprehension skills by answering questions about our texts. This term we will be looking at Traditional Tales, discussing character traits and sequencing the main events of the stories.

Numeracy

During our Mental Maths sessions, we will continue to practise counting forwards and backwards. We will also be seeing how quickly we can respond to more and less questions.

We will continue to focus on our addition skills, partitioning the quantities to 10 and learning the different ways to make each number. We will also be learning about the doubling and halving of quantities.

Towards the end of term, we will be exploring “Money”, initially brainstorming our ideas about when and how we use it. We will be introduced to all the coins up to £2, ensuring we can correctly identify these and as our addition skills develop, we will combine these coins to “pay” for goods in our class shop.

Through our topic work, we will also be exploring Data Handling; sorting a variety of objects into groups and recording and displaying the information that we have gathered.

Health & Well-Being (HWB)

Now that we have learned how to “Do Turtle” when things are becoming stressful, we are going to be problem solving for Twiggle and his friends by helping them overcome difficult friendship scenarios. We are confident we have the necessary knowledge and strategies to help them!

In other areas of HWB, we are considering the impact of physical activity on our bodies and identifying the physical changes we feel after a period of exercise.

We will also be discussing the importance of personal hygiene; reinforcing our tooth brushing and handwashing techniques.

As part of our “Shops and Shopping” topic, we will be looking at the range of food that can be bought in our local shops and investigating where it comes from. We will also have some taster sessions, ensuring we are mindful of food hygiene and safety when preparing our snacks.

During our PE sessions we will be completing a block of gymnastics, reinforcing the skills from last term while incorporating these into sequenced movements.

We will then introduce racquet skills, looking at how we hold and use a racquet before introducing ball control.

Fun fitness will be our final topic, developing each child’s personal level of speed, agility, stamina and strength through fun activities and exercises.

THANK YOU ONCE AGAIN FOR TAKING ALL EARRINGS OUT FOR GYM DAYS ON MONDAYS AND THURSDAYS.

RE

The first half of the term will focus on the Holy Family and how life would have been for Jesus as He grew up in Nazareth with Mary and Joseph. We will talk about the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist and revisit our own

As we move towards Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent, we will talk about the meaning of this special time. During Lent we will take part in special prayer and reflection times to prepare ourselves for the special celebration of Easter.

IDL (Topic)

Our first topic this term will be “Materials”. We will be exploring and identifying a range of materials, thinking about what they could best be used for and why. We will be investigating which materials float and sink then using our findings to help us build a boat.

Shops and Shopping will be our other topic this term. We will investigate the shops and businesses in our local community and consider the different jobs and roles that people can do. This will help inform our aspirations about the types of jobs we would like to do which we will express through a variety of role play activities.

Our shopping baskets will be FULL in our class shop as we become familiar with the act of exchanging money for an item.

Expressive Arts

Our art, music and drama will be linked in with our topics once again this term. Art and music will have an appreciation element with the children giving their responses to specific artwork and pieces of music.

Within music the children will be identifying various percussion instruments and using these to keep a steady beat.

We cannot wait to get started!

Mrs Duff and Mrs Strachan

Term 2

Welcome back to everyone and I hope you all had a wonderful October break.

Primary 1 are back and ready to learn!! We have a busy and fun filled term ahead including some “spooky” activities for Hallowe’en before getting ready to celebrate our first Christmas as part of the Mount Carmel school community.

Literacy

This term we will be continuing to practise our letter formation and pencil control skills to ensure we can write the letters we have been learning.

Now that we know some of the sounds the letters of the alphabet make, we will be “blending” these together to make words. These words will help us with our reading and writing tasks.

We are very excited that we are becoming “readers” in Primary 1 and will soon be bringing home our first texts with words in them. We will be making predictions about the stories we read in class, using the title and illustrations to help us.

During writing activities, we are continuing to describe a range of objects by thinking about their colour, size, texture and shape.

Numeracy

Now that we have explored the numbers to 10 fully and have looked at those numbers which are “more” and “less”, we will be focusing on the concept of addition. We will begin by combining two quantities and understanding that when you do this, the quantity gets bigger. This will lead us on to learning our number stories, where we learn the different ways to “make” our numbers to 10. These number stories (or facts) are the building blocks to which all the other number processes are built upon, so we will spend a lot of time on these, ensuring they are well embedded before moving on.

Numbers are tricky to write, so number formation will continue to be reinforced in class and through homework tasks.

Health & Wellbeing

We will continue to welcome our PATHS puppets to help us talk about our emotions and friendships. We have been talking about the kinds of things friends do together and have discussed what makes a good friend.

We have been exploring our emotions and sharing our experiences and we will be looking at ways to help us manage our feelings.

We will also be talking about ways to keep ourselves safe when indoors and outdoors.

Topic

Our topic this term is “Maps and Mapping”. We will be investigating the physical features of our local environment and having fun representing these through models and pictures. We will also link this topic to our learning in Maths by exploring the language of position and movement.

RE

During RE we will continue to give thanks for God’s love.

We will also explore the story of creation, developing our awareness of the natural wonders of the world around us.

As the term progresses, we will celebrate advent together, preparing for the birth of Jesus by showing love and kindness to those around us as much as we possibly can. We will be exploring the story of the nativity through songs, role play and craft activities.

Expressive Arts

The seasonal themes of Autumn, Winter and Christmas will be the focus of our drama, music and art activities this term.

Thanks for your support,

Mrs Duff and Mrs Strachan

A very warm welcome to the Primary 1 Blog. The children are settling brilliantly into their new school surroundings and have already established routines and friendships within their new class!!

We have had a lovely start to the term getting to know one another and our new class routines but we are most definitely poised and ready to LEARN!!!

Primary 1 – Term 1

Literacy

During literacy times, P1 have been developing their phonological awareness (the ability to hear sounds in words). We are doing this by focusing on the rhythm and rhyme of language through clapping syllables and working on our nursery rhymes.

We are also working on our fine motor control to get ready for writing! Name writing is a focus too, so we can always sign off on our masterpieces!

Listening and talking is a huge part of our day. We are learning to follow our “carpet rules” to ensure we do our best listening while the teacher or our peers are talking. We are also taking turns at communicating our thoughts and feelings.

Numeracy

We know numbers are all around us and have had a chance to talk about numbers which are “special” to us, for example, our age, door number etc.

Number times will consist of lots and lots of counting! We will be developing our “number sense” by counting out and comparing quantities and becoming familiar with the language of mathematics.

We will be reciting our number sequences forwards and backwards, understanding that each number we say represents a quantity.

As our pencil control improves we will be learning how to form our digits correctly.

Pattern will also be a focus this term.  We will link this to outdoor learning by looking for natural patterns and shape in the environment as well as artificial ones indoors.

Health & Well-being (HWB)

Our PATHS programme will feature heavily during our HWB time. The children have been very excited to meet our PATHS puppets, Twiggle and friends! Our puppet friends will be helping us to explore our feelings as well as thinking about the qualities that makes us good friends. We will also be introduced to our “Pupil of the Day” initiative, which allows each and every member of the class to be the focus of our kind words and actions for a whole day.

In PE we will initially develop our spatial awareness through games before moving onto large ball skills.

RE

The children have been introduced to our RE times and have learned about God’s love for us all. We will continue to explore this unconditional love by considering the gifts God has given us, including people who care for us and the qualities which make each and every one of us so special and unique.

IDL

We will be using our Nursery Rhymes to explore other areas of the curriculum such as art, music and technology.

Expressive Arts

During art sessions we will be creating our favourite characters from the Nursery rhymes we have been learning. We will be doing a lot of cutting and sticking of different types of collage matierials.

During music sessions, we will be singing and keeping the beat to Nursery rhyme favourites.

Mrs Duff

Happy New Year to you all! I hope you had a very enjoyable festive break with your families.

In Primary 1/2 we are ready for a new year of learning!! Please have a look at the information below to see what we will be focusing on in each subject.

Literacy – Primary 2

Phonics – we will continue to follow our Active Literacy framework, learning new joint phonemes and using these to make and break words.

Spelling – spelling common words as we learn them is always a challenge. This term we are going to be trying to spell these correctly while using them in sentences.

Writing – Using the skills we have acquired in using our Description bubbles throughout the previous terms, we are going to be writing about characters and settings.

Hand writing will also be a focus this term, ensuring we are correctly forming our letters and taking care with their size and position on our lined pages.

Reading – Our focus in reading will be to develop our comprehension skills by answering inferential questions; using the clues in the story and our own knowledge to help us. We will be discussing and sequencing the main events of stories and will continue to read our Bug Club texts too.

Literacy – Primary 1

Phonics – We will learn the remaining letter sounds of the alphabet this term while improving our word building skills.

Spelling – Now that we can read and write our sounds, we will be writing as many words as we can!! Some of our common words cannot be sounded out so we have to practise the spelling of these in lots of different ways to help us remember the letter order!!

Writing – We are continuing to develop our skills in describing this term as well as having a go at writing some words and sentences by ourselves.

Letter formation and hand writing will continue to be a focus to allow us to showcase our spelling skills with ease.

Reading – Now that we are using worded texts, we will be developing our word attack skills, remembering to use our letter sounds to help us with unfamiliar words, while looking for our common words too.

We will also be developing our comprehension skills by answering questions about or texts.

Numeracy – Primary 1 and 2

As a class, we have been working on our strategies for adding and subtracting mentally, these will help us continue with our addition and subtraction facts to 10 and 20.

P2 – We will be transferring our addition and subtraction skills into the topic of “Money” later this term. Initially we will consider the various methods we can use to pay for things before identifying the coins up to £2. Once we are familiar with the various coins, we will combine these to create exact amounts to 20p. Some children will be expected to give change and use the “p” and “£” sign correctly.

P1 – We will continue to focus on our addition skills, partitioning the quantities to 10 and learning the different ways to make each number. We will also be learning about the doubling and halving of quantities.

We will also be looking at Money, initially brainstorming our ideas about when and how we use it. We will be introduced to all the coins up to £2, ensuring we can correctly identify these and as our addition skills develop, we will combine these coins to “pay” for goods in our class shop.

As a class, we will continue to look at time this term in more detail, linking in with our topic of “Sun, Moon & Stars”.

As part of our topic, we will also be looking at measure. Initially, the focus will be on using the comparative language of measure such as longer, shorter, thinner, wider etc but we will move on to using non-standard units of measure, eg: hand spans, feet, cubes.

Health & Well-Being (HWB)

Now that we have learned how to “Do Turtle” when things are becoming stressful, we are going to be problem solving for Twiggle and his friends by helping them overcome difficult friendship scenarios. We are confident we have the necessary knowledge and strategies to help them!

In other areas of HWB, we are considering the impact of physical activity on our bodies and identifying the physical changes we feel after a period of exercise.

We will also be discussing the importance of personal hygiene; reinforcing our tooth brushing and handwashing techniques.

Keeping ourselves safe will also be a focus this term as we think about our road safety techniques and how to react in an emergency situation.

During our PE sessions we will be completing our second block of gymnastics, reinforcing the skills from last term while incorporating these into sequenced movements.

We will then introduce racquet skills, looking at how we hold and use a racquet before introducing ball control.

Fun fitness will be our final topic, developing each child’s personal level of speed, agility, stamina and strength through fun activities and exercises.

THANK YOU ONCE AGAIN FOR TAKING ALL EARRINGS OUT FOR GYM DAYS ON MONDAYS AND THURDAYS.

RE

The first half of the term will focus on the Holy Family and how life would have been for Jesus as He grew up in Nazareth with Mary and Joseph. We will also discuss how He would have gone to the local Synagogue to worship and compare this to the church where we go to pray. We will also discuss our Baptism and compare this to the Naming Ceremony which represents the Jewish tradition.

As we move towards Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent, we will talk about the meaning of this special time. During Lent we will take part in special prayer and reflection times to prepare ourselves for the special celebration of Easter.

IDL (Topic)

Our first topic this term will be “Grandparents”. We will be asking our grandparents LOTS of questions to help us learn about life in the past!!! We will compare their childhood toys/games/music to ours and see if there has been many changes!!

Sun, Moon and Stars will be our second topic this term.  Our main focus will be to understand the rotation of the Earth and how we have night time and day time. We will also explore how the Earth orbits the sun, giving us the seasons of the year. We will investigate the planets of our Solar System and have lots of fun exploring and measuring shadows.

Expressive Arts

Our art, music and drama will be linked in with our topics once again this term. Art and music will have an appreciation element with the children giving their responses to specific artwork and pieces of music.

Within music the children will be identifying various percussion instruments and using these to keep a steady beat.

We cannot wait to get started!

Mrs Duff.

The boys and girls in P1, P1/2 and P2/3 were given a wonderful surprise today………….Santa came to visit! Even though he is super busy, he made time to travel  all the way from the North Pole to come and see us!!

We told Santa what we would like for Christmas and then we sang “Jingle Bells” to thank him for his visit.

I hope you all had a relaxing October break and are ready to embark on the forthcoming Hallowe’en and Festive celebrations!! We are certainly ready for another busy term of learning in Primary 1/2, while still managing to get caught up in the fun and excitement of the Christmas term.

Literacy

Primary 2

In phonics we will continue with our joined phonemes (2 letter sounds) and become more confident in reading and writing these.

As we learn new common words, spelling will continue to be an important focus for us to ensure we can develop our independent writing skills.

We are working our way through the Bug Club texts, appropriate to our stage of learning. Please continue to login to these as required for our homework tasks. If there is any issue with logging on, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

During this term, we will focus on our word attack skills using our phonics knowledge and we will be developing our understanding of texts by answering literal questions. We will also be deepening our prediction skills by using the title, blurb and illustrations to justify our responses.

Primary 1

This term we will be continuing to practise our letter formation and pencil control skills to ensure we can write the letters we have been learning.

Now that we know some of the sounds the letters of the alphabet make, we will be “blending” these together to make words. These words will help us with our reading and writing tasks.

In writing, we will continue to describe people and objects, orally and pictorially focusing on colour, shape and size.

In reading we will be predicting what a text is about using the title, front cover and blurb. We will also be sequencing parts of the story in the correct order to check our understanding.

Numeracy

Counting will always be a focus in P1/2, ensuring we can count on and back from any number to give us the fluidity needed for mental addition and subtraction.

Primary 2

Our main focus this term will be addition within 10 and 20. Some children will be exploring the number stories (facts) to 20 including the tricky skill of “bridging” 10!

Within addition we will think about the mental strategies we use to answer calculations including counting on, doubles and near doubles.

Primary 1

Now that we have explored the numbers to 10 fully and have looked at “more” and “less”, we will be focusing on the concept of addition. We will begin by combining two quantities and understanding that when you do this, the quantity gets bigger. This will lead us on to learning our number stories, where we learn the different ways to “make” our numbers to 10. These number stories (or facts) are the building blocks to which all the other number processes are built upon, so we will spend a lot of time on these, ensuring they are well embedded before moving on.

Writing numbers can be tricky, so number formation will also remain a focus.

As a class we will also be exploring the properties of 2D and 3D shape, identifying the different types of shapes and describing them in relation to their number of faces, edges, corners etc.

We will also begin to look at the many aspects of “Time”. We already start each morning by looking at the days of the week and finding the date on our calendar, but we will also be learning the sequence of the months and their corresponding seasons. We will start to look at telling the time (on the hour and half past) using digital and analogue clocks as the topic progresses.

Health & Well-Being

We continue on with our PATHS programme by reflecting on the emotions we have been exploring and learning of ways to manage these. Our favourite PATHS puppet, Twiggle, will be helping us with this as he shows us how to do “Turtle”, giving us a strategy to calm ourselves when things get a bit too much.

Friendships continue to be a general focus and we will also be considering the importance of our mental health and who we can ask for help.

In PE we will begin our first of two blocks of gymnastics. The main focus for this block will be to develop our skills in travelling, jumping and rolling. During outdoor PE, the focus will be football, developing passing and receiving skills.

In preparation for the social event of the year (the Mount Carmel Christmas Party!!) the children will also be learning social dancing.

PLEASE REMEMBER TO TAKE EARRINGS OUT FOR GYM DAYS ON MONDAYS AND THURSDAYS.

RE

We have been learning about the importance of the bible in RE and have already read the story of “Creation”. We will continue to thank God for giving us a world of natural beauty and think about what we can do to help look after it.

Throughout November our theme will be remembrance. We will learn  what it means to be a saint, before exploring the lives of St Andrew and St Francis of Assisi.

As December arrives, we will celebrate advent together, preparing for the birth of Jesus by showing love and kindness to those around us as much as we possibly can. We will be exploring the story of the nativity through songs, role play and craft activities.

Inter-disciplinary Learning (Topic)

Our topic for the term ahead is Forces and Electricity. We will learn what a force is before exploring “push” and “pull”. Magnetic force will also be introduced and we will be experimenting with magnets and magnetic materials.

To develop our understanding of electricity, we will consider the items we use which need a power source to work. We will identify those which use a battery or mains electricity and will have the chance to construct a simple circuit.

We will consider the ways in which we can conserve energy and make power last longer.

Expressive Arts

Our art, music and drama work this term will be centred around the Christmas Nativity.

Thank you for your continued support.

Mrs Duff