Primary 2 performed their ‘Rainforest’ learning assembly today and did a wonderful job!
“I thought my reading was really good” -Joshua Gemmell
“I liked my dancing and singing” -Ewan MacLean
“My favourite song was the rainforest song” -Orlagh-Mei Marshall
“I liked our butterfly artwork” -Sophia Bentley
Please see the links below for the breaking news video clips:
We had a fantastic day at Amazonia last week! We got to learn lots of new facts about different animals who live in the rainforest. When we arrived at Amazonia, we were allowed to go and explore and find as many animals as we could. There was toucans and butterflies flying around. We then had the opportunity to hold some of the animals! It was lots of fun!
Charlie ‘I got to hold a snake, it was very soft.’
Orlagh-Mei ‘I held a stick insect and it looked like a leaf.’
Lewis ‘I held the geko, it was really tickly.’
Primary 1 & 2 had a fantastic week preparing for their Big Breakfast Appeal. Firstly, we worked hard to make lots of cakes which we served at our Big Breakfast and sold to the rest of the school during break time. We also made up a song, which we performed on the day and we then served breakfast to family and friends! Thank you very much to all of the money donated by parents and carers. We managed to raise over £100!
Daniel ‘I loved having breakfast with my dad.’
Orlagh-Mei ‘My favourite was the pancake and chocolate sauce.’
Ewan ‘I ate lots of chocolate cakes.’
Primary 2 have had a very busy few weeks back at school. In numeracy, we have been working on number processes, shape, measurement and fractions. During literacy, we have been learning new spelling rules, extending our sentences and developing our accuracy and fluency with reading. We have also thoroughly enjoyed exploring our new topic ‘dinosaurs’ with primary 1!
Daniel McWilliams ‘I like our maths area. I like to play shops and use the till and money.’
Alfie Capaldi ‘I’m so excited, I love dinosaurs.’
Ewan McLean ‘We could go digging for dinosaur bones.’
Niamh Farquhar ‘We made human sentences, I know that a sentence has a capital at the start and a full stop at the end.’
Lewis Crawford ‘I love choosing my own book at the library.’
Jackson McNeil ‘I can log on to the laptop by myself now and I typed all my spellings words.’
This term, our IDL topic is ‘Fairyland’! Last week, Darla the Dragon arrived in our class, and she asked us to teach her all about Science, Technology and Maths! She left us a ‘Big Book’ and we have to write in it every time we do work on our topic. This lets her see what we have learned and how we have progressed in our learning!
The first problem that we had to help her solve, was how to build a chair that would be ‘just right’ for Goldilocks.
“We had to collect lots of different materials that we could make a chair with.” Jackson
“It was a good idea to work together because we can make an even better chair.” Charlie
“We had to measure how big Goldilocks was, then, we could make sure the chair was big enough.” Niamh.
Next, Darla told us about the Big Bad Wolf blowing down some houses…so we helped to make more.
“We told Darla that if something was light then it would be no good. You have to use heavy things to build a house.” Mia.
“I tried to do it with lego but if the pieces don’t fit together then it will blow down. You have to join them and then they become stronger.” Ewan
“We used some chairs to make sure the house was strong. They held the whole house together.” Daniel
Then…Darla had some bad news from Fairyland..Rapunzel was struggling to get to the festival of light. There were no more boats and she didn’t want to ruin her new dress by swimming! Primary 1 helped her by investigating what materials were and were not waterproof!
“I thought that the wrapping paper would have been best, but it wasn’t. Darla will have to make her a dress using plastic bags!” Joshua G
“We didn’t know what ones would and wouldn’t be waterproof so we had to test them all out. This is a problem solving skill.” Niamh
Well done for working so hard, Primary 1!
Primary 1 have been enjoying learning through play. Each day, the children self register and then organise their own day based on their individual targets. Everyone has a Numeracy and Literacy task that they must complete before lunchtime, however, they have the freedom to decide when they will complete it. In our play area, there are lots of different ‘loose parts;. Having a variety of different items to play with encourages children to think creatively and helps to develop their imagination skills. One o the most popular areas for play is the puppet show : they children have enjoyed recreating well known stories such as Goldilocks and the three bears, whilst also enjoying creating their own stories and acting them out. We are excited to continue learning in this way!
“My tower is tall and Princess Celestia lives in here.” Eulalie
“I dressed as a policeman and I’m going to go and help people in danger.” Ewan
“I’m mixing lots of different things together to make some porridge for Goldilocks. It will be just right for her.” Lewis
“I like to use the magnetic letters and the sand to spell my tricky words.” Jackson
As part of our IDL topic, Primary 1 have been focusing on Global Goal 6 : “Clean Water and Sanitation”. We have been thinking about how fortunate we are to have access to clean water. We carried out a survey to see how many water sources we had in our school and, in total, we counted 27. We reflected on this and thought about the many countries around the world that cannot access clean water as readily as us. We tried carrying buckets of water from one side of the playground to the other…this made us realise how hard it must be for those in third world countries and how lucky we really are!
We have also enjoyed measuring the rainfall using the water gauge that we made in class. We have been tracking the waterfall and have realised there is less and less water each day. We wonder if this is because it is getting closer to summer!
For our IDL topic this term, we have been learning about water. We started of our topic by thinking about all we already knew about water and then had a think about what we would like to know. As we have been learning, we have been looking back at our first mind map and adding in all the new facts that we have learned. Here are some of our favourite things about this topic.
“I like that we get to go outside everyday to measure the rainfall. We pour the rain into a cup and then use a ruler to measure it. You need to make sure that the zero on the rules is at the bottom of the cup. You look at where the water is up to on the cup and then look at the number next to that on the ruler.” Jackson
“There are 663 million people in the world who don’t have access to clean water. I can count to 63 but not 663 million, that’s a big number.” Niamh
“It took me 4 seconds to walk to a tap and get water. It was only 13 steps. In some countries, people have to walk for more than an hour to get water. We are very lucky.” Alfie
“We have been learning about the water cycle and we got to make our own water cycle in a bag. The water starts in the sky and then falls down as rain, then it makes puddles and then the sun dries it up and turns it into clouds. In our water cycle bags, some of the water evaporated from the bottom of the bag and then turned into condensation just like the clouds. When we pressed the condensed water at the side of the bag, it started to fall like rain drops.” Ewan
“Water is good for your health and you need it to keep your brain healthy.” Ocean
Primary 1 have been talking about what makes them unique and special. We have been thinking about our different talents and skills and some children have been keen to showcase these to the class. This week, Mia demonstrated her exceptional skills in Irish Dancing.
“Last week I went to Newcastle for an Irish Dancing competition. I won 4 medals and came first twice. I like going to Irish Dancing because I like learning new dances.”
Everyone in Primary 1 has been encouraged to share their talents with the rest of the class.
I can’t wait to see all their different skills!
We have been taking advantage of the nice weather over the last few weeks and have been taking our learning outside! Our focus on maths has been counting and using numbers above 10 : we wrote these numbers outside and then made the numbers using natural resources. One group decided to make a bar graph using chalk, stones, sticks and leaves!
Our focus on literacy has been writing tricky words and stage words – we used chalk to write these in the playground and then played some games using these words.
We hope the weather continues to get nicer so that we can participate in more outdoor learning activities!
“I liked using the chalk to spell the tricky words : I know how to read and spell ‘said’.” Niamh
“I found 17 sticks – I wrote the number 17 and then put a circle round it and in the circle I put all 17 sticks. Alfie checked it to make sure it was 17.” Charlie
“I thought I had 14 leaves but when Jackson counted it I had 15 so that was too many. I put one back.” Joshua G
