We have been so busy already in primary 1A having fun, learning and most importantly making new friends. We are now familiar with our class routines and have been finding out about our school values of Respect, Kindness, Friendship, Honesty, Inclusivity and Determination. We have discussed what these values mean and how we can demonstrate them. Some of us have already received nominations for awards for showing our school values!
‘We were learning about Honesty through the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf,’ Blair & Jonathan.
We have learned lots of letter sounds and are about to start learning double letter sounds too. Keep practising at home with us to help us remember our sounds, find them in books and hear them in words. We are starting to recognise the beginning, middle and end sounds in words we hear and are working towards having a go at sounding out words to help us write on our own.
‘We’ve been learning to read tricky words and I spotted the word the when I was reading a book in the book corner!’ Thom
Some of us have chosen library books to take home to enjoy and soon we will be taking home reading books to work on at home with you. We will be working on identifying clues in the stories that help us guess what might happen next, describing the characters and remembering the main events in order.
Through our Numeracy work we have been developing our skills in counting forwards and backwards and from different starting points, identifying numbers before, after and in between as well as practising careful counting of quantities. We will soon develop our number skills by exploring addition and subtraction using Numicon and other practical materials. One day we explored our playground and hunted for shapes. We were amazed at how many we found! This helped us name 2D shapes and describe their properties.
‘One of the signs on the school building was a rectangle shapes. It needs to be a bit longer than a square to be a rectangle.’ Sophie S
Next we will look at 3D shape names and properties. Another fun activity was using the Beebots to practise using directional language by programming them to move forwards, backwards, turn left and turn right. Our next challenge will be to give directions to a friend on the playground grid to help them reach the treasure!
Mrs McCausland has introduced us to the computer room where we have learned to log on and use drawing software to create increasingly detailed pictures. We are going to start working on typing simple words, then short sentences to complement our drawings.
Our Science work this term will focus on our senses where we will learn to identify each sense and explain how it helps us to describe the world around us. We are looking forward to some fun experiments.
‘I want to learn more about the wee spots on your tongue that help us taste things.’ Ana
Our Big Picture Planning focus is currently Our Local Area. We have already named lots of people who help us in and around our homes. We are hoping to have some visitors in soon to tell us more about what they do and how they can help us. We have discovered that many of our family member have jobs that involve helping others and are excited to hear more about the details of what they do. As we come up with more ideas and questions about what we would like to investigate, we will plan more activities and learning experiences related to Giffnock.
We have lots and lots of creative people in our class! Straight away we decided that our role play area should be a Party House. Some of us set to work immediately decorating it with banners, streamers and notices. We then got the idea to bake cakes for the parties and this led to us transforming it into Giffnock Bakery where a wide selection of yummy treats are created daily. We are using our Literacy and Numeracy skills to create advertising signs and price lists, take orders, serve customers, pay money and give change and come up with some amazing recipes.
‘I like baking fun cakes and I take a picture of them so we can show our customers what they can buy.’ Iris.
Our outdoor learning has been lots of fun. We have visited the trim trail a number of times and have made all sorts of discoveries! Some children have mastered the monkey bars and the climbing net. Some have been having cook-outs in the mud kitchen. On our recent visit dinosaur footprints and bones were discovered while digging! Ribbon was used to section off the excavation area for further investigation by the archaeologists. Meanwhile, others were busy planting seeds by a little puddle which was used to wet the ground to help them grow.
Many children told us why they would like to Class Representatives on our school Pupil Groups. Everyone spoke brilliantly and we voted on who we thought should get each position. Our successful pupils who will represent the class on the Rights Respecting Schools group, Pupil Council, Eco Committee and Sports Committee were Iris, Ethan, Dimitra and Jonathan. Well done all!
