St Albert's Class 2 2017

For Friday club over the last few weeks we have been doing some crazy science along with Primary 7. We have been doing some interesting experiments and learning about difference science facts. Have a look at some of our crazy experiments 🙂

Creating our own rain cloud using only water, shaving foam and food colouring!

Mixing chemicals to create an exploding bag! We added vinegar and bicarbonate of soda to cold and warm water and had a variety of results when the chemicals mixed!

The first and second successful group to get an exploding bag!

Creating a double dose ingredients bag and the fastest exploding bag with warm water!

On Wednesday this week we went on a whole school trip to Kelburn Castle and  Country Park. There were loads of different things to see and do. Here are a few photos of us exploring and enjoying ourselves 🙂

Class 2 travelling all together for the first time this year 🙂

Setting off on the various paths to see the castle

Kelburn Castle

Exploring the garden

We saw a pheasant – some of us thought it looked like a little dinosaur!!

Looking at the different animals in the park

We spotted some octopus tentacles in the river!

Gopal and Issac on the sensory adventure trail – smelling some garlic and catching rainwater on their tongues!

Very wet and posing after our final activity!

The whole school are focusing on Social Enterprise this term for topic work. A social enterprise is a business that helps the community in some way.

We have been doing some work with a social enterprise that we have learned about already this year – The Big Issue. Corrie came in to visit the class on Tuesday last week to speak with us about homelessness and the work the Big Issue do. We learned about budgeting and how sometimes a crisis can mean people can no longer afford their homes. Then we tried making our own shelter and found it was not easy to make it safe and comfortable like our own homes are.

Corrie came back to visit on Wednesday and Donna and Alison from the Simon Community Scotland, who are a charity who work to help the homeless, came in to see us as well. We learned about the difference between a business, a social enterprise and a charity and the different ways all these organisations can help homeless people.

As part of our topic work we are going to be organising a collection of old clothes and suitcases to donate to the Simon Community to help the homeless. Keep checking the blog for information on when this will be happening!

There has been A LOT going on in St Albert’s this week!

We have been learning –

• about aboriginal art and creating some dot paintings
• about nouns, verbs and adjectives
• what social enterprise means and thinking of ideas for our project this term (you will be hearing a lot more about this very soon!)
• adding 2 digit numbers using tens and units or a numberline
• what happens to your body if you don’t get enough sleep

Lots of other things are happening too –

• Ben the storyteller came to visit our class and brought some very interesting things, told a great story and got us to create some of our own stories
• Lana and Gopal visited Holybrook for one of their P7 transition visits and had a science and social subjects lesson
• Tylor has been doing some work with the Sunny G radio station and the Baldy Bane Theatre
• The class enjoyed some exploring in the rain at Linn Park

Have a well deserved restful weekend 🙂

Working on our Aboriginal dot paintings

Fun in the rain (and a tiny bit of sun at the end of our trip) at Linn Park

Lana and Gopal  doing some Science with children from Kirkriggs who will be in their class at Holybrook next year

Investigating objects and creating stories with them with Ben the storyteller

We have already completed our first week of the last term of the year! It is set to be a very busy term ahead with lots going on as we prepare to move onto our new classes, and for some of us new schools, after summer.

We have been busy learning lots of things already in our first week back –

• Adding tens and units
• Writing using our VCOP
• Reading our new reading books
• Practicing our athletics in preparation for Sports day
• Reading and spelling words using the ‘er’ phonic
• Thinking about why Earth Day is celebrated and what we can do to look after the planet
• Shopping for class and investigating the packaging of what we bought (A lot of plastic!!)
• Evaluating our targets from last term and setting new ones for this term
• Learning about the lunar cycle and why the moon looks different to us over the month

Looking for litter in the school grounds and sorting it into rubbish that can and can not be recycled

We found a piece of paper towel which had started decomposing (this means dissolving into the ground)

Adding with tens and units

Tylor (the sun) with Huzaifa (Earth) learing about how the moon changes over a month

Today, Jen from Big Noise visited Class 2 to showcase some of the fabulous work Gopal has been working on over the past year. Click on the link below to have a look at the video  –

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We all very much enjoyed Gopal’s performance and at the end of the session everybody had a go at some of the activities Gopal had shown us with Jen 🙂

Big thank you to Jen for coming to visit us and a huge well done to Gopal on all this hard work!

We have made it to the end of term 3! Here is what we were busy learning this week –

• to find the missing number in addition sums
• adding ten to a number
• thinking about tens and units that make up an number
• discussing  migration of people
• thinking about reasons people migrate
• what contractions are and matching two words to their contraction (e.g did not =didn’t)
• practising rhythms in Samba
• batting and fielding in cricket
• to think about autism and what this means
• about the Easter story

We enjoyed an Easter Egg hunt on the sunshine on the last day of term!

Wishing you all a happy and restful holiday. See you in term 4 for our final term of this school year 🙂

The focus of the week this week was inclusion. We learned about Down Syndrome awareness week and had a ‘Lots of Socks’ day at school on Wednesday.

Class 2 Lots of Socks!

We have been thinking about the ways we are all different and in what ways we are the same. There are many things that are the same about us but also things that are different, and that make us individual.

We worked in pairs to make a list of similarities and differences between us in Class 2. Here are the results –

We thought in particular about how some differences you cannot see and you need to mindful about this when speaking to people who may have difficulties that you do not know about. It is also important not to judge someone based on a difference you can see, as you are likely to be wrong!

Some people with Down Syndrome find it hard to communicate using only words so we have been learning the British Sign Language alphabet. We used it to practice our spelling words and to sign our names.

Some other work we have been busy with this week –

• Using our VCOP in our writing
• Learning the qu phonic sound
• Revising the rules for +0 and +1
• Working out how to find missing numbers in add sums
• Writing a spine poem
• Sorting animals that hibernate and migrate
• Improving our swimming skills (Lana swam by herself in the deep end for the first time!)

Lastly, here we are on Friday at our pyjama day to raise money for Mary’s Meals! Very cosy in time for the weekend! 🙂

You should have received new instructions in the homework pouch last week about how to access the blog for any of you who were still unsure. If this is your first time making it to our class blog, well done!

This week the children have been set a special homework task to leave a comment on this blog post. The children can win points for this – for the first pupil to post a comment and  the best comment. There will be a special prize for the whole class if every child manages to post a comment……

Happy commenting! 🙂

This week was science week and we have been learning some very interesting things……………….

We did an experiment and made some fake cheese! We mixed some vinegar into a bowl of milk and the acidic vinegar  made the milk coagulate and turn the liquid milk into a solid.

We also began another experiment to find out which material was most absorbent of water drops. We all made a prediction and worked our way thought he first few materials – a sponge, a tissue and cotton wool. We will get the results of the experiment next week when we finish the rest of the materials.

We have been developing our learning about 3D shapes by discussing their properties. We built some shapes using plasticine and sticks to make the edges and corners. This helped us see the 2D faces in 3D shapes.

We also played guess the shape by selecting a shape from the bag, without looking at it, and describing it’s properties to our friends. We earned points for describing the shape correctly and guessing the correct shape. The winner of the game was………. Huzaifa! Excellent work Huzaifa you are the Class 2 Shape King! 🙂

During mental maths we have been doing counting in various patterns, in 2s, 5s and 10s. We have also been finding numbers before and after and thinking about Tens and Units that make up a number.

In writing we have been learning about punctuation, in particular full stops, question marks and exclamation marks. We know that different types of sentences finish with these and filled in the missing punctuation for sentences that tell, ask or exclaim something. We have also been spotting these punctuation marks in our reading books.

For our phonics work we were revising all  our double phonic sounds like oo, oa and sh. We played different games spotting which double sounds were in words. Lana won the most points in the challenge game. Well done Lana!

Other work we have completed this week –

• completing our research about different animals that migrate and creating an information poster about them
• reading our books and doing lots of activities to check our understanding of what we read
• developing our cricket skills in P.E
• thinking about differences and similarities in people in Circle Time, in particular differences we cannot see
• learning different rhythms and playing the Samba instruments
• practicing how to write the letters a and A correctly in our handwriting

Have a great weekend 🙂