This month we have had lots of fun in the snow!

In  literacy room 8 have been working on improving their presentation in their literacy logs. We have started weekly handwriting lessons and Miss Telfer has been very impressed with our joined up writing. We are also continuing to work hard on our comprehension through our reading books and next month, hope to improve our fluency and pronunciation when reading aloud in a group. This week we listened to an audiobook called ‘If I Ran the Circus’ which links to our class topic. We made notes whilst listening and then discussed all the rhyming used throughout the book. We have started our persuasive writing during our taught writing lessons and have written a report to persuade people to stop using animals in the circus. 

We have been learning all about money during numeracy and we can now identify all the different ways we can pay for goods, including cash, credit card and cheque. Did you know we can even use our phones and watches?! We can decide which note or coin to use to pay for something and can calculate how much change we should get. We have also been practising all the other skills we have learned through Sumdog and nearly everyone is managing to get extra raffles for getting 100 questions correct! Next month we are going to be learning all about fractions, decimals and percentages and will continue to work on our number talks strategies.

Throughout January we have been working on increasing our fitness levels by doing circuits during P.E. This has improved our stamina, strength and flexibility.  We are going to be continuing to work on these skills next month through central net games, such as volleyball, badminton and football. We have started our sexual health topic in health and wellbeing, learning all about how we are made and change as we grow up. After this we will be looking more at how we can stay safe near the road, especially when we are out playing.

Room 8 have been specially chosen to take part in the Prince William Award. Every week we are joined by our brilliant instructor Craig, who helps us build upon our character, resilience and confidence. This month we were working on qualities such as teamwork, trust, respect and showing great listening skills.

At the end of October, Room 8 enjoyed a wonderful visit to Stirling Castle. Our visit to the castle was brilliant and we learned so much more about our last topic, Knights and Castles. After arriving by bus, we explored the castle grounds before being taken on a tour by a real knight! He described all the different ways enemies were kept out of the castle and pretended we were all going to fall down into the dungeons! We then discovered a room where the knight showed us all the old fashioned weapons and clothes worn back when the castle was first built. We had a fantastic day and would love to go back to discover more.

This month in literacy the Terrific Tigers have nearly completed their latest reading book, The Boy Who Had (Nearly) Everything. They have absolutely loved learning about the Fries family and have made comparisons between Lucky Fries, Billy Humble and themselves. The Busy Bees and Clever Caterpillars have continued to read two books a week and are now self and peer assessing their work and beginning to set themselves targets. We have learned so much about our new topic, Amazing Africa, that we have written quite a few reports in taught writing, including describing famous African landmarks and African animals. Next month, we will continue to work on learning and using lots of new phonemes and common words in spelling and will be writing recounts in our taught writing.

Room 8 can now tell the time! Over the last few weeks we have been learning all about telling the time on both digital and analogue clocks. We have learned all about the minute and the hour hands and can use what we have learned to identify times on the hour, half past the hour and quarter to and quarter past the hour. We have had great fun using our new knowledge in and out of class and love challenging ourselves with the time game on the smartboard to gain the highest points at the hardest level. This month we have also learned to predict and work out the likelihood of an event happening and can use the correct language to do this. To make it easier and more fun, we have been using our chance scales to predict and relate chance and uncertainty to real life events and things we do every day. Next month in numeracy, we will be learning all about patterns and relationships and will be continuing to work on self and peer assessment and  daily target setting.

We have all become much more flexible, balanced, controlled and creative this month after learning gymnastics during P.E. Miss Telfer has been so impressed with our team working skills during this time and loves the way that we have all helped each other to learn new skills and develop our personal qualities. We all had great fun contributing to our class Talk, Talk board for Respect Me day earlier in the week, writing acrostic poems, discussing random acts of kindness and sharing our worries in the worry pocket. We are going to continue to act towards each other with kindness and respect and know that we should treat other people the way we wish to be treated ourselves. In the next few weeks, room 8 will be learning their Christmas concert dance routines and will be practising their Scottish dance for their upcoming Christmas party!

This month in literacy we have been learning lots of new phoneme sounds and common words. We have been practising our spelling with partners and using fun spelling methods and strategies to help us remember the words for our quiz on a Friday. The Terrific Tigers are loving their new novel, The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark, and can now complete four of their reading strategies independently. The Busy Bees, Clever Caterpillars and Fantastic Frogs have been reading two books every week and can complete their writing tasks with very little help from the teacher! We have also been learning to write instructions and have described how to make a magic potion, journey around the school and play a maths game we created ourselves. Next month we will be learning more spelling words, more strategies for our novel studies and learning to write reports in taught writing.

Room 8 have been practising their times tables every day and working towards knowing their 2, 3, 4 and 5 times tables off by heart. We have even created and played our own times table games to help us to remember them better. We have been learning all about the four operations in maths and can discuss the different language used to describe addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. We have been trying extra hard on Sumdog to improve our accuracy and love having competitions with each other. In number talks we have learned and used subtraction strategies to help us solve mental questions faster. Next month we are going to be learning all about time and ideas of chance and uncertainty. We will also be learning to use multiplication strategies in our daily Number Talks lessons.

Learning all about Health and Wellbeing has been great fun this month. We all had a brilliant time during health week learning new skills, working together and challenging ourselves. Throughout the week we took part in lots of fun activities such as racing on the BMX bikes, scoring goals in the Soccer Arena, taking down our opponents in the Sumo Suits and working in teams during Handball. Everyone pushed themselves to take part in all of the activities on offer, whilst learning the importance of eating healthy and keeping fit. Next month in P.E. we will be improving our balance, rotation and awareness of our body movements through gymnastics and will be learning all about road safety in class.

This month room 8 have been learning all about Knights and Castles. We have been using  laptops and books from the local library to research as many fascinating facts as we can. We have looked at the different stages of becoming a knight and the meaning and purpose of a coat of arms. We have also researched famous castles and can now name all the parts of a castle, including the moat, the drawbridge, the portcullis and the bailey. During Y- Dance, we even had our own jousting battle and created a group coat of arms through dance.

In literacy we have started our novel studies and have already read lots of new books. We have started to fill our learning logs with everything we have learned during reading. We have created character descriptions of our favourite characters, found the meaning of tricky words and summarised our books. In taught writing we have used our knowledge of knights and castles to write fantastic fantasy stories about castles, featuring knights, dragons and dungeons! Next month, we will be continuing to develop our literacy skills through our reading books and learning to write instructions during taught writing.

We have learned all about place value during numeracy and can now identify the value of a digit, write numbers in words and round to the nearest one hundred. We have also just started learning about addition and subtraction and can complete chimney sums with remainders. We now know all our addition strategies in number talks and can use them to complete our sums correctly. We have loved learning new skills and opening more games to play on Sumdog. Next month we will be learning more about the four operations in numeracy and continuing with our number talks to master the subtraction strategies.

In health and wellbeing, room 8 have had an excellent time taking part in Y- Dance and have been learning new skills in athletics and football during P.E. We have been working on our stamina, accuracy, problem solving and team work. We have also been identifying our personal strengths and discussing how we would like to use them. Next month we will be identifying role models in our life and how they can influence our behaviour.