On returning to school after our Easter break, we have been delighted to have Miss Walker working with us in Primary 1. She will be with our class for most of the month of May. We are really enjoying working with Miss Walker and all the fun and exciting learning experiences she has planned for us.

Literacy

In Literacy we have begun to learn our phoneme sounds and have looked at phoneme stories and become text detectives to find our phoneme words. We continue to use our skills in reading and writing to explore our phoneme sounds and words. So far, we have learned ch, th, sh, ng, oo and ee. Ask us to spell some words with these sounds or find them in books at home.

We are continuing to build our classroom word wall with the common words that we have learned so far in Primary 1. In class we read, write, make our words every day from magnetic letters and other materials. At home we should continue to learn our words and practise them every night.

We are learning how to write short, independent sentences. When we write independently, we are being encouraged to use capital letters, finger spaces and full stops. Some of our class can write independent sentences using joining words like and, so, but and because. Great job!

In class we enjoy listening to and reading stories and talking about what we have read with our friends. This month we have been able to ask questions about the texts we share and like to share our opinions on the texts that we read. When we read at home ask us to sound out each sound and blend the sounds together (eg c – a – t , cat). This will help us to improve our reading fluency.

Numeracy

In Primary 1 we continue to extend our knowledge of numbers and are becoming confident when discussing numbers beyond 20. We have been practising adding and subtracting with numbers up to 20 and enjoy our daily challenges, like daily 10 and number of the day to help us to learn more. We like to talk about our mental strategies with our classmates and this can help us to share our great ideas and learn more about number. Some of our friends are counting up to 100 and can talk about numbers before, after and in between. Fantastic job Primary 1!

We have begun our Time block and are learning how to tell the time. So far, we have talked about analogue o’clock time and we will continue to learning more about this in the coming weeks. We will be playing time games, making our own clocks, and having fun! At home we could look at clocks and talk about time with our families.

Interdisciplinary Learning

This term our class have been learning all about the Seasons and in particular Spring. Ask us to sing our ‘Spring is Here’ song for you at home. We have enjoyed looking for signs of spring in our environment and have begun to learn more about Minibeasts. We have been on our Minibeast hunt and found lots of different creatures outdoors. We have learned about the life cycles of the caterpillar/butterfly and enjoyed listening to the story of the Very Hungry Caterpillar. We are looking forward to learning more about minibeasts and working on our classroom display.

In Primary 1 we are showing a keen interest in learning more about the human body. We will be learning more about our body parts and organs in the coming weeks. In PE w will be preparing our bodies and updating our skills for our Sports Day activities.

Our Muslim friends have been celebrating Eid Mubarak this month and we have really enjoyed learning all about Ramadan and Eid celebrations. Thank you to our friends for sharing their knowledge of their faith with us so well. You are all stars! In the coming weeks we will be learning more about Mary, as May is the month dedicated to Our Lady. We will continue to practise the Hail Mary prayer and learn more about the mother of Jesus. We will attend first Friday mass this week and look forward to celebrating with our whole school community.