Welcome back!
In January we came back to school after our Winter break, and we were so excited to see our friends and catch up with all our news. We celebrated the new year by learning all about Hogmanay and we made some amazing new year’s resolutions. We enjoyed discussing all our targets for the year ahead, learned about how the new year is celebrated around the world and we even danced to Auld Lang Syne.
We have now settled back into our class routine and reminded ourselves of our class rules. We love our new Beat the Teacher chart and have been trying our best to behave well and work hard in order to win Beat the Teacher points. We try so hard to follow our Golden Rules when we sit on the floor during teaching time. Our Golden Rules are:
Eyes Looking
Ears Listening
Good Sitting
Brainboxes Switched On
Hands Up/No Shouting Out
Within Maths we have continued to work hard on number. We have learned lots of new strategies to help us add within 20 such as doubles, near doubles and friendly numbers. We enjoy learning through play, and we have participated in active learning to explore number bonds for numbers up to 20. We like to try to solve problems mentally and help each other lots by discussing ways that may help others. We began working on Chilli Challenges this month and we love to solve problems and share how we get our answers. We have also been learning about Time in January. We have been doing lots of activities in order to learn about the days of the week and months of the year. We are now able to recognise both o’clock and half past on both analogue and digital clocks. Please ask us to tell the time as often as possible so we can practise our new skill. We will work on Subtraction and Fractions in February.
Within Literacy we have continued to work on our weekly sounds and common words. We completed an assessment and will bring home a list of sounds/words that we should spend time working on with an adult, to help us to become successful learners.
In Writing we began learning about writing instructions. We thought about where we have seen instructions, and why we need them. Linking to our Scotland topic, we learned the Skyscraper Wean song and we made jam sandwiches then created instructions on how to make a ‘Jeely Piece’.
We have also been learning about writing persuasively. We learned about Nessie and wrote a lovely letter asking her to visit Holy Family. We also wrote a letter to Mrs Harley to ask if we could have a longer lunch break. We thought of lots of interesting ways to persuade her. We hope she considers these requests!
We try very hard to remember our core writing targets both within our weekly taught writing lesson and within our class daily writing but sometimes this can be a bit tricky for us. Please try hard to practise writing words that include our new sounds, our weekly common words and simple sentences with us. This would really help us to write more independently.
We have been working hard on our talking and listening skills this month and trying to remember not to interrupt when others are speaking. We have been practising how to be good listeners by working in pairs and groups to complete tasks. We have also been super listeners as we explore books related to our new topic.
In P.E we have been learning about Gymnastics. We have discovered lots of new body shapes and ways to move our bodies. We have enjoyed working with the mats in our gym hall and have begun to link actions and skills together in a routine.
In R.E. we have studied the topic ‘My Uniqueness’. We have been learning that God created us all as special and unique. We have been embracing our differences and the unique gifts that God gave us. We have also learned that many people have different beliefs but that we should be kind to everyone. We will now begin to explore other world religions and will begin by developing our knowledge and understanding of Islam.
Our new topic is Scotland. We have looked at pictures of Scotland on the map and spoke about some big cities in our country. We learned about Loch Ness and the story of Nessie. We made our own pictures of Nessie to hang in our classroom. We learned about Heilan Coos (highland cows) and plan to make our own mini highland cows in February. Last week we celebrated Burns Day at school. We learned so much about the Scottish poet Robert Burns and we also tasted shortbread and some yummy Irn Bru. We made beautiful portraits of Rabbie Burns and they are displayed in our class. Mrs Simpson thought we were brilliant, and we earned a ‘Beat the Teacher’ point for our hard work.
Miss Cairney has been teaching us all about Space. We can now name the planets in our solar system and have learned that we live on Earth. We can’t wait to explore this topic further.
We can’t wait for February and all the exciting learning opportunities we will have. We will learn about internet safety next month and we will soon celebrate Global Play Day when we can bring a toy to school to play with our friends. We will also begin our Easter preparations and learn about Ash Wednesday and Lent.
Just a reminder that our P.E. days are Wednesdays and Thursdays. We should wear yellow t shirts, black shorts or tracksuit bottoms and appropriate footwear. We should bring a water bottle to school as we often feel thirsty when exercising.
Homework is given out each Monday and should be handed in on Thursday. Homework helps us to consolidate all the learning we have done in class. It also allows our grown ups to see what we need extra help with. Please try to complete this every week and speak to Mrs Simpson if you find this difficult. Reading our reading book every night will also help us to develop important reading skills which will help us lots. We should try hard to remember to bring our reading book to school each day as we need to use these for reading and associated tasks.
