All posts by Mrs Simpson

Primary 1/2 October 2020

We have had a fabulous month of new learning in primary 1 / 2. We have continued to work hard on learning our new school routines and have tried so hard to show great behaviour and work. Mrs Simpson thinks we are superstars. Our Rainbow Reward chart, Class Dojo and winning lots of Golden Tokens encourage us to do our best every day.

Within literacy we have made excellent progress within the Active Literacy programme. We have learned lots more sounds and have been learning to use the sounds we learn to build new words.

Our reading is constantly improving . We have read lots of interesting reading books and have enjoyed learning a variety of Read to Write tasks. We love completing Sticky Sentences. This is where we sequence jumbled up sentences. We have created lots of interesting pieces of writing this month also. We have been learning about recounts and have enjoyed creating our own. We have written about our October holiday and a Halloween story recount. We have been trying hard to assess our own work by becoming Charlie Checkers. We have been checking our work to ensure we have included capital letters, full stops, fingers spaces and that we are writing on the line. We carried out solo talks this month in class. We shared lots of interesting information with our new friends. Mrs Simpson said that we prepared very well and listened so well to others. Here is one of us carrying our our solo talks.

Within maths, the Cubes group have made an excellent start to Addition. The Counters group have been working on Subtraction. Both groups have been using concrete materials to help them understand these concepts. We love practising our number formation on our ‘Show Me’ boards. Mrs Simpson says we are getting good at counting forwards and backwards from a range of different numbers.

Our class has continued to develop their emotional literacy through Health and Wellbeing lessons. We especially enjoyed playing the Emotions board game where we had the opportunity to discuss times in our life when we felt a range of emotions.

Our topics this month have been Autumn and Halloween. We have participated in a wide range of lessons based on both topics. As well listening to spooky stories, we have had the opportunity to create various pieces of Halloween artwork. Our favourite was making 2D shape witches. We also enjoyed going on an Autumn treasure hunt. We were able to find lots of things relating to Autumn including lots of brightly coloured leaves which we used to make Autumn hedgehogs. We praised God for creating our beautiful Autumn world by creating Autumn leaves with praise words on them.

 

Mrs Simpson has been teaching us lots of Spanish in class. We have learned lots this month including a range of colours, some classroom commands and we can also bless ourselves. Our favourite game so far is Spanish Eye Spy.

Primary 2 February

We have continued with new sounds and common words within Literacy, and Mrs Simpson is very proud of all of our achievements. Within Taught Writing we have been using a different fairytale each week to help us write. We have been learning how to write letters and have written exciting letters to our friendly dragon, Elsa and the king of Fairyland.

Within Maths we have worked very hard on addition, subtraction, measure and money. It’s been a very busy month indeed. We love when we do our Maths stations and enjoy learning through play.

As we are still doing Fairyland as our topic we have enjoyed reading and acting out stories. We have also successfully created a variety of artwork based on Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Our classroom is looking fantastic with all our creations! The highlight of our month was when we arrived in school to find that our beanstalk had been started by the characters of Fairyland.

Within ‘This is Our Faith’ we have spent time thinking about Lent and how we can properly prepare ourselves for Easter. We thought of Lenten promises and ways we can spread God’s love.

Fairtrade is a topic which we have explored this month. We enjoyed learning about what it actually means. We also learned about how chocolate is made, and enjoyed designing our own chocolate bars. We made bunting for our class and also did some home baking for our Fairtrade coffee morning. Our Tiffin looked and smelled delicious. We hope our visitors enjoyed it.

Primary 2 – January 2020

Primary 2 have had a fabulous start to the year. We have a new topic which we all absolutely love – Fairyland!! It all started when we received a letter from a friendly dragon asking us to rebuild Fairyland  as it was lost. We have been working hard to design a new beanstalk for Jack. It looks great so far.  We have also made some pictures of the giant which are on display in our class. We got a shock when we came in and the Fairyland characters had started work on the new beanstalk for us. We have been using fairytales to give us ideas for our Taught Writing lessons, and have been writing letters to Elsa about our magical powers. We also enjoyed purposeful play which was topic themed. This gave us the chance to learn through play.

In literacy we have been so busy with new sounds, words and reading books. We also met two new characters this month: Veronica Verb and Naomi Noun. We had fun learning about nouns and verbs and when to use them.

We visited the library this month and had fun reading some lovely stories. We had the opportunity to return our old books and borrow a new one.

In Maths we have been working on multiplication and measure. We have had a ball using the pan balance to compare weights of items. We even used pencils to measure the length of each other. We like to be active when we learn so we have enjoyed sharing and making equal sets of items to help us with multiplication and division.

We are so luck to get to work with a specialist during P.E time. We have been learning football. We enjoy learning new skills and developing resilience through sports activities.

Within R.E we have been learning about the Epiphany of the Lord. We have also been thinking about the baptism of Jesus and the children have been thinking about their own baptism.

Primary 2

Primary 2 have had such a busy month. Preparation has began for our Nativity show ‘A Miracle in Town’. The children have their parts and have been working hard to learn their lines and songs.

We have continued work on addition and subtraction and have also covered a topic on shape. As always, a great deal of our work is practical using Seal Maths.

Within Literacy we have been doing more work on new sounds and common words. The children are getting so good at reciprocal teaching (teaching each other) by testing each other on what we have been learning. In writing we have had a go at writing a recount and have also been writing instructions. We especially enjoyed writing about how to make a jeely piece for Katie Morag.

The children have devoted lots of their prayers this month to their deceased loved ones as part of our work on the Month of the Holy Souls. We have learned the ‘Eternal Rest’ prayer and have been saying it daily.

As part of our Emotion Works syllabus, we have been identifying emotions and linking things that happen to us with how it makes us feel. The children made their own emotions using play foam and blank faces.

We have enjoyed some S.T.E.M time within our busy class this month. We were given the challenge of designing a new bridge for the Island of Struay as part of our topic.  We made our way around a variety of stations (e.g spaghetti and marshmallows) and tried to design a safe bridge for the people on Struay to use.

Work began on our Christmas enterprise for our Christmas Fayre. The children had a ball making reindeer food and were so proud of the results.

Primary 2 October Reflection

 

 

October was a very busy month in Primary 2!! In Maths we have continued to work on addition and have been completing a wide variety of practical tasks. We also began to look at 3D shapes and have been revising what we learned in P1. Mrs Simpson says we are doing so well already.
In Literacy we have been reading lots more reading books. It’s so helpful when we practise our reading at home as it helps us to complete tasks about them in class. We have also been making great progress within writing. Our favourite piece of writing recently has been a recount of our Halloween party. We are learning to use adjectives in our writing to make it even more interesting. We particularly liked our Halloween adjectives lesson when we created a list of adjectives about witches, monsters etc. This has really helped us with our writing.
We have carried out solo talks which we were asked to prepare for homework this month. We have been a brilliant audience for our peers, and have enjoyed presenting about our chosen career. We demonstrated confidence and good presentation skills during our solo talks. We really are superstars in the making!! A special big thank you to our grown ups for helping us prepare so well.

Within P.E we are learning a range of dance moves within lessons with Greig. Our favourite so far is definitely dancing to Thriller. We particularly enjoyed our Halloween P.E lesson where we played a variety of games with a spooky theme.

Our library visits have been amazing!! We love getting the chance to read the books that we choose. As our comprehension, fluency and accuracy improves, as does our enjoyment of stories. Mrs Simpson loves reading our stories to us when we get back to class.

The highlight of our month was our Halloween disco. We had a spooktastic night and we especially loved seeing our friends in fancy dress. The party games were brilliant. We can’t wait until our Christmas party now.

Primary 2 September

We have had a very successful September in Primary 2. We have finished revising Primary 1 sounds and common words and have now started brand new learning. We have been pretending to be investigators and trying to find our new sounds in books and phoneme stories.  We have also been learning new Read to Write tasks. Two of our favourites are fixing jumbled sentences from our reading books, and retelling the stories we have read. We love using our magnetic boards and playing Pot Luck to practise our new words. We have enjoyed writing our exciting stories during Taught Writing, and we are always excited to find out who our Star Writers are.

Within Maths we have continued to work on Addition with lots of practical activities. We loved adding to 14 using candles on birthday cakes and sheep inside hula hoops. Mrs Simpson is very impressed by our Number talks especially when we add to numbers bigger than 10. We plan to move on to Subtraction soon.

We have been learning about our senses and have been carrying out experiments and playing games. We loved listening to sounds and playing Sound Bingo.

Our topic is Katie Morag. So far we have made our own Island of Struay for our class using a variety of art techniques. It is looking great. We are beginning to fill our island with all the things we learn about in the Katie Morag stories.