Language

Phonemes

We have been starting to make up the phoneme families – the sounds are the same, but the spellings are different as in a – e, ay and ai all sounding like A.

Homework ideas:

• Create short rhymes using words from the A sound family:
• Experiment with words and sounds.

I can play in the rain, I use a tray on the train, I can see waves from the plane.

• Write phoneme words in different colours and different shapes.
• Look for the phoneme in your reading books and any other texts – comics, recipes, instructions etc. and print in the environment; signs in shops, street signs, etc.
• Try these games to reinforce spelling/phoneme patterns
• http://www.spellzone.com/games/

Common words:

Keep practising previous words and add in your new ones;

you    they    all    are    my    her

two    three   four    five    six    number

This is a great site for recognising sight and spelling words.

http://www.ictgames.com/wordreader.html

Onset and rime

We are continuing to practise the onset and rime revised and introduced so far this year:   at   an   ap   am   it   in   ab

• Choose your own rime and add the onsets to create the correct number of words.
• http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/construct/

Reading

A new reading book will usually be given each Friday. The days for reading are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, so please make sure that pupils have their reading books in their bags so that they can complete reading activities.

• Look at the main events in your story. How does the story begin? What is the problem or the main event? How does the story end?
• Use your own words to tell someone what your story is about.
• Try this site:
• http://www.crickweb.co.uk/ks2literacy.html   Story Sequencer

It is the story of the Three Little Pigs with a sequencing activity, then a storyboard section for children to write the events in their own words.

Continue to look for interesting facts and information around the house.

• Stick a flyer into your jotter and tell us the most important information.

Number

In class we have been learning about the costs of items and comparing values of goods and services.

• Talk with your child about their perceptions of prices
• e.g. Is a loaf of bread dearer than a kettle? Use language such as more than/less than/ dearer/cheaper so that the child becomes used to words associated with using money.
• Continue to make up amounts of money using the smallest and other amounts of coins, e.g. 14p = 10p + 2p + 2p

or 14p = 1p+1p+1p+1p+1p+1p+1p+1p+1p+1p+1p+1p+1p+1p

We will be learning about how to calculate change this fortnight. This links to our work on subtraction and reinforces which coins we use to receive change. If I buy something for 7p and give 10p, how much change will I get? I will get 3p which is 2p and 1p.

http://www.doorwayonline.org.uk/tillwemeet.html

http://www.snappymaths.com/other/money/interactive/changefrom10p1item/changefrom10p1item.htm

Interdisciplinary Learning

We are continuing our experiments with sound.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/5_6/sound_hearing.shtml

http://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/revision/science/sounds.html

As a presentation activity, all the pupils will show their musical instrument models to the rest of the class. They will explain their reasons for choosing their instrument, how the model was made and any problems they had to solve.

The presentations will probably be held on 10^th and 11^th December in class

Remember to tell us about any games you have played on the computer or any other ways that you have been developing your skills for homework.

Throughout the school, pupils did activities to celebrate St Andrews Day.  In P2, we learned about St Andrew and had a class quiz.  In the afternoon we learned some Scots words and even sang “Heid, Shooders, Knees and Taes”.   Miss Ferguson treated us to some Irn Bru and shortbread too.  Can you say the body parts in Scots from the next few pictures?

This morning P2 were introduced to the date in French. As you can see there are no capital letters for the days of the week or the months of the year. We will continue to practise the dates in French to develop our skills.

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One of our language activities was to make words before the timer stopped. We are definitely getting quicker at spelling our words.

This is afternoon we helped to put together Snowman Soup for the Christmas Fayre. The bag contains a drinking chocolate sachet, a candy cane, some marshmallows, and chocolate stars. They look lovely, so we’ll done P2 and we hope that they sell like hot cakes….hot soup!!

We have been very busy today applying our skills across different areas.

We had to use our adding skills to find out how much money was in each purse.

We coloured the coins the correct colours to help us work out the values before we added together.

This afternoon we were learning about the pitch off a sound and experimented with a pretend drum.

When the plastic was pulled tighter, the drum made a higher pitched sound. When the plastic was slacker, the pitch was lower.

Please experiment at home with junk materials. Watch the elastic bands vibrate. If there are any parents, aunties, uncles etc who play instruments, then please show the children how you tune your instruments and show them the strings and skins vibrating. Thanks.

This morning we used our magnetic boards to practise our phoneme “ai”.  We love working with our partners to help us learn.  In the afternoon we were practising our Scottish dancing.  We hope we can do it at our Christmas party.  A big thank you to Kayla Agnew for a piece of her delicious birthday cake!

Today p2 were challenged to decorate a Christmas tree and make the design symmetrical.  It seems we have a class full of symmetry experts because the results were fantastic!  The pupils got a chance to peer assess their partner’s work to check if they had fulfilled all our success criteria.  (These are a few of our “buzz words” in school – your children should be able to explain what they mean).  Well done p2!

To keep warm we have been using our brain energy. We have all read our new books very well today and are becoming more fluent and expressive readers. We are discovering new phonemes all the time and some silent letters ( what are they all about?).

This afternoon we tried the bgfl interactive keyboard and had great fun making up tunes using the sounds of different instruments- the pan pipes and steel drums are brilliant.

In number we were finding the correct coins to match the value of items.

Why not try this at home with real coins? Have a lovely weekend everyone and keep warm.

At last a dry day when we could go for a listening walk! Last week we had a listen out for sounds inside the school as we were walking to another classroom. Today we walked in the school grounds and listened for different sounds, this is what we heard:

There are sounds that we like and some that we don’t like. What are your favourite sounds?

We used the outdoor classroom to listen to noises from the road.

How heavy are coins? We compared the weights of coins up to £1.

We agreed that the heaviest was £1, but is 1p or 5p the lightest? It was difficult to decide without using weighing equipment.

Continuing our learning all about sound, we listened to an orchestra tuning up and to the strange sounds that it made. We then learned about the different sections of the orchestra: brass, strings, woodwind and percussion and some of the instruments in each section.

Next we began an experiment exploring how different sounds are created. Look at our learning in these photos-

It’s amazing what you can learn by putting different sized elastic bands around different junk!  Some of us used our non-fiction reading books too to link different types of learning together. I wonder what we will use for our next experiment?

In primary 2 this term we will be looking at ways in which people celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah.  We will find out why people celebrate these festivals and in what ways they are similar and different.  We started today with ways people celebrate Christmas and we even decorated our class tree!  (I KNOW it’s only November – sorry!)