Today was a very special day because 29th February doesn’t happen every year.  We found out about why there is a leap year almost every four years.  We could link the information to our work on quarters in fractions and to the information we learned about the Earth orbiting the sun from Mrs Bacai.

We had some more practice with tally marks.  We have brought home our sheet and can teach you how to use tally marks if you don’t already know.  We did a virtual traffic survey in the class but we hope to do a real one outside on a warmer day.

 

We we had a great time watching the Taekwon Do demonstration. There were people of all ages in the display of moves to music. We then had the chance to have a go at some moves.

It was great fun and lots of us showed really good skills. We have been thinking about different jobs and careers. We have been thinking about all the skills that people need to do their jobs and we thought about jobs that we might like to do.

Then we carried on learning about fractions and the fractions that make a whole.

Enjoy you weekend everyone!

Another busy day, learning and applying skills in different contexts.

We have been applying our knowledge about fractions to help us create fraction flowers using origami.

Half of the flower is orange and half is green. Then we split the flower into quarters.

We could do this in different ways!

This afternoon we had interesting careers talks from Elaine- a physiotherapist and Jennifer- a librarian. We learnt a lot about what they had to do in their jobs and the qualifications they needed to get. We are all learning a lot about the different jobs people do and it is helping us to think about what we might like to do when we are older.

What a lot of excitement we have had today. First of all we called upon Geraldine the Giraffe to help us think of o-e phonemes.

 

We we were talking about vowels and consonants too. The vowels are:

a  e  i  o u  and the other letters are consonants (sometimes y acts as a vowel).

This afternoon we had some very exciting careers talks. Andrew talked to us about being a wrestler – which he had wanted to do since he was 7, but he also went to University and has a job in web design too!!

 

 

Next we were given an interesting talk by the police. They showed us some of their equipment and some children got to try out using the handcuffs.

 

Then Mrs Lennon and Miss Henderson were arrested!

Luckily they were let out of police custody! There were lots of really good questions and lots of children would like to be either a wrestler or police officer when they are older.

P2 have had a very interesting day today.  As well as maths and storywriting, we have listened to 3 different people talk about their jobs.  First of all we met a train driver called Emma.  She told us how important it was to keep safe around trains and tracks.  She told us lots of information about her job and how much training was needed.  Next we met Fiona the animal welfare officer.  She told us about her job and showed us how dogs are microchipped and scanned.  If you need your dog microchipped, NLC will do it for only £8.  She showed us pooper scoopers and bags that you can get for free from NLC.  Finally we met Jim the joiner.  He had lots of different tools to show us and talk about what they are used for.  He reminded us that they are not toys and we should not touch them if we see them around our house or garage.  We got to pass round some of his safety equipment and Jessica got to try some on.

 

This week we are going to have lots of people coming into our school to talk about their jobs.  Today, Hina and Ciara talked to us about the Solar System.  They are space engineers.  We learned about the different planets and their distance from the sun.  We drew the planets out on long stretches of paper to help us understand the distances.  We also found out about things in space like rockets and satellites.   Later on we met Fiona who is a Betterware Agent.  We had a look at the catelogue and saw some of the products she sells.  We had fun guessing what they were used for.  We are looking forward to the rest of the week.  I wonder if it will help us decide what to do when we grow up?

 

Homework from 22/2/16 until 4/3/16

Language

Phonemes

For the next three weeks we will be learning the phonemes which make the O sound in words.

This week we will be learning words with the o-e (magic e) phoneme as in rope and next week the phoneme will be oa as in boat.

Homework ideas:

Why not try to make sentences with as many words as you can.

Challenge – in your jotter, write a sensible and a silly sentence using some O phoneme words. http://www.galacticphonics.com/longvowels/oa/oa.htm

http://www.spellzone.com/unit07/page18.cfm

Keep spotting your phonemes in words that you read on packets of food and in the shops – write them down.

• http://www.spellzone.com/games/against_clock/index.cfm?wordlist=1191
• http://www.spellzone.com/games/against_clock/index.cfm?wordlist=239

Common words:

Keep practising the words you have been learning to read

two     three   four     five   six     number

how     last     many     miss   more   now

well     what     when   where   which   who

never   other   some     take     them   thing

again     always       book     cold     day     fast

ask         best         eat       find       gave     home

don’t       fell         jump     long       people   right

each       find         men       room     soon     these

Take the sight word challenge How many can you read confidently?http://www.ictgames.com/wordreader.html

• http://www.spinandspell.com/game.swf

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

A new reading book will now usually be given each Wednesday. 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.

• Make a note of any new words.
• Which strategy/strategies did you use to work out the new words.

Number

Learning more about fractions we have started to explore the idea of quarters (¼).

At home, there are lots of times when food is divided into halves, quarters and even smaller fractions. Please let your child watch you cutting the food and let them explain how fractions should be the same size.

Extend the activities to include halves and quarters:

Quarter it! Ask children to find as many examples as they can of quarters being mentioned in newspapers or magazines. These examples might come from times (quarter of an hour), adverts (save a quarter), measurements (quarter full, half full, three quarters full), etc. Children draw, stick or write about them in their Think about it jotter.

Quarter of a shape Ask children to draw shapes and explore whether they can create quarters.

Quarter full Ask children to find containers at home, such as measuring jugs, plastic bottles and cartons, and to half-fill one, then quarter fill another to explore the difference.

http://resources.hwb.wales.gov.uk/VTC/ngfl/ngfl-flash/fractions/fractions.html

http://www.primarygames.co.uk/fflags/fractionflagsres.html

Interdisciplinary Learning

We were developing our mapping skills this week and looked at a map of the fields on a farm where the fields were different colours. We knew what was in each field by looking at the key.

• Draw your own map of a farm, colour the fields in different colours and draw a key to show me what is in each field e.g. a yellow field might be wheat, or a green field might have dairy cows. Think about sheep, cows, woodland, potatoes, carrots and strawberries.

Weather

As we have started to learn about different weather conditions, watch some weather reports and think about/note down what information is given.

• Create your own weather report about this week’s weather

• Bring in printed weather forecasts from newspapers or the web
• Try this interactive game and change the weather conditions.
• http://www.scholastic.com/kids/weather/sim/game.htm

 Careers Week

• Talk to your family members about the jobs that they do.
• Make a note of the job and what is the best part of the job.

To complete the days of the week in French- samedi is Saturday and dimanche is Sunday. We noticed that the French words do not start with a capital letter.

We used the atlases to write the key for our maps and had to be careful to match the correct colours with the correct type of farming. We watched a video which linked together weather and farming. There is more rain in the west of Scotland which is good for the dairy farming in Dumfries and Galloway.

In ICT we linked together our typing skills with our copy spelling skills. We typed out sentences from our reading books and practised using the function keys for capital letters, apostrophes and exclamation marks if we needed them.

Thank you you for a lovely week, everyone! Have a great weekend.

 

 

Look at all our different partner balances! We had to make sure that we did not bump heads. It is important that we trust our partner not to let go when we are stretching out!

In the Learning Zone we were using the Duplo and Magnetico to build houses.

We used sand to make a space station on an alien planet.

Using the atlases we have been looking at where food is grown and reared in Scotland. Look at our great mapping skills!

 

 

There were sentences to put into the right order using our reading books. We found the correct pages and then put our strips into the correct order.

 

We took our new reading books into the Book Corner of the Learning Zone. It was cosy in the corner and we sat on the cool seats and beanbags to read.