As part of our weather topic, we wanted to know how rain happens.  Luckily one of the boys in our class told us about the water cycle.  We found out more about the water cycle today and even made up an action to help us remember each very tricky word.  We learned about evaporation, condensation, precipitation and collection.    Check out the following photos and see if you can work out which action goes with which word!

Please ask us about the water cycle at home and see if we can tell you all about it.

 

We went out for a walk around the playground to search for clues that winter is over and spring has started.  We found daffodils, crocus and snowdrops.  We saw buds on the bushes and trees.  More birds were flying around and we even saw a bee buzzing around the flowers.  The best sign of spring was that it was a lovely sunny day that felt much warmer than last month!

 

As part of our work on measure, we used pan balances to weigh an apple using different classroom items. We found out that it is tricky to get the balance right sometimes.

This afternoon we were practising our note-taking skills by keeping information in our heads. We looked at a short clip and listened to the information then people who were listening for Polar, Temperate, Desert and Tropical zones shared their learning with others. We are becoming very good listeners!!

 

 

 

We started to learn about measure by putting ourselves into height order. Some of us have grown and changed places in the class height order since Christmas! We tried out some of the new outdoor equipment and noticed that the logs were different heights.

 

We find different ways to practise our language skills. Today we were thinking about when we use a capital letter and these are the reasons we came up with:

We also know that country names like Scotland start with a capital letter too!

Time to show everyone what we have been learning and the skills we have been developing. We have been sharing into 4 groups to find a quarter of a number.

We could choose whichever method we wanted to do the sharing.

In the Learning Zone, we were practising sorting, examining, serving out and constructing today. What did your child learn today?

Today we used our notes about tornadoes to create our own piece of writing.  We had to make up our own sentences to write information about tornadoes.  I think you’ll be amazed at what we found out!  Have a look in our jotters when you visit us for parents’ evening.

Homework from 7/3/16 until 18/3/16

Language

French Practise saying the days of the week in French:

lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi, dimanche and counting up to 20.

Phonemes

We are continuing to learn the phonemes which make the O sound in words.

This week we will be learning words with the ow phoneme as in snow and grow

Next week we will be consolidating the different ways to make write long o sounds – ow, oa, o-e. 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 oa, ow, o-e phoneme words.
• Homework ideas:

http://www.spellzone.com/word_lists/list.cfm?wordlist=249

Common sight words:

• Keep practising the words you have been learning to read and add in the new sight words

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

bring       keep      know     there     their     every 

time         took       under     school     wish     life

• Take the sight word challenge How many can you read confidently?

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

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

 

Reading

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 trip to/join the library to look at all their useful resources.
• Look at any non-fiction books at home and look at the contents, index and glossary pages if the book has them. Ask an adult to find information with you by looking for page numbers and highlighted words.

Number

This week we will be learning about measurement and will be starting by looking at length and height. Here are some ideas for supporting our learning in class:

Measuring the family – Your child draws their family members, putting them in order of height. Then they draw them in order of age. Talk about whether the two orders are the same.

Non-standard units at home – Give your child a list of 10 things they are likely to have at home, e.g. TV, magazine, toothbrush, mug, spoon. Your child chooses a body unit of measure such as their finger width or hand span to measure the lengths of five of these objects.

Here are some websites that you may find useful

Reading measures – http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/maths/measures/index.htm

Harbour measurements – http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks1/maths/length_and_weight/play/

Fish catch – http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/math/games/first-second-grade/time-to-move/

Interdisciplinary Learning

Climate Zones

We are going to learn about climate zones – arctic, temperate, desert and rainforest climates.

• Use any information books to find out about these climates and how people live there.
• We will be having another presentation at the end of this term, so start collecting any junk materials ready to make a model of the climate zone of your choice!!!
• Take a look at this website, it has some really interesting information:

http://climatekids.nasa.gov/

Weather

We have been learning about some extreme weather conditions and taking notes from what we have seen or heard.

• Challenge, why not try to take notes from watching information on this site.

http://kidsahead.com/subjects/5-extreme-weather

 

We have been looking forward to a sunny day so that we could do a real-life survey of the cars and other vehicles that pass the school.  We worked in pairs and used tally marks to record how many cars of different colours passed by.  We turned the information that we had collected into a block graph in our jotters.

We really enjoyed ourselves and lots of us want to do more surveys at home or during playtime.

 

The children are becoming very good at origami folding and like using origami to show their learning. Today we used 4 equal parts to make a flower pattern.

 

 

 

In in our non-fiction reading we have found out that some words are in bold because they might be topic words. We found out what hibernate mea.

ICT we used our learning about fractions to create fraction flags- there are lots of different ways of making the patterns! See the photos above.

Have a lovely weekend.

 

 

It was a busy day in Primary 2!! As it is World Book Day we listened to some extracts of  stories from the site

www.worldbookday.com/story time-online/

Have a look at some of the other resources or listen to some other extracts.

This morning we joined lots of our learning together to make a vegetarian Scotch broth.  We had to cut the vegetables in half which is a link to our fraction work and we had to think about how to use the knife safely which links to our HWB learning about safe/unsafe things in the house.

In our Scottish food topic we were learning about foods grown in Scotland, so our carrots, needs and parsnips were all local produce.

We had to measure out quantities of other ingredients carefully!

After the broth had been simmering in the kitchen (many thanks to everyone who helped) we all had a chance to eat the broth with some crunchy bread and butter. The broth was delicious and we saw how the barley swelled up as it was cooked. Well done everyone!!

The Learning Zone saw more exciting action this afternoon, with wild animals behind bars, explorers looking for wild creatures, sand mountains for animals, animal family sorting and a vet helping a chameleon in the middle of the jungle! What a busy day!