This year our teacher is Mrs Hunter.
Mrs McGhee takes the class on Thursday afternoon and part of Friday morning.
Our P.E. days are Monday and Thursday. Please ensure that children have indoor shoes, gym clothes and that all jewellery is removed.
Class Dojo 
Please join our class dojo to keep up to date with class news, photos and more! You can use dojo to view the points your child has been given and to view our class dojo story.
Class Dojo is not used as a means of contacting the class teachers. Any communication should be sent with your child or via the school office. Thank you for your support.
Homework 
Primary 1 receive homework on a Monday. Every child will usually receive reading books each week. These books will be discussed in class with a teacher throughout the week, however, it helps improve your child’s reading and comprehension if they are also practised and discussed at home.
Active homework tasks will continue each week and Maths tasks will be sent home too.
Class Leadership Role
Primary 1 are responsible for looking after and feeding the birds which visit our bird boxes and bird feeders. We have been learning all about birds through observations, visitors, videos and stories. We will continue to feed the birds throughout the year.
Reminder
Please ensure that all items that your child brings to school are clearly marked with their name. This is very helpful if items get misplaced!
Here are some of the exciting things we will be learning this term…
Literacy
Writing – We continue to draw pictures of ourselves and events adding detail and pattern. The children ‘have a go’ at sounding out words to write their own stories. We are focussing on writing sentences with a capital letter, finger spaces and a full stop.
Through Talk for Writing we continue to practise our repetitive stories with lots of actions and create story maps to read to friends. The children can add different characters and settings to their stories. This term we will explore cumulative tales such as The Gingerbread Man and The Enormous Turnip.
Opportunities to write are available in all areas of play. Children are often seen writing shopping lists, cards, names and plans.
Reading – We will continue to practise our sounds. We use Jolly Phonics to introduce these and there are lots of opportunities to use our sounds during play and activities. We will have lots of opportunities to make, read and write 3 and 4 letter words. We are also learning some tricky words to help us with our reading books and with our writing.
Reading books are sent home on a Monday. The number of books may vary from week to week. These will include; phonics books which encourage the children to sound out and blend words, Oxford Reading Tree which introduces our family and their adventures and some tricky words, library books chosen by the children and Non-Fiction books to be read and discussed together.
After reading together at school we often discuss the children’s likes and dislikes, puzzles or things they are not sure of and connections to their own experiences.
Numeracy
A lot of our number practice involves counting forwards and backwards within 10, 20 and beyond. We start at various numbers within the sequence. Lots of practice is given in counting, sorting, patterns and estimating and writing numbers through play, games and active teaching. Addition and subtraction is introduced through active tasks and play with the children learning how to ‘count on’ and ‘count back’. We discuss and learn our Wonder Doubles; 1+1=2, 2+2=4 etc. The children then learn to use + – and = correctly.
In class we have a monthly calendar and weekly planner where we note events and activities. We sing lots of songs to learn Days of the Week and Months of the Year.
You will find you child’s Sumdog login in their diary. Practice at home will support their learning at school.
Through play, opportunities are provided to compare and estimate lengths, weights and capacities. Language used includes: full, empty, heavier, lighter, tall and short.
This term we will explore 2D shapes and 3D objects. Lots of active tasks will encourage the children to use their names; circle, square, rectangle, triangle, cube, cuboid, cone, cylinder, pyramid and sphere. Through play they will describe and sort these according to various criteria. Have a look in and around your house for these shapes and objects.
We will also explore time. The children will learn to read and write analogue and digital o’clock times. Explore where they can tell the time at home.
Health & Wellbeing
These are our PATHS friends. Twiggle 🐢, Daphne🐥, Duke🐶 and Henrietta 🦔. Each week we have Circle Time where our friends help us with emotional understanding, self control, social problem- solving, peer relations and self- esteem. During each lesson one child is randomly selected to be ‘Child of the Week’. This child helps Twiggle during the week and during lessons. At the end of the lesson we make a compliments list for the PATHS child which they will bring home. Please read over the list with your child and ask them to tell you how it felt to receive the compliments.
We have looked at foods which are healthy and unhealthy. Fruity Friday has returned. The class with the most children who have brought fruit for snack will win each week.
We continue to develop our Resilience and our Growth Mindset.
Broad General Education
In Primary 1, the children are able to lead their own learning and often choose ‘topics’ of their own that they want to learn more about. We have completed our Birds topic and have documented our learning in our floorbook. The children have shown an interest in their local environment and we hope to visit and learn more about our local shops and services.
We received a letter from Santa asking us to help him with his Christmas preparations. We were then involved in making cards, presents, designing wrapping paper, wrapping and many more activities.
This term we will explore Scotland. The children will learn a Scots poem and some Scots words, research and taste some Scottish food and find out about some Scottish traditions. We will use the Katie Morag stories to enhance our learning.
Other topics will be chosen by following the children’s interests.
