Welcome back, parents and carers to Primary 1/2’s class blog. We hope you are enjoying the Spring weather. We cannot believe we are reaching the end of our Primary 1/2 journey, but we are excited to share a few more adventures before the Summer holidays.

 

We are delighted to announce that our class trip has been booked! We will travel to the Riverside Museum for a ‘Toys from the Past’ workshop on the 11th of June. More information will follow via our ParentPortal.

As we approach the end of Primary 1/2, we have been continuing to work hard to develop our skills across the curriculum. Here’s a little insight into what we have been up to…

Numeracy P2

We have continued to work with three teachers for our Numeracy inputs. Mrs Lafferty has been teaching us about measurement and symmetry. Ms Clarke has been teaching us about maths in the real world and data handling.

With Ms Craig, we have been looking at times tables. We have learned the 2 times table and 5 times table so far. We are making great links to nature (2 arms, 2 legs; 5 fingers on each hand)! We can also see the link between the 2 times table and our previous learning in doubling and halving.

“We have been learning the 5 times table and the 2 times table.” – Parker

“We had to fill in missing parts of a number sequence. It was a good challenge.” – Amelia S

“We have used arrays. They help us see groups of numbers. You do little dots and you can count them and write a calculation.” – Jessica C

“We did halves with Ms Clarke. That’s when one bit is broken into two bits. It has to be the same on each side. We also learned about tally marks.” – Joshua

We have been doing amazing partner work and peer assessment in our Numeracy lesson. We are getting very good at Number Talks and using hand signals to join in with discussions.

“Number Talks helps us count. We work with our friends. We use hand signals. One of them means I agree.” – Lilly

We have continued to use our ‘Floor Book’. This is the big pad that we make notes on. Check out how excited we are to get a turn to write in it:

We are excited to do more Maths outside as the nicer weather is approaching.

Literacy P2

Ms Craig is so proud of our progress this year in Literacy. We are becoming more independent and trying very hard to write full sentences with our sounding out strategies. We have started to develop our unique handwriting styles. Many of us are applying what we have learned in handwriting lessons, such as joined handwriting and consistent sizing, into all of our work. Well done, P2!

In reading, we have all moved up a colour level in our reading books again! We love our reading lessons and have gotten to be so good at predicting, answering questions and making connections between stories. We have even started to discuss book themes and genres. We have continued to have Reading Champions who represent our class. They also do a great job of helping their peers. We have had lots of additional help from our P6/7 Reading Buddies. Thank you so much P6/7!

“We have moved up colours in our reading books. That means we are getting harder books and we are reading more.” – Billie

“On our reading challenge sheets we have to match different words to pictures and answer questions.” – Reuben

“I have a P7 reading buddy. We pick a place to read and we read together.” – Jessica C

In phonics and spelling, we have been learning all about ‘Magic E’. We know that ‘Magic E’ is silent and gives all of its ‘magic’ to a vowel. ‘Magic E’ makes the vowel say its capital letter name! We had great fun designing magic wands for ‘Magic E’ so we could fix broken words.

“We have learned about magic e. It makes other letters say their capital letter name.” – Cameron

“We work in partners. We read words and sound them out and the partner has to make it with their magnetic letters. Then they practise writing it.” – Lilly

In our taught writing lessons, we have been looking at imaginative writing. We have learned the story of the Little Red Hen and worked in partners to retell this story. This helped us learn about the structure of a story. We learned that good stories have a beginning (where we learn about the character and setting), a middle (where something important or exciting happens) and an end (where the important or exciting thing gets resolved). We are using what we have learned to write stories of our own! We have started writing about a time machine. We hope to turn our stories into a class book!

“We have started writing about ‘The Old, Strange Time Machine’. That is imaginative writing. We had to pick characters and setting.” – Christopher

“We have learned about nouns, verbs and adjectives. You can take pictures of nouns – like a crab. Verbs are where you do something – like *watching* TV. Adjectives tell us more about nouns – like a *cute and fluffy* owl.” – Jessica D

 

Health and Wellbeing 

In our in-class Health and Wellbeing lessons we have learned about different emotions and even created some poetry about this:

We are also beginning to look at Fair Trade and how we can help farmers around the world. We know that we need to try and look for fair trade logos when we are in the shops. This makes sure that farmers are getting paid a fair amount of money.

We have been splitting our PE timetable between using the gym hall/dining hall and the outdoor MUGA:

In indoor PE (Monday) we have started to learn to do yoga, gymnastics and kick-ball-rounders. We select a different focus each week. We are listening well to instructions and having a lot of fun!

In outdoor PE (Tuesday) we are playing parachute games. This is the best fun; we need to have good listening so that we can play lots of different games.

“We have just started gymnastics. We were doing balances and staying still.” – Jessica C

“We need to get better at our warm ups. It is good for our heart beat.” – Carmen

“We played mouse and cat with the parachute.” – Cameron

“We learned about fair trade. We get food from different countries. Some farmers don’t get paid very well. We need to look for the fair trade sticker when we buy food so we can help.” – Jaxson (P2)

We ask that all parents and carers please ensure their child is dressed appropriately for the outdoors, including a light jacket and leg coverings (e.g. trousers or leggings/tights). Thank you.

 STEM (with Mrs Lafferty)

In term 3 we have been learning about living and non-living things. We have explored food chains that are present in the sea and on land. We have also learned about the features of a plant, and every child in the class had the opportunity to plant a seed to take home and grow. Towards the end of the term, we looked at materials, and we discussed the difference between man-made and natural materials. We also looked at why certain materials have certain uses within the world.

In term 4 we will be learning about electricity. We will be exploring where electricity comes from and how we use electricity. We will also be learning how to make simple circuits that contain lights and buzzers.

Across the Curriculum

Monsieur Perroquet has been helping us learn objects in the classroom and stationery in French. We love singing songs and playing games to help us learn. We love spending time with Mrs Brock for French!

In our topic we have been learning about ‘Toys from the Past’, starting from 1900-present day. We have had so much fun with this topic and have even designed a few toys of our own! Thank you so much to all parents/carers who donated some ‘junk’ for our junk modelling. We loved turning the junk into robots!

We have been inspired by our topic to sketch our favourite toys. We will work with special  paper to create art prints in the style of Andy Warhol’s ‘pop art’! Stay tuned to X for our finished masterpieces!

“We have learned about toys from the past. We made peg dolls. They used to be wooden because they had not made plastic yet.” – Emma

“We made robots. We used tape to wrap up the junk and then we put tin foil on top.” – Jaxyn (P1)

“For our Scotland topic we made tartan sheep. I liked making it.” – Colton

“We looked at old toy cars. It was good fun!” – Amelia Mc

 

We will have our class assembly on the 31st of May at 1.20pm. We hope that you will be able to attend to see our showcase of what we have learned.

Thank you for reading our class blog and sharing our learning with us. We have loved being in Primary 1/2 and look forward to all the adventures which still await us! 🙂