Happy New Year to everyone! Hope you all had a happy holiday together. P3 wanted to start their blog by remembering the fun they had at the end of last term.

Billie tells us, ‘I think taking part in the Nativity helped me learn all  about the story of nativity and it was really fun too!’

Amelia adds, ‘We had to learn our words so that we could read them out to the audience’ and Abigail liked the fact that, ‘we needed to learn lots of songs and all the actions. I loved singing, especially, ‘All the Angels Sing.”

Kye’s favourite song was Little Donkey because he liked the ‘action with the donkey’s ears’.

Jessica D. really liked, ‘being a narrator and my favourite song was was the ‘Calypso Carol’. I loved when we waved our hands.’

Adeline loved the Christmas party, ‘because I loved the dancing and the food we had was so tasty!’

Cameron liked the fact that he got to see Santa at the Christmas Party, ‘We got pencils, rubbers, sharpeners and a wallet to keep them in. It made me really happy!’

Numeracy

We had been working on addition and subtraction.  Jessica D. wanted to say that she really loves adding up and subtracting numbers  and knows lots of strategies that can help her. She especially likes using her ‘friendly numbers’ like 10 and 100 to help.

Sahan, ‘likes working on sums from the textbook because there are some hard sums in there!’ There are indeed Sahan!

We looked at how repeated addition links to multiplication ie 3+3+3+3 = 4 groups of 3 = 4×3. Billie wanted to mention, ‘I’m getting better and better at multiplication because I’m practising my tables at home too.’ Well done Billie,  that’s great news!

We were also learning more about fractions. Lucy tell us, ‘I liked making the fraction birds because it helped me understand fractions. We had to fold them and then fold them again to make smaller fractions.’

We noticed that the smaller the part, the bigger the number became at the bottom of the fraction. ‘The denominator is at the bottom and it tells us how many parts there are altogether.’ says Euan.

Ebony adds, ‘ the numerator is the number at the top and it tells how many parts we are working with.’

Reuben wanted to share a fact that has helped us with our calculations, ‘if you half a half it gives you a quarter and if you half a quarter it gives you an eighth.’ Wow! Good thinking Reuben!

We have also been ordering  numbers. ‘I loved picking out different numbers and ordering them from smallest to largest,’ says Carmen.

Alana tells us, ‘we have been learning to estimate where numbers go on a number line. It helps me to know where the numbers should go.’ They can now do this really well, even with blank number lines!

Literacy

Jessica C tells us, ‘I like when I’m reading because I’m learning lots of new words that will help me as I get older.’ So true, Jessica!

Joshua has ‘been good at sounding out my spelling words and that really helps me to read and spell too!’

Here is Joshua showing off his diacritical marking. Christopher says, ‘this is when we mark our words. A dot tells us the sound is a single phoneme, a line tells us that the sound is a joined phoneme and a little rainbow means a split phoneme.’ Well done, Christopher!

Amelia enjoys ‘practising my handwriting and I can join my letters really well now.’ It certainly is helping the boys and girls to produce neater handwriting. You can see how proud they are of their writing in the photo below!

We worked on our descriptive writing last term. Lexi tells us that, ‘I liked describing my elf using adjectives like cheeky and happy because it helped me to imagine what my elf would be like.’

Lucy adds, ‘we have been using connectives to join two short sentences together like this- I had a good weekend because I got to stay at my best friend’s house.’

We were excited to get our book bag last term. We had fun making masks for one of our books. The books were GRRRReat!

Joshua tells us that, ‘I read the cheetah book at home. I liked when the snails were on the skateboard!’

Kaiden liked Martha Maps it Out and he ‘liked Martha’s map of her flat. It was interesting because it showed you everything in it.’

STEM

We have some new STEM resources in the school and the P3s have had the opportunity to use them recently.

The Magnatiles have been very popular. Ashton loves to build things like houses and stuff and Joshua adds that ‘they are fun to stack up and you can build really tall towers with them.’

Alana liked ‘Indi, because you can program him to go in any direction by using the tiles in any order.’ Another programmable device is the mouse and cheese game which was a favourite of Ebony’s. She ‘programmed the mouse to get the cheese and then I was happy!’ Good for you Ebony!

The children have also had the opportunity to use the STEM room for Science with Mrs Cullie. Lilly tells us, ‘I have liked going to the Science room. We were looking to see what would melt the ice quicker and we had a spill because we used water.’ Don’t worry, Lilly, Science can get a bit messy! Alana explains that the class were trying to rescue a Paw Patrol character that had got stuck in the ice.

Topic

Our new topic this term is ‘Famous Scots.’

‘I learned that Robert Burns wrote poems and found out how other famous Scots became famous.’ says Adeline.

‘Chris Hoy is famous for cycling and he has a velodrome in Glasgow named after him.’  Sahan tells us.

Abigail wanted to share that, ‘We have been making collage Scotland flags by ripping blue paper. It’s been fun and I have learned a lot about how to do collage.’

‘We researched on the chromebooks about famous Scots. I researched about Rabbie Burns and I found out that he wrote the New Year Song,  Auld Lang Syne.’ says Reuben.

Carmen even brought in a jigsaw that had been made of a family photo of them standing next to a statue of a famous Scot. I wonder if you can guess who it is?

Here we are using the collage technique to make our Scotland flags.

P.E.

Alana tells us, ‘We have started to do ball skills and we are learning different ways to pass the ball. We always do a warm up before we do PE so our muscles are ready. I like to play tig.’

Outdoor PE has involved lots of game playing and more recently the children have been playing bowling and skittles games. ‘We even learned to play the Finnish version of skittles!’ says Reuben.

P3 have been so busy and it’s only October! As well as all the work we have been doing we’ve also had fun days organised by the P7’s and by the Eco Club, an author visit and even a visit to the church!

Eco Fun Morning

The Eco Club organised a fun morning to raise awareness about climate change.

Lilly enjoyed making the bird feeders because ‘it was fun to use the pine cone to collect the seed. I liked swirling it around!’

 

 

 

 

Lexi liked going outside to play games. She liked ‘stacking the cans because I made a tall tower!’

 

 

 

 

 

Adeline was very impressed that we were looking after our environment by picking up litter during the Eco fun morning, she loved this activity!

 

 

 

 

Carmen liked the activity in the gym hall because, ‘it was good exercise and I was learning how to recycle.’

 

 

 

 

Author Visit

We had an author visit last week from Cheef Chebe. He came to help us celebrate Black History month.

‘We were solving puzzles and we were playing drums. They were so cool to play.’ Euan

‘I learned how three people could cross a river when one can’t touch the water.’ Sahan

‘I learned how a human being can have four legs, then two and then three.’ Adeline (ask them and they will tell you!)

‘The drums were so colourful and I loved to play them because the noise was so beautiful!’ Parker

Church Visit

We were invited to the church to take part in some activities about the Creation Story and about how we are all different and special.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Literacy

P3 have been learning all their phonemes and common words at school and then even practising them in their jotters at home which has been making such a difference when they use them in their work. Well done everyone!

Lilly was keen to say that the class have recently been  ‘learning about non-fiction books and doing a scavenger hunt to find the different features of a non-fiction book.’

‘A non-fiction books tells you facts and it can have a contents page, a glossary, an index and all these things help you to find the information you need.’ Reuben

We have been working on the formation of our letters and Lucy adds, ‘We have started to join up our letters in our handwriting to make our writing neater. I love it!’ And yes, she really did say that!

We have been working on our Recount writing. Sahan tells us, ‘That’s when you are retelling events in the right order.’

More recently, ‘We have been writing about how to make a model castle and also writing descriptions of our castles. This will help me to be able to make a model castle again one day.’ Euan

We will continue to work on our Descriptive writing over the next few weeks.

Numeracy

The class have been working on Place Value, estimating and rounding, multiplication, addition and subtraction, measurement, capacity and shape.

     

‘We were estimating where numbers went on our number lines to 100.’

Alana

 

 

 

Adeline tells us, ‘I’ve been learning different strategies of how to add and subtract. Learning how to subtract 9 by subtracting 10 and adding the one back on is really helpful.’

‘We have started to do Silver, Gold and Platinum challenges. You choose the level you want to work at.’ Alana

Ashton, ‘likes the hard questions in Platinum.’

‘When you are taking away, the number at the start is the biggest number and the other two numbers are smaller but they can add to make the first number.’ Alana

The children are regularly using a new resource called Numicon and it has been very popular! ‘Numicon is really good at helping me work out my sums when I am working with the bigger numbers.’  Billie tells us.

‘We were measuring the leaves outside and putting them in order.’ Kye

Knight and Castles Topic

Our topic this term has been very popular and has been inspiring trips to castles. Carmen went to Stirling Castle and even brought pictures in to show us…’I saw the cannons and the arrow slits and the crenelated  walls and I knew why they were there.’

Jessica C. tells us, ‘we made model castles and it was great fun because you got to make your own castle with historic features and you got to know what happened in the past and it felt more real.’

‘I loved making my own mini castle and even made my own mini figures to go inside.’ Ebony

‘I know the history of the castle now.’  Adeline

Billie says, ‘I liked that we were making castles with a drawbridge and a flag on a pole.’

 

We can’t quite believe that this will be our last term in P2/3 before we finish for the Summer holiday. We have a busy term ahead with lots of new challenges!

Looking back to last term and our class assembly about Scotland…

This is what some of the children had to say about it-

Sophie- ‘I think our assembly was really funny and it gave us the chance to show off our learning.’

Logan- ‘It was fun. I liked having the role of the doctor and I liked my line.’

Arwyn- ‘I liked being Nessie for our assembly because I liked popping out and saying my lines- I was like a boomerang!’

Halle- ‘I loved my yellow submarinne with sparkles on.’

Quinn- ‘I thought all the costumes were funny!’

Caled- ‘I liked the fact that the audience would have been learning things about Scotland.’

Jessie- ‘I liked all my big lines and pointing at the map. I think we all did an amazing job!’ I have to agree, I think you all did an amazing job too, Jessie!

Open Afternoon

In February we had an open afternoon and we welcomed parents and carers into the class. During this time we made our ‘Magical Yets’. This was based on a book we read in class that discussed how we all have to practise, practise and practise to become good at something. So instead of giving up, it encourages us to change our mindset to be, ‘I cannot do this YET’

The children have been telling me about the fact that this has helped them-

Arwyn told us that she ‘can’t ride on her roller-skates yet but I think of the things in my head that can support me.’ Good advice Arwyn!

Jessie said, ‘It increased my confidence because I sometimes get upset but when I think of the things on my Magical Yet they help me not to be sad.’

Sophie also mentioned that she now takes a deep breath and doesn’t panic before she tries something hard. ‘Before I did the Magical Yet sometimes I would panic’ she told us.

Kali remembers, ‘I won’t give up’ to help her when work gets tricky. Good for you Kali!

World Book Day

For World Book Day the children did lots of fun activities to celebrate.

They dressed up as book characters and Blair said that he ‘loved being someone from Horrible Histories.’

Elliot- ‘I loved going up to the Nature area and reading our books.’

Kaiden- ‘It was good sitting next to Blair and Christopher. We chatted about our books.’

Lucy tells us that, ‘we made reading buddies that were reading books that we designed’. She loved to make them.

Literacy

We are excited to have a new class reader called The Hodgeheg.

Blair says, ‘I like our new book because the burb tells us that Max is a hero and I want to find out why.’

Jessie tells us, ‘We’ve read Chapter 1 and 2 so far and I like that Max is trying to discover how humans cross the road without getting injured.’

Caled adds, ‘In Chapter 1 we used our prior knowledge to write what we already knew about hedgehogs and then we read more from the book and we noted down the new facts we had learned.’

Ozy was interested that in Chapter 2, ‘we found tricky words and tried to work out what they meant in context. Then we looked them up in the dictionary.’ Caled remembered that this was called Metalinguistics, which was a very tricky word! Quinn loved ‘looking in the dictionary to find our tricky words. It’s like being a detective!’

Blair also loves, ‘doing diacritical marking because I like marking the dots, lines and rainbows to show the single phonemes, joined phonemes and split phonemes.’

Jessie liked the poetry that we wrote before Easter, “we wrote spring calligram poems. I had fun writing my poem in a shape”.

The class also made sock puppets and wrote instructions to tell someone else how to make them. Lucy tells us that she loved making them and that she showed her Mummy when she got home.

Maths

Sahan liked to learn his 3 times table, ‘ now I can count on in 3s’ he tells us. Logan loves maths, ‘it is just so much fun because I know my 2, 3, 5 and 10 times tables now!’

Jessie says, ‘we’ve been learning how to do chimney sums and I know how to set them out neatly in my jotter’.

Kaitlyn tells us, ‘we were learning about time; analogue and digital clocks, am and pm, quarter past and quarter to”. Elliot says this is important because ‘if you don’t know the time you might be late for your job!’ Good point!

We have also been working on  Information Handling. Hannah tells us that, ‘we have been using tally marks to make a note of everyone’s eye colour and then we made a chart showing everyone’s eye colour.’

STEM

Ozy tells us that, ‘we have been learning about different materials like wool, plastic and glass. We were looking around the school for different things made of these materials.’

Before this, the class were working on electricity. Sophie tells us that they were learning about the things that electricity can travel through, ‘these are conductors and if it can’t go through, they are called insulators’ .

‘We were making circuits using batteries and wires, we could press a buzzer and turn on a lightbulb. It was great!’ said Blake.

IDL

Our topic this term is Ancient Egypt. We have been having a great time learning lots of facts about this interesting part of history.

Kaitlyn has found it particularly interesting that even cats were turning into mummies because ‘they believed in the afterlife’.

Harley has liked learning about the tombs inside the pyramids because he likes the hieroglyphics.

Elliot thought it was amazing how long ago the Ancient Egyptians were around and also how long they played such an important role in history.

We still have much to learn and then we will also be involved in a Ancient Egypt workshop at Kelvingrove Museum on the 13th of June which we are all looking forward to!

These are our pyramids that we made. If you look inside you’ll even find a sarcophagus and all the things the Pharoah might need in the afterlife!

 

PE

Cho’s Taekwondo members came to visit and they delivered a taster session for the children. They loved it!

Shea was very proud to share his club with the school!

P2/3 have already been very busy and it’s only just November!

Author Visit

Jessie tells us, ‘We just had an author visit so he could tell us about his books and his life. I liked hearing about his books and being sprayed with water! I thought it was good especially for people who might want to be an author.’

Elliot ‘liked when Stuart Reid came in and told us all about his books. It was really funny especially when his grandpa came in to visit!’

‘I liked it when random things popped up behind him and we all laughed and also when people from the audience were acting parts of his books,’ said Quinn.

Literacy

The children enjoy the variety of activities within Literacy.

Kaitlyn loves ‘handwriting because we get to learn and practise how to form our letters correctly.’

Lucy likes ‘learning new words. I like making them and writing them.’

Sophie tells us that ‘the Kenning poems were teaching my brain facts about the animals or objects so I could write a really good poem.’  And she did!

‘My favourite work, to be fair, is writing. I really enjoyed writing a recount about my October holiday,’ said Elliot.

Lily ‘liked doing all the fun activities during Roald Dahl Day, especially making the fox mask because we were reading Fantastic Mr Fox.’ Jessie also wanted to share her favourite Roald Dahl story with us . She was a great storyteller!

  

 

Maths

We have been looking at Place Value, Estimation and Rounding, Addition, Subtraction and now we are working on Multiplication and Division.

‘I like all the Maths activities,’ Ibrahim says.

Sahan loves ‘learning about numbers. I do great work and then I see a star from the teacher which means I can get a point.’

We’ve also covered lots of practical Maths activities such as 2D and 3D Shape,  Measurement using cm and m and we have been looking for right angles in the class and outside.

 

Skills Workshops

Each class have been involved in learning Expressive Art skills from different teachers. We did Drama with Mrs Gilroy and we have also covered  Art skills with Miss May. Soon we will be covering Music skills with Miss Craig.

Sophie tells us that she ‘enjoyed our Drama lessons because when you grow up you might want to be an actor.’

Outdoor Learning

Kaiden says, ‘I like going outside to do chalk and to play games with my friends’, during Outdoor Learning.

Harley and Ibrahim both agree that they love ‘going in the Muga pitch because we get to practise football.’

This is us making funny faces with natural materials that we found ‘up the back’.

Halloween 

The children had a fun packed Halloween and looked amazing in their outfits.

Quinn ‘loved seeing everybody in their costumes’, even the teachers!

They made a Halloween plaque,  drew spooky pictures, made Frankensien’s monsters and even did some division using sweets and witches hats. Not forgetting the all important party…

‘We had so much fun at the Halloween party.  I loved winning the candy!’ Arwyn tells us.

Nativity

Our Nativity this year is called ‘It’s A Party!’

Elliot tells us that ‘We are practising and learning our songs for our Nativity. I can’t wait to find out what part I’m playing. My favourite songs are Two Thousand Years Ago and our new song, Wise Men.’