Happy New Year!  We hope everyone had a restful break and had time to relax and enjoy with friends and family. 

Another busy term has passed.  The children performed spectacularly in the Nativity and we are proud of their confidence and effort in this.   They had a fantastic time at our Christmas party with our special visitor.  Lots of learning also took place. 

In literacy we are continuing to learn our sounds (single phonemes) and will learn all sounds before moving onto the joined phonemes (sh, th, ch, ng …).  In school we use the pink magnetic boards to help us to make, blend and read simple CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words. 

 We use the 5 finger strategy – Say it, Make it, Break it, Blend it, Read it, Write it. 

Say it – say the word 

Make it – with magnetic letters on the pink board 

Break it – break the word up by separating the sounds (phonemes) 

Blend it – starting at the beginning, move the sounds and blend the sounds (phonemes) together 

Read – read the word aloud 

Write it – write the word 2 times, remembering a finger space between each word  

Every week we have 3 new common words which we are learning to recognise with increasing accuracy to develop our reading fluency. We are also continuing to develop our phonological awareness. Please continue to share nursery rhymes with us, helping us to learn these and recite them back to you.   

Everyone has a reading book and is enjoying sharing them in class and at home.  Please remember to bring your reading book to school every day for the activities in class. 

You can continue to help at home by encouraging us to recognise and identify all of the sounds (phonemes) and common words that have been taught by using the flashcards.  You can practise the correct formation of all of the phonemes – doorwayonline.org is a super interactive resource for letter and number formation.   Also, you could encourage us to sound out and blend sounds (phonemes) together to read words. 

In numeracy we have been learning to count forwards using the forward number sequence and count backwards using the backwards number sequence, to identify numbers, before, after and in between in a sequence of numbers within 10 and to add within 10 to name a few things.  We have also been adding to 5 and 10, even beyond that for a challenge! 

This term we will be learning to recognise and identify numbers to 20.  We will be doing lots of counting using our forwards and backwards number sequence to 30.  We will also be subtracting within 5 and then within 10 and exploring money. 

You can help us by practising formation of all of the numbers and number names to 20, continuing counting on and counting back orally to increase our confidence and continuing to encourage us to find numbers, shapes and patterns in our environment. 

Our new Social Studies topic for January is Scottish Weather.  We are looking at what types of weather we have in Scotland, we are recording weather and comparing to forecasts to see how accurate it is.  We will be making rain gauges to record rainfall, we will estimate before to see how much we think is possible – parents are welcome to guess too!   We are also looking at the 4 seasons and how the weather changes in relation to these in Scotland.   

STEM with Mr Connor 

 Last term we learned about our 5 senses – how they work and how we use them to interact with the world. We did hearing tests (why not try it? Mr Connor can’t hear 15K or beyond: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWpSePfbTxc ). We also discussed optical illusions and had a taste test session where we found out that our least favourite foods was mushroom and pickles (strangely enough, our favourite was chocolate muffin, go figure…). We also went on senses expeditions round the school to see what we could see or hear (we managed to sneak in and out of P1 without Mrs Mark even hearing us! 😄) 

 This term we are learning about forces (pushes and pulls on things). We will be learning how words like stretch, pull, twist and squish can help us make things as well as taking part in fun activities which show us how our own bodies use forces every day. Watch this space for future videos!

 

Welcome to everyone in Primary 1 and to all our new and existing families.  What a busy session we have had so far – learning and sharing with each other at our Primary 1 Curriculum event, our Open Afternoon and Parent Consultations.  Thank you to all who managed to attend any of these events.  It is always good to meet and share information on the children and their learning journey. 

 

Literacy

We are working hard in literacy and are doing a great job of learning sounds. We have learned our first few sounds a, t, s, i, p, n and have been using this knowledge to blend and to read words.  We will continue to learn new sounds so we can build new words every week.  Common words are words we learn every week and can be tricky.  Please use the sound cards and the common word cards to practise at home.  These are yours to keep, cut out and use as you wish.  We have started our picture reading books and are enjoying taking these home to discuss with our adults.  Please take the time to discuss the pictures and build the story using the pictures and the child’s vocabulary.  We look forward to progressing with our reading throughout the term as we bring together all of our learning to help us. 

Numeracy

In numeracy, we have been learning to count and form our numbers to 10 correctly.  We have been learning numbers before, after and in between, it’s tricky so we will keep practising – keep challenging us at home by asking us questions!  We will be moving on with estimating and rounding then addition.   In class we have lots of different activities that help us to learn and we enjoy the challenge of completing target tasks independently.  Please help us at home by working on forming numbers to 10.   

Learning Across the Curriculum

Mr Connor has been teaching us science. We have been doing lots of fun activities – learning songs about the bones in our body and using our five senses in different activities – we may have done enough to earn a badge?   Watch this space…. 

In French, Mrs White has been teaching us greetings and numbers.  We have worked on hello, goodbye and we are learning our numbers to 10.  We love this as we usually get to sing and dance while we are learning – what fun! 

We have been learning about our emotions during our Health and Wellbeing lessons.  We have worked on Emotions Works where we have been spending time exploring emotions.  We have been naming emotions, understanding behaviours, noticing body sensations, understanding triggers for the emotion and regulation strategies to help cope with the emotion.  The discussion was fantastic and the children were very good at sharing ways to manage emotions.   We also spent time drawing around our classmates and creating a healthy person – discussing then drawing all of the ways we can be healthy.

We will soon be busy rehearsing for our Christmas Shows.  Time flies when we are having fun!  We look forward to entertaining everyone in December.   Look out for more information nearer the time. 

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