Welcome back to all of our lovely parents/carers. We hope you have had a lovely New Year; we are so glad to have our children back in school, learning and having fun with their friends. We have lots of updates since our last blog:

 

Numeracy

We have been continuing to enjoy the challenge of silver, gold and platinum activities (that we choose ourself, after Ms Craig explains each task). We are really running with this challenge system now, and are becoming skilled at reflecting on our learning journey so that we can choose challenges that suit our own needs best.

With Ms Craig and Miss Paterson, we have explored trickier addition and subtraction, estimating and measuring using rulers and data handling (using tally marks and graphs).

“I liked measuring stuff with rulers because it is a fun challenge.” – Elliot

“I liked measuring things with my hands.” – David

Since coming back from the Christmas break, we have been trying to enhance our number fluency. This is where we practise reciting numbers forwards and backwards. We are aiming to become fluid in all numbers up to 100. We have been using this knowledge to answer addition and subtraction calculations confidently, quickly and mentally. So far, we are aiming to work within 30 for subtraction and up to 50 for addition. We are using lots of partner and whole-class games for practice.

“I found doing o’clock and half past times fun!” – Katie

 

Literacy

We have all developed our reading skills since our last blog update – Ms Craig is so proud! We are underpinning this with our knowledge of phonics where we are continuing to look at joined phonemes, but are starting to learn about split phonemes. Split phonemes are where 2 letters work together to make one sound, but they are split up by another letter. We sometimes also call this ‘magic e’.

“I found split phonemes really fun, writing them down in words was easy for me.” – Lewis

“Split phonemes are cool because they have spaces in them, but they still sound out together.” – Georgia

Can you ask your child to discuss the split phoneme in these words?

these

rope

cute

kite

June

We have continued to develop our common word knowledge by creating a ‘class dictionary’. The children take ownership of this area and use it often when independently writing.

“I liked it when people got to write in the common word strips.” – Isla

As mentioned, we are using our sounds to help us read. Since our last update, all children have made good progress. We are learning to read with confidence and expression when we are reading out loud. We are using our knowledge of ” ! ” and ” ? ” to help us express words appropriately.

We are demonstrating our understanding of our reading books by completing a variety of jobs based on word knowledge, predictions on what might happen in a book, and summarising. When we complete all of these jobs, we understand the purpose and structure of our book a bit better each time. We love to read as a group!

“It was nice to make our wee books. I liked folding them at the end and seeing it turn into a book.” – Elliot

In writing, we are continuing to use PM writing, and we will use it up ’til Primary 7! We listen to a story in ‘the big book’ and look at different aspects of grammar and vocabulary, During independent practice, we change small aspects of the story to make a new story (this could be changing characters, settings or adjectives, for example). By the end of the topic, we should be able to write our own stories. Since the New Year, we have started focussing on information reports. By the end of our topic we should be able to write appropriately about something that interests us (a toy, a hobby, a pet etc). Stay tuned to our school ‘X’ account (FKA Twitter) for sneak peeks of our excellent writing.

“Writing information reports is fun because you learn different words for sentences every week.” – Wallace

“I like to write because it helps us when we are older.” – David

 

 Health and Wellbeing

We have been splitting our PE timetable between using the gym hall and the outdoor quadrangle:

In indoor PE (Monday) we have been developing our dance and gymnastics skills using lots of games and stations to increase our heart rates. We have also spent time discussing how to increase our energy and the impact of getting a good night’s sleep with Miss Paterson.

“Dancing is a lot of fun!” – Millie

In outdoor PE (Tuesday) we have been creating our own playground games, using a variety of outdoor equipment. We are enjoying using our creativity and team work skills to play and enjoy our new games together.

“A lot of people played with me in my own game of tig.” – Jack McC

In class, we are also discussing our emotions. Take a look at our emotions alphabet:

Other Curricular Areas

Last term we looked at Ancient China:

“Ancient China was a fun topic. We got to mix colours in paint to make masks.” – Gabriella

“I liked how we learned about and made dragons.” – Jack S

In our in-class topic, we have begun to learn about Scotland. This is to celebrate Burn’s Night! We will look at Scottish holiday destinations. So far, we have looked at the Isle of Arran and compared life, nature, transport and housing to our lives in Hamilton (mainland).

Last term were learning all about Water, and how it can change form by freezing, melting and boiling. We enjoyed doing lots of water based experiments and predicting which materials would dissolve in water, then testing it out! This term we are going to be learning all about sound, how our ears work and doing lots of experiments to produce sound from vibrations and change the pitch. Sounds like fun! (Mrs Brock)

 

Thank you for reading our blog update – we look forward to updating you again in at the end of Term 3!