Welcome, all parents and carers, to Primary 2’s class blog! We have been having so much fun in our learning journey and can’t believe how quickly time has passed! We have been working hard on our new routine and are learning and supporting each other wonderfully. We have enjoyed an Wear Pink Fun Day, a brilliant open session (thank you to all who were able to attend) and we have said a fond farewell to our lovely support staff memebers, Mrs Gardiner and Mrs Barnes – we will miss them dearly!
We are beginning to prepare for our Nativity. Stay tuned on Instagram and ParentPortal for updates!
Numeracy
We have been enjoying the challenge of silver, gold and platinum activities (that we choose ourself, after Ms Craig explains each task). We love to choose tasks that challenge us and are starting to learn how to choose the right challenge for each lesson.
“Platinum tasks give me more of a challenge.” – Myles
“When we go from Silver, to Gold, to Platinum the jobs have bigger sums.” – Freya
We have been learning all about numbers sequences to 100 – we can say them forwards and backwards! We have also been learning about number patterns and colour/shape patterns and how to recognise their rules.
“Blue and red can make a pattern. White and yellow can make a pattern rule, too. Green and blue can make a pattern, too!” – Charlie
We are now using what we have learned about numbers to add ones and tens together in column addition – we are very good at putting this into our jotters!
“You can explain to Mums and Dads: you add ones first and then you add the tens. Parents can ask us for help – we know what to do!” – Henry
We have also been completing some of Neilsland Primary School’s Outdoor Maths Challenges during the months of September and October. We are looking forward to sharing at an assembly at the beginning of November on how we got on with these challenges (we thought they were very fun!)
In November, we will begin investigating measurement (using rulers and metre sticks) and data handling (reading and writing tally marks and creating bar graphs based on the tally marks).
We will also start using our ‘floor book’. This is a big pad that we make notes on. Everyone gets a chance to write in the floor book. We use this to help us remember how to complete calculations. We are excited to see the pages getting filled up as we learn more and more.
Literacy
In literacy, we have been building on the skills we learned in Primary 1. In phonics, we have been using our Active Literacy boards to work with Ms Craig and our shoulder partners to say, make, break, blend, read and write our spelling and phoneme words. We are enjoying the challenge of P2 phonemes and common words!
“When we do cut and stick phoneme jobs, you need to cut out the letters to make words. I enjoy doing those jobs!” – Bella
“In dictation, we listen to the teacher and we write down sentences.” – Harlie
The sounds we learn in phonics are helping us with our reading too. We all work in different groups to read books that are good challenges for us. They test our phoneme and common word knowledge. We are trying to read 3 times a week in class with an adult, and we would all like to read as much as possible at home to show off what we are learning!
“When you read it can be skinny books or chapter books.” – Maisie
“When you read it can be nice, it gives you an imagination and helps you know more about the book when you read properly.” – Blair
We have been working so hard in our literacy lessons; we have risen to the challenge of new work and were very proud of our jotter work. We have been developing our handwriting since August, and are now beginning to learn joins in our handwriting. We know that this will help our handwriting become faster and neater.
In writing, we are using 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. We have learned about recount and descriptive stories so far. Stay tuned to our school Instagram account for sneak peeks of our excellent writing.
“Handwriting can help us to write faster.” – Charlie
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 gymnastics skills, and have learned how to have busy and quiet feet, how to land with ‘squidgy knees’ when performing a jump, and how to roll on the gym mats in a variety of ways.
Since the October break, we have started to learn how to folk dance. What we learned in gymnastics has helped us; we are using our fast and quiet feet and awareness of space to be excellent dancers.
In outdoor PE (Wednesday) we have been playing playground games and are now developing our skills with balls. We are learning how to control a ball with the inside of our feet, and how to stop the ball if we lose control. Our next steps are to begin to play simple football games and exercises to develop our skills.
“When you run lots in PE you use up energy in your body.” – Eshan
In our in-class Health and Wellbeing lessons, we have been looking at Children’s Rights and how we can work together to all have fun at school. We have developed two ‘class rules’:
- You are allowed to have fun.
- You are not allowed to ruin anyone else’s fun!
Take a look at our Class Charter, based on our unique qualities and the rights we thought were most important to us:
We have also been developing our awareness of emotions and their names during lots of circle-time games.
Other Curricular Areas
In our topic time, we have been learning about Toys From the Past; we used a lot of the information from our 80s, 90s and 00s topic that we experienced in Primary 1 to help us. We really enjoyed making peg dolls, just like the Victorians used to do!
Since the October break, we have started our new topic of ‘The Foodbank’ – we will be learning all about services in our community and developing our understanding of equity through this topic.
“Toys in the past were usually made from wood because it was very cheap.” – Aylin
Art
In art and design we have been experiencing sculpture. We first played with play-doh, and enjoyed seeing what shapes we could make.
We then used air-dry clay to make ‘creative creatures’, and learned how to mix paint to paint them.
We have also looked at the work of an artist: Kandinsky. He used concentric circles to make his art. We had a go of doing this, as well! We used different circular objects from around the class and drew around them on different colours of paper. Once these were stuck, we also used halved potatoes to do some printing in paint. We finished off our pieces with round buttons.
“We know how to draw faces now (where the eyes, ears, nose and mouth go) and how to paint them. We can make skin colours by mixing brown, white, red and yellow.” – Aidy
Thank you for reading our first class blog – we look forward to updating you again in at the end of Term 2!
