Author: WLCarolyn.Ewart@glow

Primary 1B Learning Highlights

Health and Wellbeing

As we continue to focus on the topic of Celebrating our Differences,  we have been identifying how we are different and what exactly makes us special. It was very interesting to hear about everybody’s unique talents, abilities or little quirks which make us the person we are. Here are some of the examples which we shared with each other.

Finlay – I am good at writing words and that makes me special.

Kaleb – I am learning my name and how to write it and that makes me feel special.

Lucy – I am really good at playing games and that makes me special.

Leighton – I can ride my bike without stabilisers and that makes me feel special.

We are working together with Primary 1A to build a special display to highlight our hard work in Health and Well Being over the last few weeks. We will share the finished result with you when it is ready.

Literacy

This week we have had a focus on building and extending our vocabulary. We have been using a new and exciting programme called Word Boost. Each week we focus on a new story and learn all about 4 exciting and ambitious WOW words. This week we read the story Leo’s Dream by Antonie Schneider. Our boost words were –

Celebrate

Reply 

Investigate

Enormous

Parents should have received a special ‘parent postcard’ detailing our new words to practise using in everyday conversation in the red homework folders.

We have devised a secret signal for when we hear a boost word being spoken, we will tap our noses. Suffice to say there has been lots of nose tapping this week. It has been great fun learning about these words and matching them up with pictures. We even had a go at drawing our own pictures too….

 

We now know that there are different types of words. Words which are coloured yellow are adjectives (describing) and red words are verbs (doing words).

Numeracy 

This week we have been continuing our hard work with teen numbers and using the ten frames to represent these numbers.

We have also been working on recognising number words and matching the numeral to the word or the collection. We have been enjoying using the laptops in the class to develop this tricky skill.

A great game we have discovered is ‘Numbers to Words Fruit Shoot’ on  the topmarks website. Here is the link to have a go at home.

https://www.sheppardsoftware.com/math/early-math/number-words-fruit-splat-game/

We are getting really good at describing how we see dot patterns and now we can use the = and + symbols when recording a number story.

Bonfire Night

Seeing this Thursday is Bonfire night we have been learning a little bit about the history behind why we celebrate bonfire Night on the 5th of November. We discussed how Guy Fawkes had a plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Mrs Walker set up a fun activity where we could practise our printing and colour mixing skills. We made the most beautiful fireworks pictures and even added a little sparkle too.

We hope everyone has a happy and safe Bonfire night and a lovely weekend when it comes.

Mrs Stevenson and Primary 1B

 

 

Primary 1B Learning Highlights

Literacy

This week in Primary 1 we have been working hard to improve our literacy skills. We have started reading for ourselves! To start with our books feature only pictures, but this means we can use the pictures to tell the story in our own words. This is one of the targets we are focusing on in class. Whilst exploring our new books we have been discussing the setting, this means where the story takes place. We drew pictures to describe this as well as having ago at writing a simple sentence.  We have also been introduced to all the characters we will be reading about. Their names are Kipper, Biff, Chip, Mum, Dad and of course Floppy. You will hear lots and lots about them over the coming months.

We have been learning the new sound t and i, we can identify the sound and we are becoming experts at writing them too. Our new words this week were ‘and’ and ‘it’.

In writing, we have been learning how to give our opinion. This week we wrote about what we felt about Halloween. Here are some of the sentences we wrote.

Saatvik – I think Halloween is great.

Cooper – I think Halloween is exciting.

Alex – I think Halloween is good.

Sophie – I think Halloween is scary.

We have been working really hard to write tricky words on our own and to use the sounds we know to help us with spelling. We have been remembering to use our targets, this week we had a focus on using a capital letter, a full stop and putting finger spaces in between the words. Here are some examples of our work.

Numeracy

As we continue to focus on teen numbers we found a great game to play that not only helps us to recognise teen numbers but helps us to develop that skill of subitising         (seeing the amount without counting) on a ten frame. Here are some pictures of us in action.

Halloween

It is a shame that we can’t properly celebrate Halloween this year. In Primary One we have decided to make our classroom a bit spookier by creating our own bright orange pumpkins. After reading the story ‘Pick a Pumpkin’ by Patrica Toth we discussed all the different Halloween traditions that our families follow. Carving pumpkins was the most common one! Here are our spooky Halloween pumpkins.

Happy Halloween everyone! We hope you have a suitably spooktastic evening even if it is a little bit different this year.

Mrs Stevenson and Primary 1B

Primary 1B Learning Highlights

It has been a very short and quick week in Primary 1B but we have still managed to squeeze in lots of fun learning, here are some of our highlights.

Literacy

On Wednesday we were all excited to be back in school, seeing our friends and chatting about our holidays. We shared with each other all the fun things we got up over the October break and we drew pictures to go alongside our reports. We are getting very confident with using the sounds we know to help us in our writing.

We have also been learning all about sound ‘n’. It is a long stretchy sound, which we use the tip of our tongue on the roof of our mouth to help make the sound. We have been making the shape of the sound using play-dough and practising writing it in our jotters. It is very easy to get n confused with m so we need to think about what our mouth is doing to make the sound.

Health and Well Being

This week we have been talking about emotions. We watched some clips from the movie ‘Inside Out’ and we had to guess which emotion was being portrayed by the character. Below is the link if you want to have another go at home. We had to share why we chose which emotion and then we shared times when we felt that emotion. We found that we had lots of things in common, one being we are mostly all scared of spiders and we feel sad when somebody gets hurt.

We had a go at using our drama and miming skills by playing emotions charades. It was great fun and we had some very dramatic emotions portrayed. One of our favourite characters was ‘Anger’. We practised our listening skills and pencil control by following instructions to draw the character Anger. We were pretty proud of our efforts and they looked fantastic in the end – we will add some pictures to the blog next week when they are completely finished.

Numeracy

We have been continuing to develop our knowledge of numbers up to 20. We are currently learning about teen numbers and today our magic number was 11. We have been investigating all the different ways to make and display 11. We have been counting forwards and backwards from different starting points and finishing at 11 and we have been making collections of 11 and practising our counting skills.

We hope you enjoyed reading about our week.

Happy Weekend everyone.

Mrs Stevenson and Primary 1B

Primary 1B Learning Highlights

Health and Well Being

This week in health and well being we have been talking about our worries. This can be an especially worrying time for some children so it was a nice opportunity to speak openly about anything which has been worrying us. Together, we listened to the story of Silly Billy by Anthony Browne.

Billy had lots of different worries, some of which seemed a little ‘silly’ like being worried about shoes and rain. We discuss how no worry is really silly and how it is important to share our worries with our friends or an adult we trust. After sharing some of our worries, we fed our worries to the worry monster by drawing a picture of them in his tummy.

We have introduced ‘bubble time’ in our class, if we feel worried or would like to talk to a grown up we can request bubble time in the afternoon to simply have a chat and chase that worry away.

Literacy

In literacy this week we have been learning the new sound ‘a’. We now know that this is a vowel, a black tunnel sound, where we have to open our mouths really wide to form the sound. Alongside this sound we have been learning about Inky’s Vowel house. Below is a picture of the vowel house. There is a story to go with each picture. We are very good at remembering the actions and the sounds which go with the story.

Attached below is a copy of the story behind each sound/picture in the vowel house.

4 VH story only for parents

To help us remember the shape of the letter we made some ‘ant a’s’ for our classroom display.

New word focus –

Last week we learned all about three new words, I , the and a. This week we have introduced the word ‘am’. We are able to write and recognise this word. We had a word hunt in our classroom and had to find and sort all the words we know so far into hoops. We then competed against each other in ‘word splat’. It was great fun.  We even used the new word in our writing task this week, check out our fantastic sentences.

 

Numeracy

This week we have been ordering numbers to 20. Every morning we can choose a number card and as a class we order the numbers all the way up to 20. We are now getting very quick and confident when recognising teen numbers. Mrs Stevenson is very sneaky sometimes and is our class number thief. We need to figure out which number she has stolen! It is lots of fun….

We have also been learning about the magic number 10! How to write it, how to make collections of ten and how to make ten in all sorts of different ways.

We have been continuing our work on subitising by practising this game with our friends.

We are definitely ready for our October holidays. It has been such a busy term and now it is time for a well earned rest. We will welcome all the children back to school on Wednesday 21st of October. Have a lovely break.

Mrs Stevenson and Primary 1B

Primary 1B Learning Highlights

Health and Well Being

This week in health and well being we have been talking about the word ‘Achieving‘, what is means and how it can make us feel. We explored some pictures of different people achieving something, someone had just climbed a mountain and another person was working hard on completing a writing task. We had a discussion about all the things we would like to achieve during our time in Primary One. Here are some of the things we discussed.

Arianna – I would like to be able to write a story by myself.

Saatvik – I would like to be able to read all the books in our class library.

Finlay – I would like to be able to work with very big numbers.

Mikah – I would like to be able to learn how to write all of the letters in the alphabet.

We discussed how achieving these different things would make us feel. We were able to use words such as, happy, proud, excited and someone even said they would feel crazy!! We drew pictures and shared with Mrs Stevenson our ideas. Here are some photographs of our work.

 

Rhyme Time!

This week as a focus during our busy start activities we have been focusing on identifying rhyming words. We now know that rhyming words have the same or nearly the same sound at the end of the word, like cat, bat and mat…they all end in ‘at’. We have had lots of practise matching rhyming pictures and listening to lots of rhyming stories. We even have a special game to play on the smart board, here is the link to have a go at home if you like.

Here are some photographs of the different types of activities we have been working on this week to help us develop this skill.

   

We have enjoyed reading this book and searching for the rhyming words.

 

 

This week’s school value – Challenged

This week’s school value focus has been on the word ‘Challenged‘. We have discussed what this word means to us in Primary One and have made a pact with each other to keep challenging ourselves when we are working on a task. We decided to always ask ourselves the question ‘what I can do better?’ and ‘How can I improve my work’. We have been reminding each other and giving each other tips to challenge ourselves to always be looking for ways to improve.

Our Autumn focus continues…..

We have been reading lots of Autumn inspired stories during our literacy time and building up our Autumn vocabulary. One of the stories we explored was ‘The Very Helpful Hedgehog’ by Rosie Wellesley.

After this story we made our own salt dough hedgehogs. We were able to follow a recipe to make the salt dough using the required ingredients. We mixed salt, water and flour together and then kneaded the dough into the shape of a hedgehog. We were able to use lots of fantastic describing words, such as thick, lumpy and runny. Someone even said that the dough looked like porridge and cookie dough. We  then added spikes using spaghetti to make the spines. Check out the end results below.

Subitising in Number Time

This week we have started to introduce number talks into our numeracy hour. We begin each number lesson with a number talk. This is a short session where we explore how to develop our number sense. This week we have been investigating using a five frame and discussing how we see the dots. Here is an example below.

As a class we explore what number we can see (3)and how we see it. Some children explained this as follows –

Kaleb – I counted one, two  and three and I knew it was three.

Jake  – I saw two and then another one so it was three.

Kellan – We are missing two dots from the frame so that is three.

As we become more confident we will be able to work with bigger amounts of numbers and move onto using a ten frame and even exploring dot patterns.

We are constantly learning that numbers can be represented in all manner of ways. We have been playing number match bingo this week, where we roll the dice and if we have the number on our bingo board we cover it up.  Here is an example of the number board we use. We have become much faster and more confident when recognising which number is being represented.

We hope that you all have a lovely weekend and we will be sharing our learning highlights again next week on the blog.

Mrs Stevenson and Primary 1B

 

 

Primary 1B Learning Highlights

This week in Primary 1B we have been focusing on the fact that it is now officially Autumn, our favourite season. We have discussed all the different and exciting events which happen during Autumn such as, Halloween and Bonfire Night. These are the things we are most excited about……

Finlay – seeing all the branches on the trees.

Arianna – maybe seeing some snow!

Saatvik – Seeing the colourful leaves.

Leighton – seeing the branches on the trees as the leaves fall.

Alfie – carving a pumpkin at Halloween.

As part of our learning we read the story of Leaf Man.

This is a beautifully illustrated story book about the adventures of a ‘Leaf Man’ and where the wind takes him. We had great fun identifying all the different animals in the story and were amazed at how they were all made out of different types of leaves. Once we had finished the story we had a go at creating our own Leaf Man, using some of the leaves we had collected on our Autumn walk.  Here are some of our creations.

We had lots of left over leaves so we practised our fine motor scissor skills by cutting the leaves up and gluing them onto a leaf template to create a colourful Autumn leaf collage.

As one of our writing tasks we have been drawing, describing and labelling Autumn trees. We discussed all the possible details which we could include, such as, Autumn animals which live in trees! We were able to share some amazing ideas. We also all had a go at writing the title on our work and some of us even tried to add some of our own labels onto our pictures. Check out some of our fabulous efforts.

We have also been busy this week working on learning all about our new sound ‘p’. This is soft, short and bouncy sound made with our lips, it is much quieter than the red lip sound ‘m’ that is why it is pink. We have been fantastic at recognising words which begin with the p sound and practising how to form this letter correctly. We made some Popcorn p’s to help us remember the shape of the letter.

It’s been a busy but fun week yet again. We have worked our socks off this week and we are looking forward to next week already! Have an amazing weekend everybody.

Mrs Stevenson and Primary 1B

Primary 1B Learning Highlights

It’s been another busy week in Primary 1B.

This week we have had a focus on the mathematical concept of ‘pattern’. We have been exploring patterns in our environment and noticed that if we look carefully patterns are everywhere! In particular, we have explored some simple repeating patterns, using colours and shape. Here are some of the activities we have been completing in class to help further our learning.

               

We have been practising simple repeating patterns and after reading the story of the Hungry Caterpillar we decided to make our own pattern caterpillars.

               

We have enjoyed using the game Complete the Pattern on the Smart Board.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/ordering-and-sequencing/shape-patterns. This is the link to the game in case you want to have a practise at home

As we quickly approach the new season of Autumn, a lot of our learning opportunities have came from the children bringing in objects of interest, more specifically leaves! We love it when something sparks our interest and have had lots of opportunities to explore how the seasons change and what we notice. We have been investigating our 5 senses and what they are. We are now able to name each of the senses and in class we have been relating them to Autumn. We drew pictures and labelled them with things we can…. feel, taste, see, smell and hear during the Autumn months of September, October and November.

   

 

We have also been learning all about the sound ssssssss.

We created a ‘Spotty Snake’ to help us remember the shape of the letter. We had lots of fun with this activity and the end results look fabulous. We practised writing the sound, S is blue letter sound because we use the tips of our tongue to make the sound. It is a long, soft and stretchy sound. We have been practising lots of different ways of forming the letter correctly. It is a tricky one to get around the right way!

                         

 

 

 

 

What a busy and quick week it has been. Just a reminder that Monday and Tuesday next week will be a (well deserved) holiday for everyone and we will welcome the children back to school on Wednesday.

I have been hearing lots of stories how the boys and girls have already started to get to work on their spelling challenge. This is fantastic to hear and I look forward to hearing all about the inventive methods everyone has developed to help them learn the new words! I may even ‘borrow’ some ideas to use in class!

Have a lovely long weekend,

Mrs Stevenson and Primary 1B

Primary 1B Learning Highlights

This week we have been getting to grips with using Numicon to help us when learning all about number. Each Numicon represents a number from one to ten and can give us a picture of what a number can look like and can help us begin to see relationships between numbers, each piece has one more hole than the previous. Below are some examples to show you what they look like!

We have been exploring the shape of the Numicon and matching the number of holes in the Numicon to the number it represents. We have found that there are lots of different ways we can use Numicon in our class to help us with our learning. Below are some pictures which explain how this fantastic resource has been helping us this week to make sense of all things number……

Matching the Numicon to the numeral. Mrs Stevenson wrote numbers on our desks and we had to match the Numicon to the numeral.

 

Numicon shape pictures. We need to manipulate the Numicon to make it fit the picture to complete the shape.

Numicon can help us to develop our fine motor skills too. Whilst we are getting reading to be fantastic writers in primary One we have been working hard on developing our finger muscles so they are ready to write. We had to use the tweezers to place the pom poms into the holes in the Numicon. This was tricky but it also helped us see the number of holes and help us with counting too.

We also made our own Numicon city. We had to match the Numicon to the shape of the sky scraper, we were able to count up to some pretty big numbers!

 

Our school value this week has been centred around RESPECT. On Monday we had a discussion about what respect means to us, what it looks like and what it sounds like. We have been earning raffle tickets and pegs all week for always showing respect to others. This means, being a good listener, following instructions, taking turns and of course always using kind actions.

Being and feeling Safe and happy.

In our health and well being focus this week we have discussed where we feel safe, happy and belong. Here are some of our thoughts.

Reuben – “I feel safe and happy when I am in school with all my friends and at home with my family.”

Kaleb – “I feel safe and happy when I am with my dad watching the rugby.”

Mikah -” I feel safe and happy when I am at home watching the television.”

Saatvik -” I feel safe and happy when I am in my garden with my flowers. ”

We drew some pictures to illustrate our ideas and shared what our pictures meant with Mrs Stevenson. We are becoming very confident at discussing our learning and adding lots of important details into our pictures.  Here are some pictures of our work.

           

         

We hope you enjoyed just a little snapshot of some of our learning from this week.

Mrs Stevenson and Primary1B

 

 

 

A mmmmmmmmmarvellous week in Primary 1B

What an extremely busy and quick week it has been down in Primary 1B. There have been lots of wonderful and exciting learning experiences happening in our classroom and we would like to share some of our highlights with you.

We have been continuing to focus on getting to grips with our school values, this week’s focus has been on the value Nurture. We have been talking about how we can nurture each other with kindness and encourage each other.

In phonics this week we have been learning about the mmmmmmmmm sound – that’s right the letter Mm. We know that it is a red sound because we make it using our lips. We also know that it is a looooooooong stretchy sound. We have been excellent at listening out for the sound at the beginning of words and can list lots and lots of different words beginning with m.

Here are some pictures of the different types of activities we do in class to help us learn.

     

In numeracy we have been learning about the number 3 and 4. We have learned some number rhymes to help us remember how to form the letter correctly. Below is the one to help us remember number 4! We have been investigating all the different ways of making and representing these numbers.

One of the games we have really been enjoying is using the online dice roll, where we can roll the dice and shout out the number which is shows! This is great for getting us used to identifying regular dot patterns, we’re such experts now that we don’t even need to count the dots!! Here is the link in case anyone wants to have a go at home.

https://www.curriculumbits.com/prodimages/details/maths/mat0005.html

We have also been working very hard on improving our fine motor skills through adding lots of important little details into our drawings. One of the activities we have enjoyed this week is making play doh faces to help us remember all the different facial features we all have. Here are some pictures of our creations.

 

We hope you have enjoyed our little snapshot of our week.

Mrs Stevenson and Primary 1B.

 

 

 

 

 

Primary 1B Weekly Update

It has been another busy and fun week in Primary 1B, we have lots of exciting learning to share with you all.

We have been reading lots of different stories this week. One of our favourites has been, ‘While We Can’t Hug’ by Eoin McLaughlin.

We have been trying really hard to think of all the different ways we can show we care instead of giving someone a hug and this book has really helped us to come up with new and imaginative ways to say hello or else help a friend out if they are feeling a bit glum. One of our school values which we have been learning about is SAFE. Of course, we know just now that to keep each other safe we have to find different ways instead of touching each other to show we care. Little Hedgehog and Tortoise are taught by Owl that blowing a kiss, making a silly face or doing a silly dance are all ways we can communicate without touching. We have been trying very hard to remember this down in Primary 1B and practise them everyday.  Miss Taylor even taught us about a ‘Jiggie Hug’ on Wednesday and we have been giving Jiggie hugs to our friends and teachers.

Another amazing story we shared was ‘The Invisible String’ by Patrice Karst.

This has been the most valuable book for helping us to feel Nurtured and Included, another two of our school values. It has helped us to feel connected to our loved ones  even when we are not with them. We loved the message of the story so much that we made our own invisible string necklaces alongside a little poem to send home to our grown ups. Hopefully you will have all received a necklace and can wear it with love.

    

We had lots of fun working on our fine motor skills, threading the pasta to make the necklace and then painting it with nice  and bright colours. We hope you love them.

During our story time we have been really good at remembering our amazing listening skills.  Luckily we have a helper to remind us…….

That’s right, it’s Mr Potato Head. He reminds us to have  –

  • Listening ears
  • Looking Eyes
  • Quiet lips, hands and feet

We have also been working on sharing our likes and dislikes about each story we read, alongside talking about the author, illustrator and the blurb. We are getting really good at sharing our opinions and listening to others.

We have been working hard on recognising and writing new numbers and have become something of Number Experts! This week we have learned all about 2 and 3. When we learn about number we learn in lots of different ways. Here are some pictures to show you how we learn.

Next week we are going to be starting to learn all about sounds and letters, as well as learning about more numbers and becoming name writing experts!

We hope you have enjoyed reading our blog this week.

A little reminder – Gym will be held on Mondays and Fridays. Outdoor learning will be on Thursday afternoon with Mrs Dobbie.  Please ensure your child has appropriate clothing for going outside.

Thank you!

 

 

Report a Glow concern
Cookie policy  Privacy policy