Author: Mrs Fleming

We have had the most exciting week in Primary 1! It all began last Friday at assembly. The children who took part in the STEM challenge were all given a certificate and a winner from each class was chosen. Our winner was Elizabeth who created a super model of the Loch Ness Monster. Well done Elizabeth!

Our star award winner for doing extra reading practice at home was Maddison. Well done Maddison! keep up the great work.

On Monday afternoon we came back from lunch to find something very strange on our carpet.

It was a trail of glitter leading into our library. The trail ended beside a cushion and there on the cushion was a scroll!

We excitedly opened the scroll and read it.

The letter was from a dragon. The dragon was very sad and needed our help. He explained that Fairyland was disappearing, he had no castle to protect and all of the other characters had no  where to live because people were not reading fairytales anymore. The dragon had already visited our classroom and thought it would make an excellent fairyland from himself  and his friends to live in. Our challenge is to rebuild and read lots of fairytales. The children are so so excited. The first things they wanted to do was build a castle for the dragon to protect. They did this by drawing castles,  making them from wooden blocks, cubes and lego.

We have written letters to Mrs Stewart asking for her permission to decorate and change our classroom.

We have read Jack and the Beanstalk and have started building a beanstalk(pictures in next weeks blog) We have worked collaboratively to retell the story in the correct order.

More adventures from Primary I next week. Have a lovely weekend.

 

A shorter update than normal because of the holiday weekend.

Literacy

The children are continuing to enjoy writing independently. During smart start they are using a word mat and the tricky word wall to create interesting sentences. Vrishti, Oliver and Louie were very proud of the work they produced.

Over the past weeks we have been working very hard to write sentences that include the who and what they are doing (some extending their work to include where the sentence takes place) This week we tried to add some descriptive phrases to make our writing more interesting. The children came up with some great describing words (they had a picture of a teddy bear) such as missing eye, chewed ear, fluffy fur, big smile and much loved. Some examples below.

 

Numeracy

We are continuing with subtraction in a very hands on way using the children themselves,  leaves and cubes.

We are also now doing 5 mental maths questions a day, the children are really enjoying this challenge.

Have a lovely weekend.

It has been another exciting week in Primary one. Firstly our class won the weekly peg challenge. Pegs can be awarded by any member of staff (except their own teacher) for a number of reasons, it can be for excellent work, displaying our school values or for completing a challenge. It is the first time this year we have won and our reward is an extra playtime if the weather ever improves.

   

This week we welcomed 2 new members into our Deans family. We have 2 beautiful baby guinea pigs! More are due any day from our other pregnant mummy guinea pig.

Health and Wellbeing

This week we have been focusing on our “Dreams and Goals” We are going to create a display explaining what they are and how we hope to achieve them.

   

Some of their goals included learning to swim, being a better friend, developing good listening skills etc. I will keep you updated as we think a little more about how we can achieve these goals.

Literacy

We are continuing to develop our independent writing skills. Most children are now using our tricky word wall and alphabet strips. We tried hard to write instruction about how to build a snowman and to write more detailed sentences describing who, what they were doing and where.

 

Numeracy

This week we have begun looking at subtraction. It has been introduced in a very practical and active way. We shall continue to focus on this skill and I am hopeful that the children will make the connection between addition and subtraction quickly.

I hope you all enjoy the long weekend and I look forward to seeing the children on Wednesday 19th.

This week we have been working hard to become more independent learners. We have focused on strategies that we could use when writing to help us become more independent. The main strategies we have found to be most useful are using a wordbank, an alphabet strip and attempting to sound out words phonetically. The children have done so well and are becoming more confident and willing to “give it a go”. Some examples below.

Hamish McHaggis

We have just about come to the end of our tour of Scotland with Hamish. The children have really enjoyed it. This week we drew pictures of Nessie and tried to think about words to describe her. The children thought she was beautiful, shy, friendly, enormous etc.

We also tried to plot some towns and cities he had visited on a map of Scotland.

Also a big thank you to Elizabeth who along with her mum made this beautiful tartan handbag.

Developing the Young Workforce

Children are becoming more confident when leading learning and are now more readily volunteering.  We are working on the skills required to lead e.g. good listening, fairness, encouraging members of their team etc.

Children have also been trying to work collaboratively with each other and developing turn taking as well as listening and talking skills.

Numeracy Challenge

This week the children worked in small groups. They had to add 2 numbers together and display the answer using dots patterns.

Have a lovely weekend!

 

We have had another great week full of fun and learning. It began last Friday when we were invited to share our PE slot with P5/6. They have been learning gymnastics and were keen to support the primary ones by demonstrating and encouraging them to try out different apparatus. Some pictures below of children moving across the climbing frame using only their upper strength.

Health and Wellbeing

We are continuing to explore the theme of dreams and goals. We joined Primary 1/2 to  discuss how it feels to achieve something that we have been working towards.

Archie felt successful when “I got a star award at assembly”

Amee felt proud  and successful when she “got her dancing trophy” for completing a routine.

This led onto our emotional literacy lesson which focused around 2 songs “We all need encouragement” and “Build Up”. The children had some really good ideas how to encourage each other.

Connor would say “You can do it”

Vrishti would say “You can do it and I can help you”

Sophie would say “keep going and don’t be afraid”

Summer would say “It’s okay don’t worry”

Mark would say “Keep on trying”

They also had some kind build ups (compliments) for each other.

Louie said to Sophie “you know the day of the week”

Layla said to Connor “Your so good at building lego”

Emotional literacy links to our school values of being supportive, inclusive and respecting one another.

We have to follow Hamish McHaggis on his adventures and enjoyed reading about his trip to the Isle of Skye. We have been weaving using 4 different colours to create a pattern.

We have been finding out facts about Highland cows from books and the internet. Some of the children created a short fact file.

We also used chalks (and finger rubbings to create texture) to draw our very own Highland cows.

We have also been using our writing skills to create a postcard to send to Nessie describing ourselves and what we like to do

We are trying to become more independent when writing. Some children are now using a word bank when writing sentences. They are very proud of this achievement and it is a skill which we will be developing.

Numeracy and Maths

In numeracy we have had a number of lead learners. Some children have been teaching others to play the ten frame loop game, others have been leading our number talks. They lead by asking their peers what they see? and how do they see it?

In Maths we have been studying time- days of the week, months of the year, ordering of our school day and o’clock time.

Hope you have enjoyed the post. Have a lovely weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As part of participation Friday we visited our local shops to ask  if they would display our Reduce, Reuse, Recycle posters. We have been exploring the importance of recycling correctly and we know by doing so we can help to save our planet.  We hope people in the community will see the posters and be reminded of this important issue.  Some pictures below.

In an attempt to become more independent learners, we are beginning to self assess our work against curricular targets. We have began with writing. The children are aware of the 3 main targets and these targets are part of our writing success criteria.

 

When children are finished their work they traffic light it against the success criteria (red – still a bit tricky, yellow – getting there and green –  I’ve got it!) and put it in the appropriate tray. During this term we will also focus on different forms of Feedback and how we can use it to improve our work the next time.

We are continuing to enjoy Hamish McHaggis’s adventures as he travels around Scotland. We have been celebrating all things Scottish through art and design- making tartan patterns, using chalk to create thistles and starting to make Nessie puppets.

 

Lead Learners

The children are becoming more confident leading aspects of lessons. The pictures below show a number of children explaining how to partition 8 in a number of different ways.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend. More updates next week.

 

 

 

We have had another extremely busy learning week in Primary One. We have been reading books about Winter and why some animals migrate and others hibernate. The children were amazed to find out how far geese fly and how many months hedgehogs hibernate. We began thinking about the changes we make during Winter and have created a display showing a bare tree covered with hats, gloves and snowflakes.

We have also listed the skilled we used to create our display – cutting, gluing, painting, drawing, scrunching, using primary colours to make a wash and creating a collage to demonstrate different textures.

We have continued to follow Hamish McHaggis on his adventures around Scotland. Hamish went to visit the Loch Ness Monster but unfortunately she was on her holidays. The story caused great excitement and discussion, so next week we will look at evidence from some non-fiction books and try to decided if there is enough evidence to prove that she exists. We also enjoyed learning about Edinburgh Castle and looking at pictures of the Forth Bridges (Hamish and his friends broke down there on their way to the Edinburgh Tattoo). The children used black fine line writer pens to draw an outline of these famous landmarks.

Pupil Voice

It is very important to us that children within our school have an opportunity to express their thoughts and ideas on matters which affect them. We had a discussion about the learning environment and what the children would like to change within our own classroom. The main message was that they wanted to have their own chair so with that in mind, all children created a name label and now have their own space in the classroom.

 

Health and Wellbeing – Dreams and Goals

We have been discussing what success and achievement means to us. The children chose one thing that made them feel proud of themselves. A few examples below.

 

 

Developing the Young Workforce

Following on from last weeks post,we have had a number of children leading the learning. Below is a picture of Oliver leading a math’s activity during smart start.

Collaboration is another essential skill needed to develop the young workforce. We reminded ourselves of the skills we should use at all times- listening, looking at the person who is talking, allowing others to talk, offering an opinion at the appropriate time. We are practicing effective collaboration every day.

Numeracy

This week I have set up number challenge using Numicon. Numicon is a practical way of representing number and the children have enjoyed exploring it and using it in different ways. We have also been using rekenreks which helps to develop number sense. We have been working on double numbers, rekenreks are a really useful tool for teaching this skill.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Firstly Happy New Year to everyone, I hope you all enjoyed the holidays I know the children did, they couldn’t wait to share all their news at check in time. We  thought it would be a good idea to write a thank you letter to Santa, to tell him how much we loved our new toys.

On Wednesday we had a surprise visitor, Hamish McHaggis from Coorie Doon in the Highlands . He brought some amazing books with him. We have started to read all about his Scottish Adventures. The children are loving the new scots words from the books such as “braw”, “blether” and “peely wally”(lots more words to come!)

We created the first page of our Scottish floor book which demonstrated what we already know about Scotland.

Over the next few weeks we will use Hamish’s adventures as a vehicle to learn more about important places in Scotland such as Edinburgh Castle, Loch Ness, Glamis Castle, The Falkirk Wheel and the Islands of Scotland. We will also explore Scottish food, drink, music, wildlife, tartan etc.

In Math’s we will be exploring shape and time. We began today by looking at calendars for 2020. The children plotted their birthdays  and we discussed the purpose of a calendar and how to use it.

 

In a previous post I spoke about the importance of Developing the Young Workforce, it is an initiative which schools across West Lothian are developing. We are focusing on Social Intelligence which can be divided into 4 parts- Communication, Feeling, Collaborating and Leading. The children had some good ideas about how they would like to lead learning in our class-

Sophie would like to lead reading groups. She would do this by encouraging her peers to sound out words and point to each word as they were reading.

Louie feels confident when identifying sounds and would like to lead others by helping them use their sounds to create new words.

Jayden really enjoys art and would like to lead some art lessons by encouraging his peers to add more detail and use real life colours.

Mark would like to lead a number talk. He enjoys solving number problems and can lead and support others by explaining necessary steps that need to be taken to arrive at the  answer.

I shall keep you updated on their progress.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

 

 

 

We have  had a really exciting week filled with Christmas activities. We have made Christmas cards and written letters to Santa. All the children tell me they are on the nice list. A few examples below.

 

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We also read a beautiful story called Little Robin Red Vest.

It is a wonderful heart warming Christmas story about a little Robin who gives away his 7 vests to other animals who need them. On Christmas Eve he has no vests left and is tired and cold. Santa finds him and Mrs Claus makes him a beautiful red vest because he displayed true Christmas spirit. The children made some beautiful vests that they would have given to the robin.

 

Today was our Christmas party. We played games, danced ate food and welcomed Santa.

A great time had by all!

I would like to wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year when it comes and I look forward to welcoming the children back on Tuesday 7th January 2020.

 

It is definitely beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Primary One! We have a new Christmas tree, lights and decorations.

On Tuesday it was Christmas jumper day as well as Christmas lunch. Very, very exciting!

Nativity has been a big focus this week. The children have had a “photo shoot” (individual pictures available to order after Nativity performances) a dress rehearsal  in front of the whole school and our first big performance today. I am very proud of each and everyone of them. It can be a bit daunting being on stage, but I must say they have taken it in their stride. If you have managed to come along I hope you enjoyed it and it put you in the festive mood.

Literacy

Continuing on the nativity theme, we wrote invitations asking friends and family to join us for our very special performances.  A few examples below.

Health and Wellbeing

For the past few weeks we have been looking at how we celebrate differences, bullying (what it is etc.) as well as what to do if you are being bullied. This week we focused on friendship, specifically what makes a good friend. We made a mind map to illustrate our ideas.

Once we had brainstormed we created friendship tokens that we would give when we saw someone being a good friend. We were also able to describe how we feel when someone is kind to us. A few examples below.

Numeracy

We are continuing to work on our number bonds to 10. Our challenge this week was to create a jigsaw displaying number friends to 10. The children worked in small groups of 4/5, they had to communicate with each other effectively (listening and talking at appropriate times) as well as taking on different roles e.g. cutting, sorting, gluing etc. The skills we are beginning to develop are essential for future employability. Developing the Young Workforce is a phase you will become more familiar with as your child progresses through school.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend and the elves are not too naughty! (I’ve been hearing all about them at check-in time).