Tag: health and wellbeing

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

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 2/1 Weekly News

First of all thank you to all the parents and carers who attended last Friday’s Scottish assembly. We very much value all of your support.

Let’s start off our blog this week with a Homework Superstar. This wonderful model of Edinburgh Castle has been created with such attention to detail that all of Primary 2/1 think it deserves pride of place at the start of our blog. There are so many wonderful details which reflect all of our fabulous learning, from stained glass windows, the Scottish Thistle to Mons Meg the famous cannon! I think you will all agree that it is simply fantastic!

We have had an incredibly busy week in Primary 2/1 with all of our continued learning surrounding Scotland and our little friend Hamish. This week we got our thinking caps on and wanted to send Hamish off on another adventure. We all used our imaginations to think of places in the world that Hamish might like to visit.

Robyn wanted Hamish to visit Disneyland.

Ethan wanted him to visit the cinema to see Toy story.

Kayden wanted him to visit Legoland.

Here are some examples of our wonderful work. We are really getting to grips with writing extended sentences using full stops, capital letters and finger spaces and also being able to sound out the trickier words all by ourselves.

We have been working on a few new sounds, h, g and v. The boys and girls are all very eager to lead our learning when we are focusing on a new sound. We take it in turns to stand up beside the smart board and sound out each letter to help each other blend them together to make a word.

In maths we have been learning to tell the time to the hour and half past. Mrs Stevenson set us a challenge to make our own clocks to use. We worked together to position each numeral in the right place and to arrange the minute and hour hand correctly. We then had to change the hands to reflect the time which was called out.

Euan was happy with this activity because he took turns with his team mates, everyone having a go at writing the numbers and changing the time.

We then had a go at playing a whole class Time bingo game, it got quite competitive in the end, but it helped us to read the time with more accuracy and speed!

Robyn loved this game because everyone took turns.

This week we have also been busy applying our artistic skills. Lennon articulately shared the story behind the Thistle becoming Scotland’s national emblem. We had a go at creating our own thistles using chalk and a picture on the smart board as a stimulus. The end result looks fantastic and they are now proudly displayed on our classroom wall.

Elkie said that she loved her thistle once she had made it.

Ashley commented that she loved hers too and felt proud of her work.

Keeping with the same theme, we tried our hand at weaving to create a mini kilt effect. It was super tricky and really required us to use our fine motor skills and concentration. We really enjoyed the challenge and found that it was actually not that difficult. Some of us even created a pattern with the colours.

Sai found this task very very hard, but in the end he did a great job! Well done Sai!

Lastly, we have enjoyed joining in with  Primary 1 this week to take part in some Health and Wellbeing and some emotional literacy. We have been discussing ‘Success’ and what it looks and feels like. We all happily shared our own successes with each other and talked about how we can reflect this in the classroom. One of the main messages that came across was that we should never give up! We watched the story of Robert the Bruce and the spider who kept trying to build her web, it took her 7 attempts! It really made us think about when we find something tricky we should keep going and see it as a challenge! We then moved on to learn the Fischy Music song ‘Encouragement’ we enjoyed singing along and performing the actions. We were able to suggest ways in which we can support or encourage our own friends in the classroom.

 

 

Feeling Festive in Primary 2/1.

It has been a busy week in Primary 2/1 and we are now in full festive mode. We decorated our classroom with Christmas trees, tinsel and fairy lights and we have even been enjoying having a ‘real’ fire crackling on our smart board whilst we work.

      

On Tuesday we had our Christmas jumper day and our Christmas dinner, it was very yummy!

Despite all the festivities we have still been working hard in the classroom. We have been learning all about the sound ‘e’ and are making great progress using the vowels we know to help us build and write new words. We have been writing more silly sentences using tricky words and the sounds we know to blend together and create CVC words.  We also had a go at some functional writing and created some wonderful invitations to our Nativity performance.

In numeracy we are continuing to develop our skills using number bonds for 10, we are enjoying using games on the smart board to help us and practising using concrete materials to help us. We are still practising our mental maths skills every day with our ‘Daily Five’, we are coming up with lots of strategies to help us such as, counting on, using our fingers or using a ten frame.

In Health and Wellbeing we are continuing to develop our focus on Celebrating Differences. This week we have been investigating the qualities which make a good friend. We have been working alongside Primary 1 where we came together to watch the story of ‘The Rainbow Fish’, this helped us to think about what makes a good friend and what doesn’t!

We designed a Friendship Token which displayed a quality which we would like in one of our friends. We had lots of lovely ideas which reflected our class charter and school values and we were able to share our thoughts confidently with the group.

   

This week we have also been having a big think about our learning environment. We spend so much time in our classroom everyday and it is important that we all have a say in how we would like it to look and what resources we have to help us learn.  We talked about all the things we like about our room and all the things we don’t. We then made a list of what we would like changed or included. The main items to come from this discussion was the inclusion of a ‘computer den’ and to improve our class library, making it more colourful. Here are some of our detailed designs. What this space to see what happens to our classroom in the New Year………

   

To round off the week we finally got to perform our Nativity ‘It’s a Baby’ to all of our friends and family. We have been working very hard over the last few weeks to perfect the actions and words to our songs. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and hope all the audience did too! We would like to thank everybody who attended for their valued support.

Dressed up and ready to perform!

We are looking forward to another festive week before we break up for the holidays. Please remember our class party will be held on Thursday afternoon, get those party clothes at the ready!!

 

 

Primary 2/1 Weekly Update.

There has been a big buzz in Primary 2/1 with the start of Advent this week, with lots of chatter about  Elf on the Shelf and Christmas decorating. We are looking forward to adding some festive cheer to our classroom next week.

This week we got all festive in our writing lessons. We wrote about what we would do if we were an ‘Elf’. The children came up with some wonderfully imaginative and naughty ideas.

Erica – I would wrap toilet roll around the toilet.

Nathaniel – I would throw things down the stairs.

Tyller – I would throw books at people.

Kayden – I would sit on top of the tree and watch everybody.

We also had a go at writing sentences all by ourselves. Mrs Stevenson put a picture of a cat in a Christmas stocking on the smartboard and our aim was to come up with a sentence which we could have a go at writing independently. We are getting really confident at using the sounds we know to help us spell words. We were all able to use /ck/ to sound out tricky words like stuck, sock and lick. We have started to use targets in our writing to help us focus on what we need to do be successful and to improve our writing. At the moment we are focusing on remembering to use a full stop, finger spaces and to use our very best handwriting.

In numeracy we have started to think about using mental strategies to help us in our number work. We have started a ‘Daily 5’ challenge on the smartboard, here we have to answer some addition calculations using our knowledge of number families within 10.

In Health and Wellbeing we are still investigating and celebrating differences. We have been enjoying starting our lessons with ‘calm me’ time, where we clear our minds and imagine we are in a calm and safe place to help us relax. Here are some of the examples of our ‘calm me’ places.

Nathaniel – At home in my cozy and warm bed.

Euan – On a beach listening to the waves crashing on the shore.

Elkie – At home stroking my guinea pigs.

We are finding that when we start off our lesson like this we are relaxed and ready to listen and learn. Elkie and Belle both described their feelings afterwards as calm and happy.

Last week we had a discussion about bullying and this week our focus was on what advice we would give someone who was being bullied. The children gave lots of sensible ideas and we finished off our lesson by drawing a detailed picture and describing 2 things we would do if we knew of someone getting bullied.

Lennon said that he would tell his friends to share the problem. Tadas said that he would say ‘Stop’ to the bully. Jordon suggested that he would say that he was going to tell an adult about what was happening. Take a look at some of our wonderful pictures.

 

 

As you can see we are getting more confident with adding important details to our work and talking about what is happening in our pictures.

For the past two weeks, we have been working on a STEM challenge. We have been reading the bible story, Noah’s Ark and discussing our favourite parts and which animals we would save if we had the chance to. Mrs Stevenson set us the challenge of designing our very own Noah’s Ark. We thought carefully about which materials we would use, especially materials which would be waterproof or not. Then we had to think about materials which may float or sink. There definitely was a lot to consider in our designs. Luckily, we had lots of junk modelling materials in our class which we could use to help us construct our arks. We spent one afternoon building our arks and choosing appropriate materials. It was pretty tricky and we had to solve quite a few design problems in the process. One problem which kept cropping up was what type of glue would work best. Thankfully in the end we were ready to make some predictions about whether our ark would float or sink and then test out our arks. Here are some of our predictions…

Here we are ready to test out our arks.

It was great fun testing out our arks, unfortunately not all of them floated. It led us onto a great discussion about what we would do differently next time to ensure our ark floated.

    

We are looking forward to next week and our Nativity performance. We hope that all of our friends and families can come and enjoy some super festive singing with us.

 

A Busy Week in Primary 2/1

It’s been another busy week in Primary 2/1. We have been busy learning our songs and actions for the Christmas Nativity Performance. We are looking forward to sharing it with all our friends and family.

In numeracy this week we have had a big focus on using the symbols = and + in number stories. We have been investigating all the different ways to make 10. We are becoming more confident adding groups together mentally and using strategies such as counters and drawing pictures to help us. We made a ladybird display in our classroom to help us remember all the different ways to add up to ten.

  

The boys and girls had lots of good ideas on how our display should look.

  

Here are some examples of how we like to learn in Primary 2/1.

In Health and Wellbeing this week we are still celebrating differences. Through this we have been looking at the topic of bullying. We shared our ideas on what we thought bullying would look like and how it might make us feel.  We discussed what we could do or who we could talk to if we thought bullying was happening in our school. We had a go a drawing some pictures to illustrate a bullying situation and we were able to talk about our pictures and describe what was happening in each. We are becoming so confident when discussing our work and are trying extra hard to add lots of important details into our drawings.

   

We are looking forward to welcoming friends and families tomorrow for our Book Bug Launch in the hall.

Celebrating Differences

This week in Health and Wellbeing we have had a focus on celebrating our similarities and differences.  We started off by having a discussion about what makes us special. Here are some of examples that the children contributed to the discussion.

Elkie – ‘I love my guinea pigs’.

Euan ‘I have been to Lego land’.

Erica ‘ I love underwater creatures’.

Belle ‘I love coming to school and learning’.

Next we teamed up with Primary 1 to play a game of ‘Switch’. We had to listen to a statement, for example, ‘I have a little brother’ and stand up if it applied to us. We then had to find a friend who was also standing to switch places with. It was lots of fun and made us realise we have lots of similarities with our friends.

We then played a game of spot the difference. We examined 2 pictures and had to explain what was different and what was the same in each. It was harder than it looked!

In the last activity we had to work with a partner and find three similarities between us and draw them onto a picture. Most of us noticed that we were all wearing a similar uniform and some of us even had the same hair colour.

We are looking forward to what next week’s  Health and Wellbeing lesson will involve!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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