Tag: literacy

Primary 2/1 Sharing the Learning

We have had yet another busy week in Primary 2/1 with one of our main highlights being our sharing the learning afternoon on Tuesday.

Prior to Tuesday we had a surprise in the story corner on Monday…. 3 bowls of porridge and 3 little bears! We think the dragon was telling us that he wanted us to read the fairytale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, which we did! We then tried our hand at making our own story map, this is where you retell the story but instead of using words you draw pictures. They were really successful and helped us improve our retelling and sequencing skills at the same time.

Elkie really liked this activity because it helped her to improve her drawings.

  

 

On Tuesday afternoon we welcomed parents and carers into our classroom to share some of the fantastic learning which has been taking place. We had a ‘Goldilocks’ theme for the afternoon with a main focus on literacy based activities. These are some of the activities we had in place.

Word building using the magnetic boards and CVC cards, a Goldilocks story sequencing, Goldilocks free writing with story  mats, Story telling with our puppet theatre and props, word splat and the chance to share a fairytale with your adult using our  word pointers to find some tricky words.

Euan enjoyed using the puppets to put on a show for his mum and gran, he even acted out the story of Jack and the Beanstalk too.

Nathan enjoyed making a bear face with his mum and sharing with her.

Andrew loved adding all the details onto his bears face.

Ashley enjoyed making the porridge bowls using patterns with her mum and gran.

It was a successful afternoon and we loved showing everyone around our classroom and having the opportunity to talk about our learning and even help create our Goldilocks display. A huge big thank you to everyone who attended, we very much value your support and encouragement and thoroughly enjoyed having you all in our class.

 

Here is our finished Goldilocks display…. we think it is super and love the fact that our parents and carers helped us create it.

On Wednesday we had a go at writing letters to the three bears from Goldilocks to say sorry for all of the chaos she caused in their cottage.  We are getting very good at reflecting on our learning at the moment. We are using green for growth (for something we could improve on) and tickled pink (for something we did well). This is helping us to identify our own next steps in our learning.

In numeracy, we are still focusing on Subtraction and applying the tools to help us answer calculations. This week saw us focus on word problems, where Mrs Stevenson would read out a problem and our task was to write down the calculation to find the solution.  We are getting very confident at this and have enjoyed leading our learning by making up our own word problems for our friends to solve.

In PE we are still working on developing our football skills. This week we played body ball where we took our ball for a walk by passing it carefully from one foot to the other and when a body part was called our we had to place that part on the ball, it was tricky getting into some of the positions especially for ‘back’ ball! We have been improving our ability to dribble and pass the ball with control and co-ordination, so this week we put this to the test with a simple game. We got into groups of 3 and made a triangle shape and passed the ball to our partners. We had to pay attention and make sure we could stop the ball with our feet only..no hands allowed and then pass the ball to our other partner with control and accuracy.

An exciting week in Fairyland for Primary 1/2

It has been an exciting week in Primary 1/2 as we continue to build Fairyland in our classroom and have had exciting deliveries from our friendly dragon.

On Monday we had an unexpected delivery after lunch. A bag of compost, some seeds and a selection of plant pots!! We knew straight away that we needed to plant the seeds to grow our own mini beanstalks in the classroom. We learned all about how to care for our seeds to nurture them into proper beanstalks. We learned that all plants need water, sunlight, soil and the right temperature to grow. We have been very diligent when watering our plants every day and have been filling in a special bean diary to observe and record any growth.

          

Jordon was happy  to add the castles at the top of our beanstalks.

Nathaniel felt excited to plant his very own beanstalk.

The dragon also delivered a little pot of beans with all of our sounds written on them. We think he wants to help us get better at spelling, we have been having lots of fun spelling fairyland words with the beans.

Belle was practising her common words with the beans.

Euan had a go at writing speedy Gonzalez because he was watching it at home.

We were so excited to come into class and see that Jack’s beanstalk had appeared in our home corner. We worked so hard on creating different leaves and are very proud of how fantastic and realistic it looks. We think the dragon will be very happy with it and Elkie thinks it looks good.

On Tuesday we had yet another exciting delivery, Castle booklets and a trail of green glitter EVERYWHERE! He’s one messy dragon!! We couldn’t wait to get started writing in them. Mrs Stevenson even let us use the fancy pens.

  

On Wednesday we continued to practise our writing skills with a special focus on ‘listening carefully to the sounds in each word to help us spell independently. We thought about what magical things we would like to happen to us if we got our hands on some magic beans.

Georgia thought she would get a mansion for her family.

Ashley wanted her magic to make everyone in our school happy.

Erica’s magic beans would turn into an aeroplane to take her to the candy shop!

We decorated castles and wrote our magical ideas onto a special bean. Mrs Stevenson put them on display in the classroom and once again we are so proud of our learning.

It really has been a week of exciting deliveries, on Thursday yet more magic beans appeared. This time they were colourful ones, this got us talking about our favourite flavours of jelly beans! We decided to conduct a survey of our favourite flavours and then display the information on a class bar graph. It was really interesting to see all of our choices on the wall and we were able to answer questions like, what was the most and least popular flavour. Then we had a go at making our own bar graphs! This dragon really is helping us learn so much.

On Thursday we also had the added excitement of World Book Day. We thoroughly enjoyed wearing our comfy pyjamas, bringing our favourite soft toy and of course sharing our most favourite stories throughout the day. We enjoyed our library time with P5/6 and sharing our most favourite stories.

Archie brought in Goodnight Tractor because he likes the pages.

Robyn brought in The Stinky Sprouts and the Station Mouse because she likes them and they are very good.

We are very much looking forward to our Sharing the Learning event next Tuesday   (10th March) 2pm to 3pm and hope you can all make it.

 

 

A Mysterious Visitor…..

It’s been a very exciting week in Primary 1/2! On Monday a very curious and strange thing happened. During our wet lunch time we returned to the Primary One classroom where we found a sparkly glitter trail leading into the story corner! It was such a surprise! At first Mrs Fleming and Mrs Stevenson thought it was us children! Some of us even thought we had a ghost in the class. Tadas thought it was a glitter monster and Ashley thought it might be a robber! Upon further inspection we discovered a very smoky smelling and burnt letter addressed to us. This letter was from a very sad dragon who has nowhere to live,  his home Fairyland has been destroyed because people aren’t reading enough fairytales and believing anymore. It is so sad.  Primary 1 and Primary 1/2 have decided to help this poor dragon out. We are going to help rebuild Fairyland and give the dragon and his friends somewhere to live one again.

We wasted no time in getting straight to work. In the letter, the dragon spoke of Jack not having a beanstalk anymore, so our first job was to read Jack and The Beanstalk.  We had  couple of different versions of the story which we have been reading and listening to over the course of the week, we discovered that there are many differences between each one. We definitely love the ‘Stinky’ Jack one the best. Euan loved that he had to sleep outside in the barn with Daisy the cow!

In Primary 2/1 we are all fantastic artists and very creative, so we decided to make Jack his very own beanstalk in our classroom. We used lots of different materials to create textured leaves to add to the vines. We even used fine black liner to add little beasties. Watch this space as our beanstalk grows over the next week, it is going to be amazing!

    

Reading the fairytale Jack and the Beanstalk got us talking about whether we would climb a beanstalk or not, or what we would trade for some magic beans. I must say we are all very brave in Primary 1/2 as most of us said we would definitely want to climb up!

Belle wanted to see the view and Ashley fancied a golden egg so she would be rich!!  Kayden said he would trade his Xbox for some magic beans to be rich.  Nathaniel said he would trade his toilet!!! for some magic beans because he has two already!

We practised our writing skills and as we are focusing on extending our sentences we used the word ‘because’ in our writing to explain our reasons. We created a lovely display of our work by adding dangling legs and clouds to our pictures. We think Jack would be impressed. We also added some pictures of Daisy the cow to our display. We worked really hard on our listening skills to follow instructions to draw a cow step by step. Jordon thinks our display looks good and is excited to add more to it.

    

Later on in the week our friendly dragon delivered a shiny mail box to outside our classroom, we have had great fun writing letters and drawing pictures to him to help cheer him up.

In Numeracy and Maths this week we have still been working hard on our tools for subtraction. We are getting really good at using a number line to help us jump backwards to take away. The friendly dragon must want to help us with our learning too, as he left us a little maths measuring challenge. We had to find classroom objects longer and shorter than the giants footprint. This was a great activity for estimating and using a variety of non standard units and of course getting us used to using this mathematical language.

   

Other learning highlights this week.

Andrew really enjoyed making a castle in the Den this week, he used pencils and pens and made sure to colour in the lines.

Elkie loved building the leaves for the beanstalk, because she liked painting and even added ladybirds to hers.

Euan loved making the giants legs in our writing task.

Kayden felt really proud of himself this week for writing so many oo words by himself.

Belle really challenged herself when writing the oo sound and joining the two letters together.

We are really excited about what is going to happen in Fairyland next week.

 

Primary 2/1 Weekly Update.

Let’s start off our blog with our learning highlights this week from the children.

Elkie – My highlight was making my Highland cow because  I loved making it.

Sai liked making his fact file about highland cows, his favourite fact was that their hair is so long it goes over their eyes, but it is there to protect them.

Jordon – I liked drawing Nessie because she goes under water.

Nathaniel- I liked learning about the sound x because it was easy to write!

Tadas – I like the daily 5 because it is easy for me!

Robyn – I liked learning all of our sounds, every Monday I look forward to seeing all the new letters for the week.

It’s been another busy week where we have been learning all about the Loch Ness Monster! We watched the Nessie cam but unfortunately didn’t catch a glimpse of her this time, why not have a look for yourselves at home!

Use this link       https://www.lochness.co.uk/livecam/

This led to a very interesting discussion about whether we thought Nessie existed or not….. Most of us are believers! We made our own Nessie to decorate our Learning Journey wall. We had to use our scissors very carefully and we came up with some amazing Nessie designs.

In writing this week we wrote postcards to Nessie, telling her all about ourselves and the things we like to do. We all wrote at least 3 sentences all by ourselves. After reading the story, Hamish the Highland Cow by Natalie Russell, we also designed and wrote our own fact files about Highland cows and created a pastel drawing using a smudging technique to create a ‘hairy’ effect!

   

We are still working on the topic of Time in Maths. This week we have been looking at how we measure time. We talked about seconds, minutes, hours, days and weeks. We discussed how long we thought it would take us to complete certain activities. We had a team work challenge where we had to match up activities with how long we thought they would last. 

Lennon thought this was a good challenge and Erica said it was lots of fun.

We have also been discussing the seasons and which season we like the best!

Euan’s favourite season is Summer because that’s when his birthday falls.

Jordon loves Winter the best because the snow comes out.

Ethan loves Autumn  the best because you can collect all the leaves.

Kayden loves Spring because you can start to play outside.

We designed some posters to show different changes  which take place in each season.

As part of our numeracy we have been examining how to double numbers. We are getting really good at doing this mentally and talking about our answers. One of our focuses this week has been how to use a number line to help us solve addition calculations by counting on. Its really easy when you know how!

Just a little reminder for the children to bring their red homework folders to school every day with their reading books. Many thanks!

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.

 

 

Happy New Year from Primary 2/1.

Happy New Year everybody!

It’s been a quick and busy break but we are all back to school and raring to get learning. We’ve had a hectic first week back in Primary 2/1 and have packed lots of exciting learning into our days.

One of the topics we have been having a focus on, is developing our 4 social Intelligence skills which are, leading, communicating, feeling and collaborating. These are essential skills for everyday life and will provide us with the appropriate skill base for entering the workplace, which is a little while off for us but its good to make a start early!

Primary 2/1 have become something of experts at leading number talks, so much so that we don’t even need Mrs Stevenson to help! We are able to discuss and share with the class how we see the number patterns and can confidently record our calculations using the correct symbols, all whilst talking to the class and writing on the board. We really enjoy taking on the role of the teacher and helping our friends learn. Here are some photos of us in action….

 

We have also started investigating the concept of time in maths this week. We  explored different calendars and found out how many days in total were in each month as well as how many Monday, Tuesdays etc there were. It was tricky at first but we soon got the hang of it. We also discussed why it is helpful to have a calendar and how it can help us remember to important dates and get organised. We decorated our very own calendar to take home, not forgetting to circle the most important date of the year….our birthdays! Just so nobody forgets!!! Here are some examples of our work.

With Burn’s Night fast approaching we have decided to start a mini topic featuring a special visitor to Mrs Fleming’s on Wednesday……Hamish McHaggis. It was all very mysterious indeed. We got a note to tell us that a visitor was hiding somewhere in the class. After a frantic search we found Hamish wrapped up in a tartan scarf. He had brought a number of books with him to help us with our learning. The first book he introduced us to was called the ‘Edinburgh Adventure’. Here we saw lots of famous landmarks in our capital city, like the Edinburgh castle and the Forth Road Bridge. There was also lots of funny Scottish words which Mrs Stevenson couldn’t pronounce, so we helped her out! We are looking forward to learning lots more about our beautiful country with Hamish and his friends.

We had a big think about all the things we already know about Scotland and what we would like to learn about in the next few weeks, we enjoy planning together and having a say in what we would like to learn about.

 

Christmas Countdown in Primary 2/1

We’ve made it to the last week of term and we have been truly embracing the holiday spirit in our classroom. We have still been busy with numeracy and literacy in the mornings (with a Christmassy twist) but in the afternoons we have been working hard to create a number of festive pictures, decorations and take part in various festive activities.

Here are some pictures of what we have been getting up to…..

   

We made Christmas wreaths using paper plates, green paint and a variety of sparkly decorations. The finished wreaths look fantastic and we are very proud of our hard work. They are the perfect addition to a festive front door.

In this activity we used green paint and a fork!!!! to create the effect of the pine needles on a Christmas tree. This was incredibly messy but once they were dry and decorated they looked great.

Here we were using our cutting, gluing and designing skills. We had to cut out triangles to make the shape of Christmas trees and glue them onto a snowy background. Then we used chalk and different types of line to decorate the trees.

We have also been using technology to get festive. We all got the chance to decorate our own virtual Christmas tree and the highlight of the week has definitely been using ‘The Santa Dance’ as a brain break.

As well as all the fun and games we’ve been having, we have also been reminding ourselves of the reasons behind which we celebrate Christmas.  We read different versions of the Christmas story and we are getting very good at retelling it in our own words and remembering all about the different characters involved. We had a go at sequencing writing about the story and drawing pictures to go with our sentences.

Seeing Christmas is the season of goodwill and love we read the most beautiful story called ‘Little Robin Red Vest’ by  Jan Fearnly.

This is a heartwarming story about a kind little robin who gave away all of his lovely cozy vests to other little animals he met on his walk who were cold and in need. It started us talking about giving gifts at Christmas time and showing love and understanding towards others especially those less fortunate than ourselves. We also got to design our own snazzy vests for little Robin. Check out some of our cool designs…..

It was been  busy week so far and we are looking forward to the arrival of Santa soon and having some relaxing time at home with our families and friends over the holiday period. We would like to thank you for your continued support and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

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.

 

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