maths – Page 2 – East Calder Primary School Blog

Primary 2/1

P2/1 have done a great job of settling into the new school year.

We have had great fun exploring our new classroom and getting to know our new classmates.

In maths, we have been sorting. We listened to the story ‘Handa’s Surprise’. Handa had lots of different fruits, so we wondered how we could sort them out. P2 were problem solving together to sort our Lego.
‘We could sort them by colour’, ‘we could sort them by shape’. After that the P2s talked about how we could represent the groups.

We’ve also been learning about our school rules Ready, Respect and Safe. And our school LEARN values.

We were very creative designing our rainbow fish for our class charter. We think it looks great!

Article 28: We have the right to learn.

Learning in P2/1 and P2.

P2 and P2/1 had a super time at The Scottish Owl Centre in Polkemet.
We took part in a ‘Hoots for Dinner’ game, where we learned about what some owls eat and saw an owl fly from perch to perch. One of our highlights was seeing a baby owl. We all thought it looked very fluffy, small and cute!

After lunch we had a go on the Owl slide and had great fun at the park.

We’ve been outside in this lovely weather. We worked in pairs to draw analogue clocks. We’ve been working on o’clock, half past and quarter past times.

Article 28: I have the right to learn
Article 31: I have the right to play

P3a Grid References

This week we started learning about grid references. We have different activities to help us. We used the Maths Wall to place pictures in the grid and then have to write the correct Co-ordinates. We had some work on Seesaw to complete placing and recording Co-ordinates and an Alien game to shoot the Alien crafts by getting the Co-ordinates correct. We played Billy Bug and had a sheet to colour the Co-ordinates to create a picture. Lots of learning!

P3B Data Handling

We have been learning to create and interpret graphs. We started by creating a whole class pictograph, showing different hair colour in our class. We realised that the most common hair colour in our class is blonde. We then answered questions to interpret the graph. We also create a pictograph showing our favourite flavours of crisps.

We have enjoyed interpreting different graphs and we have made some interesting observations, talking about what we notice, and answering and asking questions. We wrote on sticky notes to show our thinking and we shared our ideas with each other.

We displayed our learning on our Maths and Numeracy Wall to help us talk about what we learned. We were very confident talking about our learning using the correct language including data, graph, interpret, title and categories.

We have also learned to gather information and display this in a Tally Chart, and then use the information to create a bar chart. We are excited to take our learning outside next week, where we will be creating a Tally Chart and bar graph in our playground.

Article 13: We have the right to find out things and share what we think with others.

Finlay said this Article was displayed with our Learning Intention because the children were sharing their ideas and learning something new.

P3a – Fractions on a Number Line

Today we came into class to several pieces of tape on the floor. We tried to think why they were there. Mrs Spence helped by placing a 0 at one end and a 1 at the other. As a class we worked out that they were number lines. Mrs Spence then put a blank piece of card right in the middle between the 0 & 1 and asked us what would go there? We then had to write the answer on the card. It was 1/2. We then put another piece of card in the middle between the 0 and 1/2. We worked out this would be 1/4. Then we put another piece between the 1/2 & 1 and worked out it needed to be 3/4. We then extended the line to 2 and had to work out what fractions went where. Then we split into groups and tried to complete the task. Some of us managed to work in 1/2’s from 0 to 5!

A Very Busy Start to the Term in P3B

Welcome back everyone! We have had a very busy few weeks in P3B. We have been working hard to create posters about the “Zones of Regulation.” Each class has a chart and we use our names to show how we are feeling by placing our names in either the green, red, blue or yellow zones. This is a great way for us to talk about our feelings and we shared strategies that can help us regulate our emotions. We were so excited to visit P1 and P2/1 this week to share our learning with the younger children.

We had some great ideas, using our own experiences to help us. Many of us suggested strategies such as telling our trusted adult, taking deep breaths, taking five minutes to have some quiet time, brain breaks, write a note in our Worry Box, go to the Safe Space. The children were confident individuals as they spoke clearly and were eager to show the younger children the pictures on their posters. Well done everyone! Thank you so much to Mrs Murdoch, Ms Rutherford and the children in Primary 2/1 and Primary 1 for allowing us to come to your class.

This term, we are learning to summarise texts in Reading Comprehension and we are learning to write a Narrative text in Writing. We decided to link these two areas by summarising an example of well-known narrative texts. We had a choice between “Hansel and Gretel,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” Rapunzel” and ” “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” We worked in random partners to read the text and write a short summary. We also had to write words down about who, what, why, where and when? This encouraged us to think about the Orientation section of a Narrative text.

In Maths, we have continued to consolidate our learning about Compass Directions. We practised all the directions we learned last term and worked in random partners to use compass directions on a map. One of our favourite days was when we took our learning outside. We try to take part in outdoor learning at least once a week if possible. Everyone was excited to practise compass directions in the playground and we used great vocabulary to demonstrate our learning.

Thank you to this amazing learner for volunteering to be our “human compass.” You did a great job following the directions you were given and you helped remind everyone about North West, South West, North East and South East.

We then played a game called “Captain’s Coming” where we had to listen to the instructions and use our learning about Compas s Directions to help us. As you can see, we all really enjoyed our learning and we had a discussion to remind us the purpose of playing this game. Some of the children said it was helpful to have objects or areas as reference points in the playground to help them remember the directions.

Article 28: We have the right to learn.

Article 29: We have the right to develop our talents and abilities.

Article 13: We have the right to find out things and share what we think with others.

Article 12: We have the right to be heard.

P1a News

We’ve had a really busy week in P1a.

In Maths we have been continuing to learn about time and have been reading o’clock and half past times on digital and analogue clocks.

Our new sound this week was ‘ai’ and we made a list of ‘ai’ words, but soon realised that this sound can be written differently e.g bear, whale etc. We also tried to make words that rhyme and used magnets and flip charts to make rhyming word families.

On Wednesday we had our sharing the learning afternoon. Thank you to all the parents and carers who were able to come along. We had a great time trying out all of the senses activities. We had smelling pots to guess the smell, tasting activities to identify sweet, sour, bitter and salty, shakers to make for the sense of hearing, fun glasses to design for sight and lots of different textures to stick onto a huge hand for the sense of touch. It was agreed afterwards that the tasting one was the best!

Compass Directions

This week we have been learning about using a compass and giving directions. We each made a compass and gave directions to our partner to move them around the class. As it was such a nice day we took our learning outside and directed our partner around the playground. We had to make sure to we used the correct vocabulary.

Happy Red Nose Day! P2/1 had a great time dressing in red for Comic Relief today.

This week we have been learning to use tally marks to record information. We found out about our favourite animals and favourite toys. P2 have been dividing by 2 and P1 have been learning to ‘share equally’.

We read our reading books to our reading buddies in the library and P2 learned five new Word Boost words from The Tobermory Cat by Debi Gliori.

P3a Problem Solving

Today we were set a task to find out how many different towers we could make using one green, one yellow & one red block. We used the cards to get into random partners. We got out the blocks and worked together on the towers. We came up with our success criteria together. We needed to –