All posts by Mrs Smith

Digital Learning Week 2018, First Level, Primary 2, Technologies

Digital Learning Week in P2

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This week, as part of Digital Learning Week, Primary 2 have been developing their digital skills with a little help from the Technical Troopers. The children were keen to use Scratch Jr to explore coding. The three Technical Troopers from P7 and P6/7 provided lots of help and encouragement, and their great enthusiasm was soon inspiring P2 to try new things.

We also used Puppet Pals 2 to explore animation. First, we had to choose a space themed background, then think about different characters and objects that we could include as part of a simple story. Finally, we added sound effects and words to tell the story. The results were fantastic and we were very impressed by our efforts.

As part of our Moon Mission IDL work,  we also designed rockets on Purple Mash.

Maths & Numeracy, Uncategorized

P2 Number

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Primary 2 have been  hard at work recently developing  their understanding of 2 digit numbers, as well as working on addition and subtraction skills.

To support this work we have been exploring and using a resource called Numicon.

We learnt that each coloured shape represents a different number, and first of all, we played some games to help us recognise the value of each shape quickly and confidently.

Then we began to use the shapes to help us investigate different ways to make  11, or 14  or 15 etc.  This helped us to practise and consolidate the number bonds we had been learning.  We also used the Numicon to make larger 2 digit numbers such as 32, 56 or 79.

We were then able to show 10 more than or ten less than, and we could describe clearly what was happening each time.

We have also been very busy on Sumdog, Hit the Button and other games to practise our number skills, and we are keen to take part in the Sumdog competition this week.

Information for Parents, Primary 2, Winter Ready P2

P2 Winter Ready Activities

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Good Morning Primary 2

I hope you are all having lots of fun in the snow with your friends and family.  Here are some activities for you to try today.

Literacy

  • Write a story about your adventures in the snow. Illustrate your story with some pictures, or take some photos.
  • Can you invent a fantastic new machine to clear all the snow away now? What does it look like? How does it work? What special features does it have? Draw a detailed picture and label it neatly and accurately.
  • Read your favourite story. Draw and describe the main character, or even make a puppet of the character using an old sock, or a wooden spoon or a .  .  .
  • Why not visit the World Book Day website and watch the Biggest Book Show On Earth (Illustrator Extravaganza)

http://www.worldbookday.com/biggest-book-show/

World Book Day

  • Or perhaps you would enjoy a Reading Challenge?

Share-a-Story-Reach-for-the-Stars-Reading-Challenge-1 (1)

 

Maths and Numeracy

  • Play a number game such as Guess My Number e.g. my number is an odd number, it is a teen number, it is more than/less than etc.
  • Go on a 2D and 3D shape hunt around the house and see how many of each shape you can find. Can you make some 3D shapes from snow?
  • Play a game like Snakes & Ladders, Dominoes or Ludo
  • Log in to Sumdog and take part in our Primary 2 Snow Day Competition

 

IDL

This week we started to look at life in Roman times.

Use your research skills to find out more about Roman homes. What materials were used to build houses? How were the walls and floors decorated? Were the homes heated?

Next week we will be investigating the clothes they wore and the food they ate. Perhaps you can find something out and be ready to share it with the class.

Uncategorized

P2 Christmas Post

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Over the last few weeks, the children in Primary 2 have enjoyed reading some of  Mairi Hedderwick’s Katie Morag stories.

Katie  Morag is the main character in each book, so we looked really closely at the text, and at the pictures in the books to learn as much as we could about her. We tried to draw a likeness of her, and we were really pleased with the results.

Katie Morag lives on the Isle of Struay, and we were keen to look closely at a map of the island. We explored the island and found some of the special places mentioned in the stories. We also programmed the Bee-bot to follow different routes around the island.

Katie Morag and her family live above the shop and Post Office, and Katie Morag sometimes helps to deliver the mail. We thought that we could set up a Post Office in our classroom and provide a service to all the classes in the infant area by sorting and delivering the Christmas post each day.

We were kept very busy every day. Sometimes we even needed to provide an afternoon delivery as well as a morning one! Final deliveries were made today. A huge Thank You to everyone who used our service and made our learning such fun.

Primary 2, Uncategorized

P2 Christmas Party

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This morning Primary 2 were ready to party!

The children all looked amazing, and had such enthusiasm for taking part in the games and activities, which they planned themselves yesterday. They did this by first of all gathering lots of ideas for party games, then they used tally marks to record votes and eventually they discovered that the favourites were Pass the Parcel, Musical Statues, Christmas Corners and Duck, Duck, Goose (which we changed to Santa, Santa, Elf since it was Christmas!)

We also had time to dance and show off all our wonderful moves. We even had a dancing competition. What terrific dancers we have in P2!

In between all these activities we  stopped to enjoy a short break and to have some food and drink.

The party was a lot of fun and a great way to start our day.

Book Week Scotland 2017, English & Literacy, Primary 2, Uncategorized

Book Week in P2

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Last week the children in Primary 2  were very excited to receive their Read, Write,  Count bags as part of  the Book Week Scotland event.

First, Primary 5 children were welcomed into the classroom to  present the bags to the younger boys and girls. They explored the contents of the bag together, and spent a little time choosing and reading one of the books.

We were then joined by family and friends later in the afternoon, and had lots of fun playing some of the suggested number games using the resources in the bag, as well as completing some of the tasks related to the book ‘Mr Tiger Goes Wild’ by Peter Brown.

At the end of the afternoon we listened to author Kes Gray read his story of Quick Quack Quentin which was the other book in our Read, Write, Count bag. There was lots of fun and laughter as we worked out what our names would sound like if the letter A was missing!

Kes Gray is one of our favourite authors in Primary 2, so please ask us about some of the other books we have read that were also written by him.

Thank you to everyone to came to visit. We hope you enjoyed exploring the Read, Write, Count bags as much as we did.

Maths & Numeracy, Mid Calder 40th Anniversary, Primary 2, Uncategorized

P2 Open Afternoon

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This week, Primary 2 threw open their shop doors, and invited family and friends to come and buy!

As part of our Mid Calder IDL topic  we have been exploring the different shops that exist in Mid Calder. We learnt about the different types of goods and services available. We investigated and discussed matters such as signs and logos, opening and closing times and the range and cost of items for sale.

We then decided to work together in pairs or in small groups to create our own shop especially for the Open Afternoon. We made a plan and then set about making the signs to provide information for our customers and the goods that we wanted to sell. We made some winter themed cards in two different sizes.

When the doors opened, business was brisk, and soon our customers were buying big cards for 20p and small cards for 10p.  We  calculated total costs and worked out how much change to give back to customers.

Finally, the customers helped with a little bit of Market Research by sharing some ideas about what new kind of sweet they might like to see for sale in the future.

Thank you to everyone who came along and joined in with our activities.

First Level, Interdisciplinary Learning, Maths & Numeracy, Primary 2

Money

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This week Primary 2 have been working very hard learning about Money as part of their IDL Topic.

LI We are learning to use different coins to pay an exact amount

SC I can read the cost of an item

I can choose the coins I need to pay for it

First, we looked at all the coins very carefully and practised recognising and sorting them by putting them into different money banks.

Next we looked at the cost of items in the toy shop, and discussed which coins we could use to pay for it. We discovered that there were different ways of making the same amount. Soon, we were trying to make the exact amount using the fewest number of coins.

Perhaps we will be able to use our skills at home too, by using coins to pay for some items next time we go shopping.

Mrs Smith would love to hear how we get on!

 

 

 

English & Literacy, Expressive Arts, Interdisciplinary Learning, Maths & Numeracy, Primary 2, Sciences, Uncategorized

P2 Mid Calder Museum

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At the end of our IDL topic about Dinosaurs, Primary 2 invited P1 and P7 to their Museum.

First, we made posters to inform the classes that the museum was about to open, and we put them up all around the school.

         

Then, we discussed the things we particularly enjoyed about our own visit to the National Museum of Scotland, and we talked about the kind of things we thought would have made our visit even better.                                                         For instance, we really enjoyed handling the dinosaur bones and looking at the huge skeleton models, but we thought that a short film about dinosaurs would have been really interesting too.

Thinking about these points, each Dino Discovery Team planned their own display. They had lots of  amazing ideas! Soon, we had displays that included

  • digging for fossils in the sand
  • sorting dinosaur models into herbivores and carnivores
  • working as a team to build an enormous jigsaw and name the dinosaurs
  • using netbooks to create dinosaur pictures
  • a quiz
  • a short film clip about a stegosaurus

Primary 2 wanted their visitors to have lots of opportunities to pick things up and handle them, to play and to be creative as they learned about dinosaurs. They also created Fact Files about different dinosaurs, and carefully chose non-fiction books to display as well.

Interdisciplinary Learning, Maths & Numeracy, National Maths Week 2017, Primary 2, Uncategorized

P2 Dinosaur Maths

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P2 have been very busy this week learning to gather, display and interpret information related to our IDL context of Dinosaurs.

Success Criteria

  • I can collect information
  • I can display information
  • I can interpret information

We discussed what question we wanted to ask, and how we could best gather the information.

We decided to find out what P2’s  favourite dinosaur is. We  thought that creating a Tally chart would be a good way to gather and display the information.

This is what we found –

We were then able to look at, and comment on the results.

In our Dino Discovery Teams, we were developing our research skills this week too.

        

As part of this, we began to learn about the size of different dinosaurs. We soon discovered that although some dinosaurs were quite small, some were huge! We were particularly interested in the length of them. We noticed that the lengths were given in metres, so we had a look at a metre stick that happened to be in the Maths area, and we used it very successfully to work out that a Stegosaurus would only just fit into our classroom!

We think we’ll have to find more metre sticks now, and go outside next week to measure the lengths of other longer dinosaurs!