Hello from P3G,

Here’s a little update about some of the learning that has been taking place and some of the new areas we will be working on this term.

 

Enterprise: Make it Grow

As part of our financial education, the classes have been challenged to design an enterprise project under the heading ‘Make it Grow.’ The challenge is to be able to make our starter loan of £10 grow into a profit. This week, P3G have been busy generating ideas for our project and will be carrying out further research regarding pricing, resourcing and purchasing items. We need to be able to get our project off the ground using this initial £10 only and are required to keep an ongoing financial record of our costings. What a great way to put all our learning about money into good use!!! We will keep you updated on the progress of our enterprise project.

 

Mathematics: Money

We have been continuing to learn about money and have been familiarising ourselves with coins from 1p – £2. We have been working with a range of coins and developing our knowledge of the symbols £ and p. We have also been investigating different combinations of coins and money equivalences, e.g. 2x 50p coins is equal to £1.

We are continuing to look at addition and subtraction strategies to help with calculating total costs and correct change required, from a given amount, in problem solving.

Remember, you can support your child by exploring coins at home together, e.g. look at their values, sort out different ways of making the same amounts, ordering from lowest to largest values etc.

Here are links for games that will help support you and your child at home:

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/money/toy-shop-money

Instructions:

• Select ‘Mixed Coins’
• Then select from the column that is headed ‘Exact Money’
• Start by selecting the ‘Up to 20p’ box. If your child appears confident with this, then they can challenge themselves and move onto the next box ‘Up to £1’

http://resources.hwb.wales.gov.uk/VTC/working_with_coins/eng/Introduction/MainSessionPart1.htm

Instructions:

This link should take you straight to the correct game and level. Follow the instructions on the screen and work through the 20 examples together, helping your child to combine totals where necessary.

 

Mathematics Future Focus: Time

In the next couple of weeks, we will be learning about time and will have opportunities to make and read hours (o’clock) and half hours on a variety of clock faces. Although we will start by looking at analogue clock faces, we have noticed that some of the boys and girls are wearing lovely watches, lots of which are digital, so we will take the opportunity to look at this too!

 

Numeracy: Additional Support Parents Can Offer

Remember you can help and support your child‘s understanding of addition and subtraction processes by encouraging them to practice counting forwards and backwards from any given number, e.g. can you count backwards from 43, until I tell you to stop. It would also be helpful to work on ‘number before’ and ‘number after’ a given number, e.g. what is the number that comes before before 50.

 

Head Teacher Awards: For writing an excellent newspaper report, with great use of the success criteria.

Congratulations to:

Summer Brookes

Kirsty Jankowski

Hadia Javed

Tia Johnstone

Literacy: Writing

This term we will be using our imagination for creative writing and will be learning about writing beginnings, middle and endings. We will be using our knowledge of VCOP (Vocabulary, Connectives, Openers and Punctuation) to up-level and improve our writing. We have already started to look at this and have been using story strings to create interesting stories. Look out for our Big Talk homework which will help support us with this writing focus.

 

Look out for our future updates,

P3G : )

Big Writing – Big Talk Homework 

Hi Parents/ Carers,

This week for Big Writing we will be looking at different examples of newspaper articles and will be writing our own reports in class.  Before we write our own, we will need to know more about this style of writing and identify the key features of newspaper reports.  The Big Writing approach suggests sending home ‘Big Talk’ homework, the night before, to prepare (mentally) for what they will be writing about the next day. The advice is to find a quiet time to have a discussion about the writing topic/ style etc with your child as this will then give them a starting point of familiarity/ personal experience for their writing.

We have sent home a slip with The Big Talk focus, but have given pupils a couple of nights to try and fit this in before they have their writing sessions in school.

This week’s talk homework task is to talk to an adult/ older sibling about the different features of the newspaper reports (You may need to borrow a newspaper from a family member or friend.)  Ask your child the following types of questions:

• Do you notice anything different from the way stories are presented?
• Look at newspapers and talk about how they differ from other types of writing such as, postcards, letters, poems etc?
• How are the paragraphs organised, is the layout of a newspaper report the same as a page in a fictional book?
• Have you noticed anything interesting about the type of language that is being used throughout the report?

We look forward to hearing the children’s contributions and key findings about newspaper report writing and will use their knowledge to help create our own checklists and success criteria for the writing that will take place in school.

Mrs Bowman, Mrs Mackie and Mrs Waugh (whoops nearly wrote Buchanan!)

This session we will be encouraging all children to stay as healthy as possible and to make the right healthy choices.  We will be focusing on encouraging and promoting healthy eating across the school.  Here is how you can help your child:

*eat breakfast – remember we have a Breakfast Club Monday to Friday from 8.15am.  A Murrayfield breakfast includes toast with flora spread and/or jam, choice of low sugar cereal with milk, water or low sugar apple or orange fruit juice

*choose healthier snacks – fruit, low salt or sugar snacks, try to keep sweets and crisps to a minimum as these snacks tend to be low in nutrients and high calories

*drink water – we encourage all pupils to drink water during class time and have (non-fizzy) juice for lunch or morning break.

*grow your own – all classes have access to our school garden where a range of vegetables and fruits are grown.  Maybe you could try to grow some of your own in pots at home

*eat together – we encourage all pupils to socialise with their peers during their lunch.  Sitting eating a meal together is a great way of finding out about your child’s day

Please let us know if you have any tips on how to encourage children to make healthier food choices.  Perhaps you have a great packed lunch idea or healthy snack suggestions.  We would love to hear about your ideas.