This week we helped P1 children with Education City. We showed them how to log onto a netbook, helped them to find the website and type in their usernames and passwords and then helped them to play some games of their choice. Mrs Kennedy was very impressed with how patient we were and how well we explained what to do. We were also mindful not to do everything for the P1s but to help them to do it for themselves – they will learn much better that way.
In literacy, we worked on our spelling pattern – ‘ed’ ending words and revisited alphabetical order. Some children were becoming more secure with finding words in the dictionary – trying to open the book near the letter they wanted according to where that letter comes in the alphabet. Some children were putting words in alphabetical order – sometimes having to look at the third letter to do this as the first two were the same.
We also began our History trail topic. Last week the children chose the camera as the invention they would like to learn more about. We will look at the history of cameras, a little on how they work and how cameras are used today.
We began by thinking about all the ways cameras feature in our lives today. Together we came up with lots of answers. For example, to communicate – pictures in newspapers, magazines and on the internet, speed cameras, x-rays, to name a few.
Next week we will learn about the very first cameras and begin to think about how they work.
In numeracy and maths, we have been continuing with subtraction. It was quite tricky this week as we were learning mental maths strategies of subtracting near multiples of 10 (9, 11. 29, 31…) from 2-digit numbers. We were subtracting the nearest 10 and then had to remember to add one if the original number ended in a 9 and to take another away if it ended in a 1. This required a lot of resilience as quite a few had to keep trying when their first answers weren’t correct. We kept at it though and we’re getting there now.
On Thursday we looked again at time. Concentrating on quarter to and quarter past. Some children were learning am and pm times. When Mrs Kennedy marked our work, she discovered that a lot of children were struggling to read the correct hour when it was quarter to. To help us we made clocks and practised setting them to ‘quarter to’ times read the times out loud, explaining where the hands were. This seems to have helped and we are much more confident now.
We have also been very busy coming up with ideas and writing the script for our assembly – words will come home next week and I might be asking for some props too!
Have a lovely weekend, wrap up warm.
P3B and Mrs Kennedy
