P3A are very much back in the swing of things this week. In maths we have begun subtraction. At the moment we are practising our mental subtraction through number talks and working hard to become more confident with missing number sums (eg, 18 – ___ = 7 or ___ – 5 = 12) as quite a few of us were finding these tricky – we’re getting good at them now though!
In outer maths we have begun ‘time.’ We are working on telling the time using an analogue clock at the moment. Focusing on half past and quarter past. We also drew the hands on a clock face to represent these times too. We have to remember that the little hand points to the hour and the big hand points to the minutes. We will continue with this topic for the next few weeks.
All classes are changing their corridor wall displays at the moment and P3A chose ‘snow animals’ as their theme. We have been learning about how some animals have adapted to survive in very cold climates, we have been learning about snow leopard, snowshoe hare, sika deer, arctic fox, bobcat and polar bear. In groups we did some reading for information, highlighting interesting facts. We then used these notes to write a fact file. These are very informative and will be great on our display. We have been enjoying watching clips from a program on BBC iplayer called ‘Stunning Survivors: The Secret Skills of Snow Animals’ It has been very interesting and we have learned a lot about how animals survive extremely cold conditions – much better than us humans can!
We also created some artwork for the display. When we were watching Stunning Survivors we saw the Northern Lights and decided to learn more about them. We then created our own interpretations using water colour paint. We also drew line drawings of a snow animal of our choice and glued them onto our Northern Lights backgrounds. They are very effective and we worked hard to look at the animals looking at the lines, shapes and features and trying to recreate them in our drawing.
We read the book The Secret of the Kelpie by Lari Don, an adaptation of a traditional Scottish folk tale. This led us to look at traditional Scottish designs. In the Secret of the Kelpies there are some drawings carved into stone – shapes to represent objects and tell a story. We decorated our own initial with Scottish patterns. We also did a ‘Spot the Silly Word’ reflective reader task on a passage from the book, we read the passage carefully, spotted the silly words and suggested more suitable words to use in their place. This really helps to increase our vocabulary as we work together, discussing possible words to use.
We now have music lessons with Ms Bain on a Thursday. This week we were singing the Scottish song – Katie Bairdie, I haven’t heard it yet but I got very good feedback from Ms Bain on how well P3A sang 🙂
In PE we have begun a block on football. We were improving our dribbling skills this week – trying to keep the ball close to our bodies and in control while we move around quickly.
Another great week, well done P3A. Have a lovely weekend everyone.
