Author: Miss Harrison

This week we were given our own Education City logins and passwords. Instead of being P3 Play Leaders this week, we became P3 ICT Leaders! We helped the P1 pupils to access and play games on Education City.

In Numeracy this week we have been learning to subtract near multiples of 10. This can be quite tricky but we have been using our 100 squares to help us. When we have been subtracting 21, we have been subtracting 20 and then subtracting 1 and when we have been subtracting 19, we have been subtracting 20 and then adding 1. This week, some of us have been subtracting a two-digit number from a two-digit number and some of us have been subtracting near multiples of 10 from three-digit numbers.

This week we revised using quarter past and quarter to times and writing times on analogue and digital clocks. We played a game called ‘Wakey, Wakey’ on Education City and we played a time board game. Some of us were also learning to use am and pm times.

In Literacy this week we have been looking at alphabetical order and ordering words by their third letter. We have also been practising using a dictionary to help us to locate and spell words. In writing this week we learned to write a balanced argument! Miss Harrison showed us some headlines about computers being banned in schools! Although most of us were against this statement, we tried to think about another person’s point of view. We looked at arguments for and against with our learning partners and then we used bullet points to list our points on our planning sheets. On Thursday, Miss Harrison showed us how to write a balanced argument and then we used our planning sheet to write a balanced argument for and against banning computers in school. We were able to use an introduction, offer an opinion and use a conclusion.

This week we began our new learning focus, ‘Time Travellers’. We will be learning to compare aspects of people’s daily lives in the past with our own by looking at how computers have changed over time.  We started by working in groups and looking at how we use computers in our everyday lives.  Afterwards, we went back in time to look at the very first computers. Did you know that many of the early computers were the size of a large room or built into walls? To showcase our learning at the end of our ‘Time Travellers’ focus we will be presenting PowerPoints to P3B on how computers have changed over time. When we look at a different time period each week, we will be recording our learning on our PowerPoint presentations.

Thank you for reading our blog post. We hope that you have a lovely weekend.

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

In PE this week we have been continuing to develop our skills and techniques in football. We worked on different movement skills and then we went into teams and played some football matches. On Thursday afternoon we went outside with P3B and we played football together.

In Numeracy this week we have been learning to subtract a single digit from a two-digit number and we have been learning to subtract multiples of 10 from two-digit numbers. Some of us have been learning to subtract near multiples of 10 and some of us have been learning to subtract from three-digit numbers. We have been using our subtraction skills to solve different problem solving tasks at the start of each of our numeracy lessons. We are becoming more confident with explaining our strategies used and how we worked out the solutions.

This week we have also continued to look at time. We revised how to read quarter past and quarter to times and then we looked at writing o’clock, half past, quarter to and quarter past times in different ways. We also compared times and ordered times from earliest to latest. Some of us were learning to calculate time durations using a yearly calendar.

In Literacy this week we were looking at identifying the main features of a text, punctuation and writing a diary entry.

On Monday, we played a game called ‘Princess and the Pea’ on Education City which explored features of a story. Miss Harrison gave us different fairy tales and we have to identify the main characters, the supporting characters, the setting, the problem and the solution.

On Tuesday, we looked at using a variety of punctuation accurately. We rotated round different punctuation activities. We played a punctuation card game, we completed a counter full stop activity where we used counters to put in the missing full stops in different texts, we set up a ‘blether station’ and worked with a partner to create sentences using different punctuation and we used our knowledge of punctuation to correct mistakes on a letter.

On Wednesday afternoon we looked at writing a diary entry. We explored features of diary writing and then we worked in a pair to write a diary entry of a day in the life of Williamina Fleming. We included a date at the top, used time linking words and wrote in the past tense. On Friday some of us shared our diary entries and reports about Williamina Fleming at our Scottish assembly.

In art this week, we decided to create our own nebulas! We looked at the horsehead nebula which was discovered by Williamina Fleming and we also looked at photographs of other nebulas too! We used chalk to create our own space landscapes and then put our own nebulas in the sky. We looked at mixing colours and blending them and we got some great effects!

Thank you for reading our blog post. We hope that you have a lovely weekend.

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

In Numeracy this week we have been continuing to look at subtraction. We learned different strategies to subtract a teens number from 20 and we looked at using different subtraction vocabulary such as ‘minus’ and ‘find the difference’. Some of us were learning how to subtract multiples of 10 and near multiples of 10 from a two-digit number and some of us were linking our addition and subtraction facts and using these to solve problems.

This week we also started to look at time. We revised using o’clock and half past times and then we learned how to use quarter past and quarter to times. We played a game on the computers called ‘Stop the Clock’ where we had to use our knowledge of times to match analogue and digital clocks.

In Literacy this week we have been looking at non-fiction texts. We have been listening to and reading different non-fiction texts and on Monday we learned to find information in non-fiction texts. On Tuesday we used non-fiction texts on the internet to find out information about Williamina Fleming, our Famous Scot focus. We recorded our research notes and then on Wednesday, we used them to write a report about the life of Williamina Fleming. We used interesting titles, subheadings for each section of our reports, an opening paragraph to tell what our reports were about and a closing sentence to round off our reports. Two of us will be sharing our reports at the Scottish assembly next Friday.

This week we were also looking at using different linking words. We completed an activity where we had to select the correct linking word to complete the sentence. Afterwards we chose the correct linking word for different sentences and then we wrote our own sentences using the linking words that we had learned.

On Wednesday we went to our school library. We will be visiting the library every Wednesday just before lunch. We really enjoyed our first visit to our new library and enjoyed reading our new books with our friends.

On French Friday we started to revise our numbers in French. We listened to a French numbers song, played different French numbers games on the Promethean board and matched the words in French to the correct numbers with a partner.

In PE this week, we have been continuing to practise our football skills. We developed our dribbling skills and worked on looking up whilst dribbling by trying to balance cones on our heads. We also practised passing to a partner and then we played a dribbling game against the other teams.

This week we have been continuing to lead play in P1. We really enjoy being play leaders and helping to support free play in both P1 classes. This week we have also been leading block play. Our block play leaders have been taking groups of P1 pupils and leading their learning.

Thank you for reading our blog post. We hope that you have a lovely weekend.

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

Happy New Year and welcome back to our blog!

In Numeracy and Maths, we have started to look at subtraction. We have been revising our subtraction facts to 20 and looking at using different strategies to solve subtraction sums, including missing number problems. Some of us have also been learning how to subtract a single digit from a two-digit number and how to subtract a two-digit number from a two-digit number. This week we also started to learn how to describe, plot and use grid references. We will be creating our own pirate treasure maps and with a partner, guessing where the treasure is hidden using grid references.

This week we finished our book study on ‘Charlotte’s Web’. To show our understanding of the text, we created our own cartoon strips summarising the story. We listened to a summary of ‘Charlotte’s Web’ and then we worked with our learning partners to identify the main points. We tried to order the main points correctly. We used speech bubbles and thought bubbles in our cartoon strips to write what the characters were saying or thinking.

This week we had PE with Mrs Reid on Wednesday and Miss Harrison took us for PE on Thursday afternoon. This term we are learning how to play football. We played different games to develop our dribbling skills and we worked with a partner to develop our passing skills. At the end of our lesson we played a game where we had to use both our dribbling and passing skills to win! This week we also had a fitness session on Tuesday morning where we took part in different activities to improve our levels of fitness. Here are some photos of us in action!

This week we have been working hard on our winter display for the infant corridor. Before the holidays, we asked Miss Harrison if we could learn about polar bears. On Monday we used different materials to create polar bear images. We looked at using spirals and overlapping circles to create our backgrounds and then we explored using different shapes to create our polar bears. On Tuesday we looked at using the internet and non-fiction texts to read for information. We worked with a partner to find facts about polar bears and then we made our own polar bear fact files. Did you know that polar bears have forty-two teeth?

Thank you for reading our blog. We hope that you have a lovely weekend.

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

We have had a busy last week of term in P3A!

In Numeracy and Maths this week we have been learning about pattern in shape. We looked at completing shape patterns by putting in missing parts into the sequence. We also learned how to use 2D shapes such as squares, rectangles and triangles to create tiling patterns. We used a ruler to draw the sides of our 2D shapes and worked really hard with copying and continuing different tiling patterns.

In Literacy this week we have been revising our common words. Since it was the last week of term, Miss Harrison let us pick our favourite active spelling tasks and we completed these activities using our common words. In reading, we have been looking at answering different questions about texts. We read a story called ‘The Mischievous Elf’ and we discussed some of the things that our cheeky elves have been doing at home. We used information from the text to answer true or false questions, explored the meaning of ‘mischievous’ and listed other words with a similar meaning and used descriptions from the text to draw a picture of Ernie the elf. This week we have also been continuing to practise joining our handwriting.

In Art and Design this week, we made Christmas cards. We used different coloured paper strips to make Christmas trees. We had to make sure that we used longer strips for the base of our trees and shorter strips for the top of our trees. We also looked at overlapping our strips and positioning them at different angles. Then we used our glitter glue to add a pot and a star on our trees. Finally we wrote our own personal messages inside.

On Wednesday afternoon we had our Christmas party where we played games and had a disco in the hall or went to the cinema room and watched ‘Arthur Christmas’. Here we are just before the party. We look very grown up and smart!

This week we have been developing an awareness of the ways in which Christmas is celebrated in different countries and we have been comparing this to our own lives. Miss Harrison showed us a presentation about Christmas around the World and then we went into groups and picked our own country to research. We used the internet to find facts about how Christmas is celebrated and then we used PowerPoint to record our information. On Friday we presented our PowerPoints to the rest of the class.

Thank you for reading our blog post. We hope that everyone has a lovely and very Merry Christmas and we hope that everyone has a happy New Year.

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

In Numeracy and Mathematics we have been learning to add several small numbers and use our addition facts to solve problems. We played a game called ‘Top Spot’ where we had to add two next-door numbers to find the number above and race to the Top Spot. This week, some of us were also revising adding two 2-digit numbers and adding near doubles. We were also learning how to add a 3-digit number and a 2-digit number.

In Literacy we have been consolidating summarising a text. Miss Baillie read us a story called ‘Here Comes Jack Frost’ and when we were back in class, we identified the main parts of the text on our planning sheets. We used our notes to summarise the story on our own comic strips. We had to make sure that we put our main ideas in the correct order and we also illustrated our comic strips too. We worked really hard on our comic strips and we can’t wait to see them up on Miss Baillie’s infant corridor display!

This week we have also been revising answering questions about a text. Miss Harrison read us a chapter from Charlotte’s Web and we listened carefully. Afterwards, we answered different types of questions about the text. We worked hard to answer in sentences and use capital letters and full stops.

In PE, we have started Basic Moves. On Thursday we went to the hall and we took part in different activities to develop our movement skills. We looked at object control and travelling and practised dribbling, throwing and catching, skipping and striking a target.

This week we have been really busy planning and preparing for our Christmas Enterprise. We finished painting and decorating our wooden Christmas tree decorations and got them ready to sell. We also made signs, price lists and a rota for our stall using Microsoft Word.

On Friday it was the PTA Christmas Fair. We used a rota system to make sure that everyone got a turn on the stall. We sold reindeer lollipops and wooden Christmas tree decorations. We really enjoyed planning, preparing and selling our lollipops and decorations and we really enjoyed the Christmas Fair, especially the cakes and candyfloss! Thank you to everyone who supported our stall and to the PTA for organising the Christmas Fair.

Thank you for reading our blog post. We hope that you have had a good week and that you have a lovely weekend.

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

In Numeracy and Mathematics, we have been learning to add a 2-digit number and a teens number. We looked at adding the tens, adding the units and then adding our answers together. We have also been learning to add two 2-digit numbers. Some of us have also been doubling 2-digit numbers, adding several numbers and adding a multiple of 10 to a 3-digit number. This week we have been using our addition strategies when looking at costs, prices and profits for our Christmas Enterprise.

In Literacy, we have been writing character profiles about Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web.  We watched a video about describing characters in a story and then we looked at some characters from different texts. With our learning partners, we discussed what the characters looked like, their personalities and what they liked and disliked. Afterwards, we worked in groups and we wrote words and sentences to describe Wilbur’s character. Finally, we worked on our own to write character profiles about Wilbur.

This week we have also been learning to answer questions about texts. We listened to a poem called ‘Market Day’. We played a game on Education City about rhyming words and then we identified the rhyming words in the poem. We answered questions about the poem and we tried to write our answers in sentences. We also used clues from the text to draw a picture of the market.

This week we took part in Tesco’s Christmas Competition. We received a letter from Tesco in Linlithgow asking us to make snowmen to be displayed in their store over the festive season. They asked for the snowmen to be bright and colourful. We used a variety of media such as glitter, paint, oil pastels, material and pens to create our snowmen. Hopefully you will see lots of our snowmen at Tesco soon!

This week we have been busy planning and preparing for our Christmas Enterprise, the Christmas Fair. We began by making reindeer lollipops. Before we started the production process, we worked out the cost of each lollipop, decided on a price for each lollipop and then worked out our profits. When we were making our lollipops, we had to work really hard to make sure that they could be sold. Some of the cutting was quite tricky but we were resilient and we now have fifty cute reindeer lollipops ready to sell!

We have also been making wooden Christmas tree decorations. Again we looked at the cost of each decoration, decided on a selling price and worked out how much profit we would make if each decoration was sold. We painted our decorations and once dry, used glitter glue to decorate them. We will continue to prepare for the Christmas Fair next week.  It really is like Santa’s workshop in P3A!

Thank you for reading our blog post. We hope that you have a lovely weekend.

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

In Numeracy and Mathematics this week, we have been looking at adding two 2-digit numbers, using our addition facts to solve problems and finding doubles and near doubles to 100. We have also been revising how to solve missing number problems. We looked at starting with the smallest number and ‘counting on’ to the other given number to find the missing number. Missing number problems can be very tricky but we tried our best!

On Thursday we attended the P3 Benchball Festival at Linlithgow Academy. We were divided into two teams and we played games against other P3 classes in the Linlithgow Cluster. Miss Harrison was very pleased with us as we followed the rules, displayed excellent teamwork and sportsmanship and used a range of skills and techniques throughout our games. On Friday our whole class got a School Values Award for participating confidently at the festival and we also won Class of the Week.

This week was Anti-Bullying Week at Springfield and we have been really busy learning about friendship and recognising that each individual has a unique blend of abilities and needs.

This week we have been looking at being unique and recognising that each individual has a unique blend of abilities and needs. During our art lesson, we watched a Sesame Street video about what makes us special. We explored what being unique means and we took notes on our own personality and our interests. Using our notes, we thought about what makes us all unique and we created hand images to record our ideas. Every hand is unique, just like us.

We explored the theme of ‘friendship’ through Charlotte’s Web. We discussed the friendship between Charlotte and Wilbur and we listed the qualities that made both characters a good friend. We watched a clip from the film of the moment when Charlotte and Wilbur became friends and explored how to be a good friend. We played a game where we had to match qualities of a good friend and then we had an individual challenge where we had to write words and sentences to describe a good friend.

In writing this week, we learned to write recipes. We wrote recipes for a good friend. We shared our notes sheets with our learning partners and discussed what we thought made a good friend. Miss Harrison then showed us how to set out a recipe and we looked at using bullet points to make a list of ingredients, using numbers for each step, ordering our steps and using bossy verbs. We worked really hard on our recipes and if followed carefully, they would make wonderful friends!

Thank you for reading our blog post. We hope that you have a lovely weekend.

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

In reading this week we have been learning to use alphabetical order to find words in a dictionary. We watched a Learn Screen on Education City about using a dictionary and then we played a game called ‘Space Venture’. We worked with a partner to locate words in the dictionary to play the game. Afterwards, Miss Harrison gave us some words from our chapter in Charlotte’s Web and we had to use our dictionaries to find the meaning of the words and write them down.

This week we have been learning how to use speech marks. We learned about different rules that you need to follow when using speech marks and then we went to different activities. We picked our own learning activities. Some of us were rewriting sentences putting the speech marks in the correct places, some of us were looking at speech bubbles in a text and writing the words using speech marks and some of us were copying sentences from our reading books, showing speech marks correctly, on a graffiti wall.

This week we have been continuing to learn to spell words with different letter patterns. We have also been revising our common words. We always practise our spelling in different active ways and this week we were making our words out of play dough, typing our words on the computer, making word searches with our words, creating secret agent words and tracing around our spelling words.

In Numeracy and Maths we have been continuing to learn different addition strategies. This week we were learning to add two 2-digit numbers by adding the tens, adding the units and then adding our answers together. Some of us have also been learning how to add several small numbers and some of us have been learning to use a written method to add two 3-digit numbers. We have all been using our addition facts and strategies to solve different word problems.

In Social Studies this week, we were learning to identify forms of agriculture in Scotland & foods associated with these. Miss Harrison told us about different types of farms in Scotland and then we played a game where we had to match the food/produce associated with each farm. Finally, we drew pictures of food/produce associated with different forms of agriculture in Scotland.

In Science we have been continuing to learn about forces. This week we were learning that forces can make things move and/or change direction and that forces can be either pushes or pulls. We watched a video called ‘What makes things move?’ and we discussed examples of pushes and pulls. Then Miss Harrison gave us different images and we had to organise them into two groups – pushes and pulls. We also investigated what happens when a push and pull are equal in strength and opposite in direction.

In Art this week we were learning to create work using the visual elements line & pattern. On Wednesday we were introduced to a new character in our book, Charlotte. Charlotte is a spider who makes beautiful patterned webs. We looked at photographs of a spider’s webs and discussed the different lines used in the web. Miss Harrison showed us how to use straight and curved lines to create a web and then we picked which way we would like to make our own webs. We used oil pastels and wax resist or markers and oil pastels. Our webs are beautiful too!

Thank you for reading our blog post. We hope that you have a lovely weekend.

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

This week we concluded our learning focus on Australia. We presented our PowerPoints on Australian landmarks to the rest of the class and we discussed what we had learned. We also made comparisons between the natural environments of Scotland and Australia. Miss Harrison was very pleased with how confident we were when delivering our presentations and we were able to use ICT to successfully share information with others.

In Art and Design this week, we learned to create pictures of a view we had observed. We looked at images and a film of fireworks and we drew pictures to show what we saw. We used rulers to draw buildings in the foreground and then used oil pastels to create fireworks in the background. Here are our fantastic fireworks pictures…

This week we started our Book Study on Charlotte’s Web. When we came into school on Tuesday, there was a spider’s web on our classroom window with the message ‘Hi’! Miss Harrison read us the first chapter of the story and told us all of the things that we will be learning through Charlotte’s Web. On Wednesday, we looked at story settings. We looked at different pictures of story settings and we discussed with our learning partners stories that we knew that were set in each setting. We used clues from the text in Charlotte’s Web to discuss where we thought the story was set and then we used our own ideas to create a drawing or a model of the setting. Some of us also wrote descriptive sentences about the setting of Charlotte’s Web. In Literacy this week we have also been continuing to use our knowledge of punctuation to punctuate sentences correctly. We also revised when to use capital letters and we were able to use capital letters for names of people, names of places, dates, titles and at the start of sentences.

In Numeracy and Maths this week we have continued to learn different strategies to solve addition sums. We used 100 Squares to add on multiples of 10 to 2-digit numbers. We then used our knowledge of adding multiples of 10 to add 11, 21, 9 and 19 to 2-digit numbers. Some of us also learned how to bridge/cross numbers when adding. We looked at strategies to solve addition problems such as 17+6 or 65+17. Miss Harrison also showed some of us how to use a written method to add 3-digit numbers.

In Science we have started to learn about forces and magnetism. Miss Harrison showed us a science clip and then we investigated how a force can make an object change shape. We had paper, tin foil, play dough, cotton wool and cloth and we explored whether we could push, pull, stretch, squeeze, stretch and twist each material. We discussed how we applied a force to change the shape of the materials. Finally we played a game called ‘Squeeze and Squash’ and we were able to use vocabulary such as pushing, pulling, stretching, squashing and twisting to describe forces.

Thank you for reading our blog post. We hope that you have a lovely weekend.

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx