Author: Miss Harrison

We have had a fun and busy week in P3A. On Tuesday afternoon, we went to the PTA Halloween Disco. Aren’t we a scary bunch?!

In music with Mrs Bain, we chose appropriate instruments to create atmospheric sounds to tell the story of The Witch’s Magic Potion. We followed conducting signals to control the volume. In fact we even learned Italian because we now know about crescendo and diminuendo!

In reading this week, we have been looking at giving a personal response to a text. We started by looking at pictures of different items and used emotion cards to show whether we liked, disliked, loved or hated the items in the pictures. Next we played a board game called ‘Likes and Dislikes’ where we selected a topic and moved round the board expressing our likes and dislikes. Finally, Miss Harrison read us a story called ‘Castle Adventure’ and we discussed what we liked and disliked about the story with our learning partners, giving reasons for our answers. Individually, we wrote what we liked and disliked about Castle Adventure, giving reasons why.

In writing this week we have been looking at writing letters. We wrote letters to children in a school in Australia! We used our planning time to write a paragraph about ourselves and to write down questions that we wanted to ask the children in Australia. In our writing lesson, we looked at features of a letter and we used our planning sheets to write our letters to our Australian pen pals. We ensured that we included an address, a greeting and a closing farewell. We worked really hard with our letters and we are looking forward to receiving our replies!

In Numeracy and Maths this week, we have been continuing to look at different strategies to help us with addition. We have been playing different ICT games to revise our number bonds to 20 and to practise adding two 2-digit numbers. We have been using our number bonds to 10 to help us to add a single digit to any 2-digit number. For example, we have been using addition facts such as 5+4=9 to solve 85+4. Miss Harrison also showed some of us how to partition 2-digit and 3-digit numbers and then re-combine the answers to solve different addition problems. We have also been using 100 Squares, Numicon and ten frames to help us with our addition.

This week we have been continuing to learn how to use technologies to share information with others. We worked in our groups to finish creating our PowerPoints on Australian landmarks and we were able to successfully add text, images and animations. Next week we will share our presentations with the rest of the class and we will learn lots of facts about The Great Barrier Reef, Ayers Rock and Fremantle Prison!

Thank you for reading our blog post,

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

 

 

 

In writing this week, we made posters to advertise our Shoe Box Appeal.  We watched a video about the Shoe Box Appeal, looked at what to include and what not to include in a shoe box and which date our shoe boxes need to be ready for so that we had all of the important information needed on our posters.  We also looked at features of an effective poster and we made sure that our posters were clear and easy to read, bright and eye-catching and that we included all of the important information. We worked with our learning partners to make our posters. They will be displayed throughout our school to encourage people to bring in a shoe box and help children in areas of the world who might not get as much as we do at Christmas. We are looking forward to organising and leading the Shoe Box Appeal at Springfield.

In Numeracy and Mathematics this week we revised rounding to the nearest 10 and we learned how to read and write number names. On Thursday, we were learning how to select and use the most appropriate way to gather and sort data. We revised how to use tally marks. We are very confident with using tally marks since we use them to record our house points. Afterwards, Miss Harrison asked us what our favourite Australian animal was and we used a tally mark chart to record our data. To present our data we made bar graphs. We had to include a title and labels!

This week we looked at Indigenous Australian Art.  We listened to an Indigenous dreaming story and then we looked at different examples of Indigenous Australian Art.  We looked at dot painting and then we created our own paintings of Australian animals using a dot style. We worked really hard with our art work and our paintings look fantastic!

On Thursday we started to explore the natural environment of Scotland. We looked at photographs of native Scottish animals and with our learning partners, used the internet and fact sheets to find information on our chosen Scottish animal. After the holidays we will begin to compare the Scottish animals to the Australian animals.

In French this week we learned the names for parts of the body. We listened to a song about parts of the body, watched a video on High Five French which taught us five different body parts and played ‘Simon Says’ using our new vocabulary. We also did ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ in French!

On Friday we went to our P1-3 Pupil Voice Committees. There are six committees; Play, Eco, Health and Wellbeing, Pupil Council, Reading and 1+2. We will be helping to make important decisions and we will be involved further in the life of the school.

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

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

We have had another fantastic week in P3A and we won Class of the Week again today!

In Numeracy and Mathematics this week we have been learning to count on in fours and fives, estimate numbers on a number line and round numbers to the nearest 10. We completed sequences by counting on in fours and fives and we made a human number line to help us with our rounding. We also played games on Education City to consolidate rounding and estimating and we completed written work in our jotters and workbooks.

In Literacy this week we have been looking at retelling a story in sequence. We listened to the story ‘The Frog Prince’ and we took notes on the setting, characters and structure of the story. We then used our notes to write the story in the correct order. We had to make sure that we included the beginning, middle and end and that we put the events in the correct sequence. This week we have also been continuing to spell words with different letter patterns and we have been practising our common words.

On Friday (we now call this ‘French Friday’) we revised the colours in French. We listened to the Rainbow Song in French, played different games on our Promethean board and used our knowledge of colours in French to complete a paint splat activity. Afterwards we worked with our learning partners to test each other on the French colours.

This week our class were given a very special job! Our house points were relaunched on Friday at the assembly and we have a new House Points display near the hall. Miss Baillie asked us if we could create line drawings for the new House Points display. We looked at photos of Champfleurie, Hopetoun, Ochiltree and Binns and we discussed the lines and shapes that we could see. Miss Harrison then showed us how to create a line drawing by sketching and looking at smaller shapes which go together to make a big picture. We worked so hard on our drawings and we can’t wait to see them up on the new House Points display!

Last week we told Miss Harrison that we would like to learn about Australian animals so this week we started to explore the natural environment of Australia. We watched a video about koalas and then we took a trip to Australia to learn about other Australian animals. Afterwards, we selected which animal we would like to research. We completed our own Animal Fact Files! On Thursday we used a search engine to find information and we looked at using key words to find the facts that we needed. We took notes on our animal’s description, habitat and diet and we noted down any other interesting facts. Next week we will be transferring this information onto our fact files.

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

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

 

 

We have had a busy 8 days in P3A!

Last week we were the peg challenge winners again and we were also Class of the Week! Miss Harrison was extremely proud of us and we are going to continue to work hard to ensure that we win them again!

Last week we created newspaper reports on James and the Giant Peach. We were writing reports about when the peach landed on the Empire State Building! Firstly, we looked at features of a newspaper report and we created our own interesting headlines! Then we looked at the key facts and wrote these down on our planning sheets. We also used our planning sheets to take notes on the introduction, main story and conclusion. Afterwards we created our first copy of our newspaper reports in our jotters. We had to make sure that we used capital letters and full stops, put the events in the correct sequence and included who, what, when and where. Miss Harrison looked at all of our reports and checked our spelling. Finally we created final copies of our reports and made sure that our writing was neat and that we included a picture. Our newspaper reports are absolutely fantastic and we have displayed them inside and outside of our classroom.

This week we have been continuing to look at different reading skills. We have already looked at summarising and question writing and this week, we looked at illustrating. We looked the job of an illustrator and looked at some examples of famous illustrators and their work. Miss Harrison read us the last two chapters of James and the Giant Peach and we had to use our visualising skills and information from the text to create illustrations for those chapters. On Tuesday, we used our summarising and illustrating skills to create alternative blurbs and front covers for James and the Giant Peach. When we were writing our blurbs, we worked hard to summarise the story and not give too much away to the reader. We also tried to use interesting words. We definitely have authors and illustrators in the making!

This week it was European Day of Languages.  On Friday, we learned different colours in French. We listened to a song about French colours, we played some different games on the Promethean Board and we played a French colours game in our classroom. Miss Harrison will be using different French words and phrases that we learn throughout the week to help us to develop our language.

Over the last fortnight, we have continued to look at symmetry. Last week we reflected shapes and pictures in mirror lines to make them symmetrical. We also created our own symmetrical patterns. This week we concluded our learning on symmetry and we used our knowledge of lines of symmetry to create our own symmetrical designs on squared paper. We had to check if our designs were symmetrical by comparing both halves to check if they were a reflection of each other.

This week we have been learning to find 1 and 2 more or less than and 100 more or less than with numbers to 1000. We have also been learning to count on in twos and threes. When we were revising odd and even numbers, we played a game called ‘Popcorn’. Miss Harrison called out different numbers and if the number was even, we had to ‘pop’ up and if the number was odd then we had to ‘pop’ down!

On Thursday after break we arrived back into our classroom to discover boarding passes to Australia on our seats! Miss Harrison had a suitcase filled with sun cream, a sun hat, sunglasses, a story book called ‘What’s in Your Pocket?’, a weather map of Australia and photographs of Ayres Rock, Sydney Opera House, coral, kangaroos, koala bears, the Australian flag and Australian rugby players.  We discussed what we already knew about Australia and then we wrote down what we want to learn. We are going to be exploring the natural environment of Australia and by comparing the weather in Scotland and Australia, looking at how climate affects living things.

This week we had a very special party in P3A. A member of our class has been undergoing treatment for the last two years and this week, it was the end of her treatment. We are all very proud of how brave, strong and resilient she is and we wanted to celebrate! Miss Harrison also wanted to celebrate how kind, supportive and understanding we are in P3A. We ate lots of party food, listened and danced to music and had lots of fun!

Thank you very much for reading our blog post.

We hope that you have a lovely weekend,

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

Congratulations to two members of our class who took part in Pedal for Scotland last Sunday. Well done boys! We are very proud of you!

In Literacy this week, we have been looking at answering and creating questions about texts. On Monday we looked at the role of a questioner and in pairs, we constructed our own questions using ‘who, what, where, when, how and why’ openers. We played a game on Education City called ‘Wild River’ where we had to answer who, what, when, where, why and how questions about events in the story. Afterwards, we read an extract from Jack and the Beanstalk and we answered questions about the events to show our understanding.

In Numeracy and Maths we have been working with numbers to 1000. We have been learning to find numbers before and after a given number and to find numbers between. We used different songs and a Splat Square to revise numbers before, after and between to 100 and then we used this knowledge to find numbers before, after and between to 1000.

On Thursday, we continued to learn about symmetry. We revised finding lines of symmetry using a mirror and then we looked at shapes which have more than one line of symmetry or none at all. We also explored how to make pictures and shapes symmetrical.

This week we started to use the 5-Point scale. We looked at different cartoon faces and discussed how we felt each of the faces was feeling. We listened to a story called ‘When My Worries Get Too Big’ to help us to understand the 5-Point scale. Miss Harrison read out different scenarios and we had to rate how we would feel and decide where we would be on the scale. We will be using the 5-Point scale in our class everyday as it is very important that we are able to talk about our feelings.

Thank you for reading our blog post. We hope that everyone has a healthy and happy long weekend.

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

We have had another fantastic week in P3A and we were delighted to find out today that we were the winners of the Peg Challenge once again!

In Numeracy and Mathematics this week, we have been continuing to look at place value. We explored how to put numbers into a place value chart and we used our knowledge of place value to order whole numbers. This week we also started learning about symmetry. We revised what we already knew about symmetry by looking at symmetrical pictures. Then we looked at lines of symmetry and using a mirror to find lines of symmetry. We looked at different shapes and used our mirrors to check whether or not they had lines of symmetry and we then drew the lines of symmetry on a variety of shapes and pictures. We also played some symmetry games on our Promethean board.

On Monday we looked at words with different spelling patterns. We practised our spelling words by completing lots of different active tasks such as rainbow words, spelling flowers, using letter magnets and creating a wordsearch using our spelling words. On Wednesday we revised our spelling words and we beat Miss Harrison at the spelling game ‘Word Workout’.

This week we continued to work on our punctuation. We played ‘Penguins on Ice’ and investigated whether each sentence needed a full stop, a question mark or an exclamation mark. We looked at when we use exclamation marks and then we corrected sentences by adding capital letters and exclamation marks.

This week we have been learning to summarise. On Monday, we looked at the role of a summariser and we found out that they write a short version of a story and that they only include the main points. In groups, we looked at an extract from Goldilocks and the Three Bears and we found the who, what, where, when and why for the text. Afterwards, Miss Harrison read us a chapter from James and the Giant Peach and we were able to use what we learned about summarising to write a short summary about the chapter.

We also used our summarising skills this week to write a summary about the tale of Peter Rabbit for Miss Baillie’s display in the infant area. We worked really hard with our writing and our presentation. In Art & Design this week, we looked at the visual elements; colour, shape, line and texture. We created Peter Rabbit drawings for Miss Baillie’s display. We looked at the shapes of different flowers and used oil pastels to create a colourful background. Then we used line to create a fur-like texture on our Peter Rabbits and cut them out and glued them onto our background. It created a really nice contrast and we think that our drawings look fantastic on the display!

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

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

In Literacy this week we continued to consolidate our use of adjectives. On Monday, we looked at the characters, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, from James and the Giant Peach and we worked with our learning partners to come up with adjectives to describe these characters. We used our adjectives to write a descriptive paragraph about Aunt Sponge. Afterwards, we made our own character for the story and we had to use adjectives to describe our new characters.

This week we have also looked at varying our use of punctuation by using question marks. We played ‘Amazing Punctuation’ on Education City and then we looked at how to use question marks in sentences.  In our new jotters, we corrected sentences by adding capital letters and question marks and then we created our own questions, punctuating them accurately. We have been working really hard to keep our jotter work neat.

On Monday we got our first reading book in P3. Miss Harrison was very impressed with our fluency and use of expression when reading aloud. Next week we will start our spelling and spelling homework.

In Numeracy and Mathematics this week, we have been learning about place value. We have been learning to find the value of each digit in whole numbers and we have been learning to partition numbers. We have played different place value games, we have recorded whole numbers on place value charts and we have completed a variety of place value activities. On Tuesday, we used our new Numeracy and Maths jotters to record our number partitioning. Miss Harrison was very proud of our work and the presentation was excellent. We got 3 dojo points for neat jotter work!

Since we are such sensible and responsible P3 pupils, this year we are going to become P3 Play Leaders. This will involve supporting the P1 pupils with their play. This week we went to P1 and became leaders in different play areas. We encouraged the P1’s to play nicely together, share and take turns. Miss Harrison gave us different scenarios and we discussed how we could help in each case. Mrs McAulay and Mrs Gordon commented on how fantastic and responsible we were on our first day as play leaders.

In P3 our Outdoor Learning focus is ‘Trees’. Throughout the year, we will be taking part in different outdoor learning activities and observing the changes in trees over the seasons. This week we looked at the two types of trees and we were able to work out with our learning partners what makes a tree an evergreen. We looked at the different characteristics of deciduous and evergreen trees and then we went out to our outdoor area and we went on a tree hunt. We used a tree identification sheet and looked carefully at the different leaves that we found.

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

P3A and Miss Harrison xxx

Welcome to our first blog post in P3A! We have had a busy week back at school and have worked very hard and settled in well. This year we are the eldest children in the infant area and we have been trying really hard to be good role models. Miss Harrison has been extremely impressed with us and we won the Peg Challenge on Friday for our excellent behaviour in the corridor.

On Tuesday we looked at our school values. We played a game similar to ‘Simon Says’ where Miss Harrison called out the different values and we had to perform the actions. We were very confident with our values and Miss Harrison couldn’t get us out! We discussed how we could display each value in school and then we worked in groups to make posters about each value. They look fantastic up on our school values wall. We made sure that they were attractive to our readers by making them eye-catching, clear and neat.

This week we also discussed what makes a good P3 pupil and teacher. We worked in groups to write down some ideas and then we shared these ideas with our whole class. Miss Harrison typed them up and displayed them beside our behaviour traffic lights. We would like Miss Harrison to be intelligent, fun, kind, helpful and buy some Star Wars books for our classroom!

This week we started our new class novel for this term, ‘James and the Giant Peach’. On Tuesday afternoon we decided to give our reading area a ‘James and the Giant Peach’ theme so we worked in groups to draw the outlines of the main characters and then we used different media to add colour. Later in the week, Miss Harrison read us some more chapters and we discussed with our learning partners what we thought might happen next to the main characters. We used our visualising skills to draw our predictions. We included lots of detail and used information from the text to help with our drawings of the main characters. On Friday we revised what we already know about adjectives. We used our knowledge of adjectives to identify words that Roald Dahl used to describe the insects in James and the Giant Peach. We highlighted the adjectives in the chapter and we discussed why authors use adjectives in texts.

On Wednesday we had Mrs Tulloch for Science/STEM and then Mrs Reid for PE. This will be the same each week. This term we are learning about sun and moon changes with Mrs Tulloch. As well as having Mrs Reid on a Wednesday, we also have PE with Miss Harrison on a Thursday afternoon. Miss Harrison will be taking us for benchball as we have a P3 Benchball competition in November. On Thursday we practised our throwing, catching and passing skills and set ourselves time challenges to see how many passes we could make with our partner in the time set. We looked at making three passes before you could score and then we played some benchball games.

On Thursday we revised our addition, subtraction and multiplication skills. We played a game on Education City where we had to select the correct operation for each sum. We then played a game called ‘Inverse Machines’ and made our own inverse machines for our Numeracy display.

On Thursday, we looked at children’s rights. We watched a video about children’s rights and discussed which rights we have at school. In our groups, we looked at the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and highlighted which rights were applicable to school. We shared our ideas with our whole class and we have displayed these rights on our Class Charter.

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

P3A and Miss Harrison 🙂