Author: Mrs Kennedy

In between nativity rehearsals, making salt dough decorations and the Christmas Fair we have managed to do a lot of consolidation work on our sounds and common words this week, keeping a sense of normality before christmas excitement really sets in!  At the beginning of the week we practised using sounds to make words and sentences and towards the end of the week we concentrated on our common words.   The children are really coming on and it is especially apparent in weeks like this how good they are at reading and writing now.  They are also very good at choosing activities that suit them and their learning styles.

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We had our Growth Mindset Family Learning afternoon on Wednesday.  P1 were learing about resilience. We have been listening to stories about resilience – ‘Giraffe’s Can’t Dance’, ‘Winners Never Quit’ and ‘The Most Magnificent Thing’.  There were challenging activities set up around the classroom, and we had to try each activity with these things in mind: keep trying even if it’s a bit tricky, mistakes are ok, ask for help if you need it and work together.

We have also been working on near doubles in maths as we apply our knowledge of doubles to work out the answers to near doubles sums.  We finished this off by going outside on Thursday to write all our doubles and near doubles in the playground.

We also worked on our salt dough decorations this week, getting them ready to sell at the fair- a huge thank you to Mrs Woolsey (parent helper) who came in to take groups of children to make the dough.  They were a huge hit and we completely sold out!

Nativity practise is going great and we’re very excited to perform for you next week – the children have worked really hard, you’re in for a treat!

Have a lovely weekend.  P1B and Mrs Kennedy

P.S. Some of the children were being photographers this week, taking photos of the learning happening in the classroom, when I uploaded the photos I found these 😉 I did hear some chat about needing a selfie stick!

P1B have been on the move this week; using our bodies, getting our hearts pumping and brains working as we learn.  In PE on Monday we used our whole bodies to make all the addition sums for 4.

Then we played a running game where there were lots of sums around the hall with no answers, when Mrs Kennedy called out an answer we had to run to one of the sums that adds up to the number she called out.  We’re getting really quick at remembering all the different ways to make 2, 3, 4 and 5 and enjoyed racing our friends to find the right sums.

We have also been doing a lot of word building this week.  We used our bodies again as we put sounds in hoops to make words and said each sound as we jumped in the hoops and read the word at the end.

The whole school has a book focus this week and next and we’ve been looking at the story of Jack and the Flumflum tree by Julia Donaldson.  Firstly we drew pictures of what we think the Isle of Blowyernose looks like and what we might find if we visited there.  The pictures are amazing and Mrs Kennedy wrote down all our ideas too – she had a lot of writing to do as we had lots of thoughts about what it would look like.  We also studied the words in the book to help us to understand the story better.  Our favourite phrases are ‘don’t get your knickers in a twist!’ and ‘I can’t swim for toffee!’  There are also lots of lovely describing words to explore too – heaved and hauled, gobble and guzzle, nip and gnash, as well as the characters – red-cheeked Rose and stubble-cheeked Stew and poor granny with her terrible doze of moozles!

At assembly on Friday we watched as P5A put on a fantastic performance all about Remembrance Day.  They helped us to understand why we wear poppies at this time of year. After the assembly we really wanted to make our own poppies. Mrs Kennedy gave us some resources and in our usual creative way we made lots of different styles of poppies – they were brilliant!

P1B and Mrs Kennedy x

We’ve been Busy, busy again! We had fun at the end of the day on Monday, dookin’ for apples which we gobbled up straight after, enjoying the novelty of eating in class.

We have been reading our new reading books with our reading groups several times this week.  We are really good at reading the words aloud and are working hard to listen as others read and we follow the words on the page. We also share our ideas and opinions on the story and listen to those of others.  We chose the names of our reading groups ourselves and have decided on Elephants, Pandas, Polar Bears and Kangaroos – four fantastic names!

We have also been working hard using the sounds c, k and ck. We have been writing quite a bit in our jotters too, sounding out sentences using all the sounds we know and learning how to leave a space between words as well as trying to write on the line.

We are trying to get outside as much as possible when the weather is good.  We visited the outdoor classroom again on Monday and practised our ‘c’ sound.  We left a large stone ‘c’ on the ground as a surprise for others to see when they come in, but we won’t tell them it was us!

We practised our common words in the gym this week, enjoying the big space to run around and make a lot of noise as we played games to learn the words.

We have been looking more closely at adding, learning all the addition sums for numbers to 5.  We are really pretty good at saying all the sums that add to 2 and 3 and will be working on 4 and 5 next week.  We’re also working on a wall display so we can use this to help us as we work.  Mrs Kennedy has lots more games planned for next week to help us to learn all the number facts.

Mrs Kennedy has just downloaded the songs for our nativity The Innkeepers Breakfast,  we will start learning them on Monday, Christmas is about to begin in P1B!

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

P1B and Mrs Kennedy

 

It is lovely to be back together again after the holiday, we have settled easily back into our routines and have been sharing lots of interesting holiday news.

We have had lots of fun outside this week as we investigate Autumn and the changes happening all around us.  We are lucky to have such a big outdoor space and we had great fun in the outdoor classroom.  We have collected lots of things for our Autumn table and children can bring in anything they find outside of school too.

After our walk we worked in groups using a record sheet to note down all the sings of Autumn that we noticed.  We worked very well together as we learn co-operation and how to work together to complete a task.

We have also been working hard in Numeracy this week, learning addition.  We have been working with a partner, challenging each other with tricky sums, we like being the teacher and checking if our partner has the right answer.

We also had our first visit to the library on Friday.  Mrs Manlove explained that we will choose a book every Friday and take it home to read, bringing it back the next Friday so we can take a new one.  Some Buddies came too and helped us to choose a book.  They are also very good at reading to us.

Have a lovely weekend from all in P1B x

Wow! What a quick term and yet when we think about all we’ve done and how settled we are it seems like we have been at school for a long time.

This week we have been learning the sounds ‘d’ and ‘e’.  We pretend we are playing a drum for the ‘d’ action and crack eggs for the ‘e’ action.  We really enjoy the Jolly Phonics songs and actions and they are really helping us to remember our sounds – you can find them on youtube if you would like to practise at home.   We are also enjoying finding words or sounds we know as we look at books and words all around us.

In numeracy we have been learning ‘one more’ and ‘one less’ and saying the number before or after a particular number.  We are getting very quick at it.

On Tuesday we had lots of visitors to our classroom for Special Person afternoon.  It was very busy and lots of fun, we played games together and it was lovely to show others around our room and share our learning.

We loved assembly this week, especially when Miss Baillie announced that P1B were class of the week!   We have certainly been working very hard. Mrs Kennedy is extremely proud of us and how well we have settled into school life.  We have all learned so much since we first started and we are a very happy and hard working bunch!

We are really looking forward to term 2, beginning with some outdoor learning.  We will be looking at some new projects and begin to practise for our Christmas show.

Have a lovely holiday from all in P1B.

Another busy week in P1B.  We now have a castle in our classroom  – all the children worked hard to build it.  We put our name on the bricks so that everyone knows who made it!  We’ve been playing in it a lot – lots of role play going on with knights and baddies, kings and queens.

  

We have been reading the story of The Three Little Pigs this week.  We have been talking about and drawing the ‘setting’ of the story.  We have been writing some words from the story too, sounding out as we write. We all had a really good go and Mrs Kennedy is amazed at how well we are learning our sounds.  We also made puppets and worked in groups to put on shows, retelling the story.  We are very good at putting on different voices for different characters and using props.

Later in the week, some of us decided to be judges during the shows – we made notes and wrote down scores – great writing practise.

In maths we have been learning about gathering information and how to record it, using tally marks and pictographs.  We made a giant pictograph showing our favourite fruit.

We are a very creative bunch – during free play we have been really busy using lots of different materials to make signs and flags for the castle as well as masks, hats, bracelets and much more. Here we are with some of the things we’ve made. Mrs Kennedy is very pleased with all our problem solving, decision making and persistence 🙂

 

We hope you all have a lovely weekend.  P1B x