literacy – Springfield Primary School and Bonnytoun Nursery School

June 20, 2019

P1B – Week ending 21st June

In Literacy this week we have continued to work on our diary writing skills and tricky word spelling. We worked on our listening and talking skills too, sharing what we had done at The Marches and talking about what we were looking forward to on Gala Day. It’s fair to say we are excited about Gala Day!

In Numeracy we continued our learning on writing our numbers up to 20 in words. We have also continued to practise counting up and down in 2s and progressed to counting up and down in 3s. In Maths we completed our Data Handling lessons, learning about a new way to sort information using Carroll Diagrams. You can see an example of these by following this link –http://resources.hwb.wales.gov.uk/VTC/carroll_diagrams/eng/introduct/default.htm.

We met our P2 buddies this week and had great fun playing with them with the outdoors toys in the playground.

We enjoyed our final session with our specialist from the National Youth Choir of Scotland. We continued to work on keeping the beat and using our listening skills to identify where sounds were coming from. We also had fun again playing parachute games.

On Thursday we visited our new P2 classroom and met Miss Harrison. We heard a story about a cautious caterpillar and drew a picture of our favourite part of the story. We really enjoyed spending time with Miss Harrison and chatting to her about P2.

Have a lovely weekend. Only 1 week left!

Mrs Reid and Primary 1B

June 13, 2019

P1B – Week ending 14th June

In Literacy this week we have been working on rhyme. We read the Julia Donaldson story, Room on the Broom, and had fun filling in missing rhyming words in the story. We worked together to find matching pairs of rhyming words and choose some of these pairs to write some super sentences.

We were very lucky to have a visit from the author Alan Windrum who came in to share two of his story books with us – One Button Benny and A Puppy’s Tale. We had great fun joining in with the story and also sang some songs accompanied by Alan too.

In Numeracy we have been learning how to write numbers up to 20 in words. We have also continued to practise counting up and down in 2s. We found some of the number words a bit tricky to read at first but we are beginning to recognise some of these and know that with practise we will get to know all of them.

In PE we had our final Gymnastics lesson with Mrs Harris. We had to chance to practise all of the techniques we have learned over the past few weeks and had the opportunity to climb the wall bars and also showed our upper body strength as we climbed between the bars.

As part of our Community focus we learned about the environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy. Inspired by his work, we went outside to find natural resources and, in small groups, we made some super pictures with the things we had found.

We were very lucky that the weather was just about kind enough for us to have Sports Day on Wednesday and Mrs Reid was very impressed with the resilience shown by everyone as, despite the wet and cold, everyone tried their very best to complete the potted sports stations and then run in the class races. Mrs Reid was ‘delighted’ to get the chance to show the children that it’s the ‘taking part that counts’ when she entered the teachers race!

We enjoyed our second session with our specialist from the National Youth Choir of Scotland. We successfully kept the beat to a variety of different types of music and used our listening skills to identify where sounds were coming from. We came up with ‘loud’ and ‘quiet’ actions and had great fun using the actions within songs.

We have been busy making something special for Father’s Day too. The children were excited to tell Mrs Reid the reasons they loved their daddies. We hope you like our work!

Have a lovely weekend. We can’t believe there are only 2 weeks of Primary 1 left!

Mrs Reid and Primary 1B

June 7, 2019

P1B – Week ending 7th June

What an exciting week! Our first class assembly!

We have worked very hard over the past few weeks preparing for our assembly. Not only have we been learning our lines but we have also been practising the musical accompaniment, painting artwork, making butterfly wands and designing butterflies to decorate the walls. We have had great fun and have learned lots about the butterfly lifecycle. We hope you enjoyed watching the assembly as much as we enjoyed performing it!

We have had a very musical week as along with our assembly preparation, we also began a block of lessons with a specialist from the National Youth Choir of Scotland. We were very good at keeping the beat and had great fun singing rhyming songs. Our favourite part of the lesson was definitely the singing games with the parachute!

We continued our learning in Literacy this week, revising a selection of digraphs and tricky words and have been practising making up sentences using our digraph words. We have also started working on our diary writing skills.

In Numeracy we have been practising counting up and down in 2s. We looked at the pattern counting in 2s makes when we ‘painted’ our numbers on a hundred square and noticed that we ended up with painted columns of numbers. We were also learning about odd and even numbers, linking this to our counting and did really well playing the ‘coconut’ game.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/learning-to-count/coconut-odd-or-even

In Maths we continued to learn about data handling and managed to use the skills we have learned to interpret a variety of pictograms.

In PE we continued our Gymnastics block with Mrs Harris. We had to use our listening skills to know which position we needed to get into and had to co-ordinate our bodies to make tunnels or obstacles in the ‘road’. We worked together in teams and had great fun taking turns to tunnel under a whole team!

As part of our Community focus, we were very lucky to have a special visitor in class, A’s dad, Dr Walker! He came in to talk to us about his job as an Emergency Doctor and taught us how to call for help in an emergency. We worked in pairs, taking turns to pretend to call 999 for help. We also talked about the importance of only calling this number if you have a genuine emergency!

Have a lovely weekend!

Mrs Reid and Primary 1B

May 23, 2019

P1B – Week ending 24th May

What a quick week!

In Literacy, we have been learning the new digraphs, ‘au’ as in launch and ‘aw’ as in draw. We learned that, once again, there is unfortunately no set pattern to follow to work out which au/aw to use when we are spelling using this digraph but, as we have discussed before, this will get better with practise. Our new tricky words were ‘do’ and ‘as’. This was the last week of new digraphs and tricky words for Primary 1. The rest of the term will be used to consolidate learning of all sounds we have learned throughout the year.

In Numeracy we continued to work on our sequencing skills, forwards and backwards, within 20. We took turns to choose a selection of numbers and found the easiest way to sequence the numbers was to work out which were the largest and the smallest numbers and sequence the others in between. We loved using the caterpillar sequencing game and used this to challenge each other. You could play this at home too (https://www.topmarks.co.uk/ordering-and-sequencing/caterpillar-ordering).

In Maths we continued to learn about how to present data in a pictogram. We learned that it is important to create a separate column for each of data sets in the pictogram, making it clear to understand. We began to learn about strategies we could use to interpret the data in the chart.

In PE we were working on eye/foot co-ordination, dribbling a ball and we also continued our Gymnastics block with Mrs Harris. We built on the Gymnastics learning that we have done so far, practising a variety of rolls and jumps. Everyone worked very hard to try to complete the tasks.

We were also lucky to have an Enjoy-A-Ball session this week. Paul Pizza was impressed with the ball dribbling skills on show and how well the children listened to his instructions.

We started thinking about our class assembly which is set for Friday 7^th June. Mrs Reid was very impressed with the ideas which were suggested and we are hoping to incorporate all of them into our performance. We’re keeping this top secret just now!

We arrived in school on Thursday to find one of our butterflies had hatched from its cocoon and shortly after we started our day, another one emerged! We were very excited to see them and had a super discussion about the hatching process. We had lots of questions and researched the answers to these together. We wanted to know if our butterflies were boys or girls and what the red liquid was that came out of the butterflies as they hatched. I wonder if the children can tell you the answers?

Have a lovely weekend!

Mrs Reid and Primary 1B

May 16, 2019

Primary 1B – w/e 17th May 2019

We have had another very busy week in P1b!

In Literacy, we have been learning two new digraphs, ‘ow’ as in cow and ‘ou’ as in loud. We learned that there is unfortunately no pattern to follow to work out which ow/ou to use when we are spelling using this digraph but we know that with lots of practise we will get to know which one to use. Our new tricky words were ‘here’ and ‘into’.

In Numeracy we were learning about one and two more or less than within 20 and how to order a selection of numbers within 20, both forwards and backwards. We created number lines in pairs and challenged each other to work out one or two more than or one or two less than. Once we had shown that we could order numbers from 1 to 20, we challenged ourselves by selecting a few cards at random and put these in order from smallest to largest and vice versa. Mrs Reid was very impressed with our ordering skills.

In Maths we were learning about Data Handling. We learned that data is information and that ‘handling’ means how to present the information to make it easier to understand. We did a class survey of favourite fruit. We learned how to collect data using tally marks and how to put this information into a pictogram. We did very well answering questions about the data, using the pictogram to help us.

In PE, we continued our Gymnastics block with Mrs Harris. We were learning about balancing and jumping this week. We worked hard to listen to instructions and did our best to balance on the floor and on sloping benches.

We had some very special P1 visitors this week – a policeman, firefighter, nurse, midwife and community youth worker! Not only were these great community jobs for us to learn about as part of our Community focus but these people were special because they are mums and dads of some the P1a and P1b children! We joined up with P1a for the event and had great fun learning about the different jobs. We got to spend time with each of the visitors and got to pretend we were doing their jobs! Mrs Reid and Mrs Gordon were delighted to hear both classes asking great questions and sharing their learning with each other.

We have continued to learn about the butterfly life cycle and have been watching our caterpillars very closely over the past couple of weeks. We have been amazed at how quickly they have grown, becoming very fat and hairy! When we arrived on Wednesday we found they had transformed into their cocoons.

Have a lovely weekend!

Mrs Reid and Primary 1B

May 2, 2019May 2, 2019

Primary 1B – w/e 3rd May 2019

We have had a very busy week in P1b!

In Literacy, we have been learning two new digraphs, ‘oi’ as in coin and ‘oy’ as in boy. We learned that ‘oi’ usually comes at the beginning or middle of a word and ‘oy’ mostly comes at the end. We did find quite a few exceptions though which made it tricky! Our new tricky words were ‘there’ and ‘were’. We found that when we tried to come up with sentences using ‘there’ we were getting a little bit muddled up with ‘they’. We kept trying though and now understand the difference between the words.

In Numeracy we were learning about the different ways that a subtraction question could be written. For example, find the difference between, minus, take away, less than. We have also been learning how to use subtraction within worded questions. For example, there were 10 carrots. 5 were eaten. How many were left? We saw how important it was to read the question carefully before answering.

In Maths we were learning about Capacity. In pairs, we took on two challenges to work out the capacity of a variety of vessels – a spoon challenge and a cube challenge. We had to choose a vessel and predict the number of spoons of sand which would fit inside the vessel and then redo the experiment to see how many cubes the vessel would hold. It was interesting to see how accurate (or not!) our predictions were. We found that some groups got a different answer for the number of spoons of sand in the same vessel and worked out that this was because the size of spoonfuls differed from one group to the next.

In PE, we continued our Gymnastics block with Mrs Harris. We were learning about different types of jump this week.

Mrs Laing visited us again to complete the clay modelling. Everyone has now sculpted a model. The models look amazing! There were so many different ideas. Once they are dry they will be able to come home.

We also participated in a Generation Science workshop, part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival. The children learned about computer programming through following instructions to build a Lego robot goal keeper and programming the robot to try to save shots at goal. They learned how important it is to give clear instructions to make sure the robot did what they wanted it to do. They had great fun programming the ‘live’ robot to make a jam sandwich! Mrs Reid was impressed with the Lego building skills and how confidently the computer programmes were devised.

Have a lovely holiday weekend!

Mrs Reid and Primary 1B

April 28, 2019April 28, 2019

Primary 1B – w/e 26th April 2019

It was lovely to see everyone back after the Easter holidays.

This week we revised all of the sounds, digraphs and tricky words which we have learned so far in P1. Mrs Reid was very impressed with how much everyone could remember!

In Numeracy we continued to learn about numbers to 20. We have been identifying larger/smaller and largest/smallest numbers within a given selection of numbers. We have also been practising writing our numbers to 20.

In PE, we started a term long block of Gymnastics lessons with Mrs Harris who is an external Gymnastics specialist. We were learning three different positions – straight, tuck and star. We had to listen carefully to hear which position we needed to make to move around the hall. Everyone tried very hard to follow Mrs Harris’ instructions.

We were very lucky to have Mrs Laing visit us this week to do an Art lesson, teaching us how to work with clay. Everyone will have the chance to build a clay sandcastle. Some children completed their sandcastles this week and the others will have a chance to do this next week. It was tricky (and very messy!) working with the clay and we found we needed to have strong hands to mould the clay into shape.

We also had four very special visitors to the class this week – Mr & Mrs McAulay, Tilly and Lottie! It was wonderful to see them all. We were very quiet as Tilly and Lottie were asleep!

We finished the week with a lovely paired reading session with our P7 buddies.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Reid and Primary 1B

April 5, 2019

Primary 1B – w/e 5th April 2019

This week in Literacy we have continued our revision of the sounds and tricky words we have learned this term. We have worked through a number of phoneme challenges, identifying words with the correct phoneme in them and blending the words together. In Dictation, we have been writing sentences incorporating a variety of digraph words. We are getting better at remembering capital letters, finger spaces and full stops.

In Numeracy we have continued to learn about numbers to 20. We have been sharing strategies of how to keep track when counting a set of items and have also been working on identifying numbers between 0 and 20, using a number line to help us. We have continued to practise writing our numbers to 20.

Within our Transport topic we have been working in groups to design and build futuristic modes of transport. We talked about the past, present and future and how things change over time. We looked at pictures of transport from the past and present, discussed how these had changed and how they might change in the future. Each group drew a picture of their chosen mode of transport, used the picture to help build a model and then presented their model to the class. There were some fantastic features of our futuristic transport including a hot air balloon fuelled by angel cakes, a rainbow aeroplane and an aeroplane/double decker bus combo which was almost taller than the children who made it!

We also had a trip to the park this week and had great fun playing together with P1a. Many of us showed resilience when trying to climb up or down and bravery when riding on the flying fox!

We have had a very busy term, working hard and learning lots!

Have a lovely Easter holiday!

Mrs Reid and Primary 1B

March 28, 2019

Primary 1B – w/e 29th March 2019

This week in Literacy we have been revising all sounds and tricky words we have learned this term. Everyone had the chance to go over each of the digraphs and tricky words individually with Mrs Reid. As well as reading the digraphs and digraph words, everyone tried to write them too. We found this trickier but know with practise we will get better at this.

In Numeracy we have been learning about numbers to 20. We have been counting up from 0 to 20 and back again and have also been practising writing the numbers. We have been doing lots of sequencing activities, talking about number before and number after. We found completing the backwards sequences a little more challenging than going forwards but when we took our time we could work out the next number.

We completed our work on Money this week. Our coin recognition is now very good. We added monetary amounts together and also worked out the difference between monetary amounts. We still need to remember to check which symbol is used in a question (+ or -) or check which words are used (e.g. more than, less than) to work out whether we should be adding or taking away.

Within our Transport topic we have been learning about hot air balloons. We learned how they fly and Mrs Reid was impressed to hear us talking about the air molecules which had been mentioned in the film we watched! We looked at pictures of different hot air balloons and described them to each other and then everyone designed their own hot air balloon. Our designs were very imaginative.

Everyone made their hand print into something special for their Mum for Mother’s Day. Hope all the Mums are well looked after this weekend!

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Reid and Primary 1B

March 21, 2019

Primary 1B – w/e 22nd March 2019

This week in Literacy we were have been learning ‘oo’ and ‘ew’ as in grew. We have found that ‘oo’ is mainly found in the middle of a word and ‘ew’ is mainly found at the end. We have also been practising our new tricky words – her and of.

We have been learning about Spring this week and had fun going outside to look for the first signs of Spring around the school. We found some flowers and saw buds on the trees and bushes and were excited to find a nest high up in one of the trees. When we got back to the classroom we did some fantastic ‘Spring Writing’ which you will be able to see on display when you come in for your Parents’ Evening appointment.

In Numeracy we have been continuing our learning about subtraction within 10 and have focused on subtracting from 10, 9 and 6.

We found our work on Money a bit tricky this week. We were trying to work out which coins we could use to make up a given amount. We were good at working out numbers which made the amount we needed but got a bit muddled deciding which coins were real. We had lots of discussion about whether there was a 3p, 4p, 6p, 7p or 8p coin! We enjoyed playing an online money game, working on sorting, ordering and counting coins (single coins to 10p and 1p to 10p). You could play this at home too – https://www.topmarks.co.uk/money/coins-game.

Within our Transport topic we managed to finish our junk modelling. Everyone chose a form of transport to design. There was lots of discussion and problem solving during our building as we tried to work out the best way to structure our models. Everyone used their imaginations very well indeed and successfully worked out how best to fix their models together.

In Health and Wellbeing, we have begun to see our plant life cycle in action. Our sunflower seeds have already started to grow into seedlings. We have been looking after them carefully and have been very good at taking turns to water them.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Reid and Primary 1B