Signs of spring

This week we have been continuing to look for signs of Spring or new life during our RE lessons. Many children have spotted some new flowers growing near our school or in their gardens. We decided to do some planting of our own in the classroom. We made lots of links in our learning when doing this:

RE – new life, Lent, preparing

Science – growing seeds, what will we need, what are the best conditions for growing things, seasons, weather

Literacy – sequencing, writing instructions

Numeracy – counting seeds, measuring soil

In phonics we learned about ‘ng’ and ‘wh’, we all agreed that they were quite tricky. Ephraim has been great at spotting ‘ng’ throughout the week in reading books or on the smartboard – well done Ephraim. We tried a new activity at our choice station this week – the ‘wh word hunt’ – we had to use magnifying glasses to spot the tiny wh words hiding in a colourful picture, it was good fun. We have also been using magnetic letters, playdough and written tasks to help us learn these new sounds. Another station was the peer assessment station, one of us read the words and the other person had to spell the words on the whiteboards, we loved taking it in turns to be the teacher! Next week we are moving onto the rude clown sound -Th.

In numeracy we worked on number names to 10 as this was something we chose as a next step after learning about money. We played games to help us do this, eg. Matching names to numbers, spelling number names games on the spelling bug app, number name wordsearches. We are all more confident now in reading number names and are ready to move onto something new next week. Remember to log onto Sumdog to take part in the West Lothian Contest this week. We will also make time at school next week during Smartstart and numeracy to do it too.

In IDL we learned about mapping and made our very own treasure maps for our pirate adventures. We discussed what you would find on a map: symbols, a key, a compass, a route. This will help us during Outdoor Learning Week where we will have a go at following some maps outside.

Pupil voice:

Dexter- I liked playing the sky phonics app on the iPads.

Klaudia-In PE we were playing hockey.

James-I enjoyed learning about Lent.

Amber- I liked learning about subtraction.

Isla- We made a treasure map.

Brooke- I liked our RE work this week.

Ephraim- I liked learning about number names.

Mark- We were planting seeds.