Mrs Roy

Our weekly news

We can’t believe it’s Friday again, the weeks are flying by in P1! Here are some of the highlights of the week (sorry for the lack of photographs but we have been so busy that we forgot to take them):

In writing this week we learned a new skill, editing and redrafting. We all looked at each others pirate adventure stories and thought of ways to up level them and change the greens to pink. We then rewrote our stories onto a scroll. Some of the stories are being entered into the Young Writers competition and we decided to put the others into a book for our class library.

In numeracy we continued to learn about subtraction and focused on subtracting from 8 and 9. It’s important that we have good number sense and understand different strategies for solving subtraction stories. We enjoyed using the subtracting apps on the ipad and we all managed to log onto sumdog during our number carousels. Another of our favourite activities was the space subtraction puzzle. We played a new game this week ‘bus stop’. The aim of the game was to roll 2 dice then move your bus the correct number of spaces on the board. If you landed on a plus sign you got to add passengers to the bus, if you landed on minus you had to take away passengers. Well done to Paul L and Nathan who were our winner’s!

Image result for stop the bus game

To finish our pirates topic we made some healthy pirate snacks using cheese and apples. Before we started we had to learn about the skills and equipment needed. We also discussed the importance of washing our hands before handling food.

We want to share this video with you about being germ smart:

Everyone enjoyed the afternoon and the best bit was eating the leftovers!! We were also able to make lots of learning links, Paul M made links to symmetry when slicing the apple, James cut his apple into halves, Ephraim cut the cheese into cubes. Here are some photos of us hard at work!!

We finished the week by watching some growth mindset dojo clips. These reminded us about the importance of exercising our brains and not giving up, especially if we are finding things tricky to begin with. Instead of saying “I can’t.. say I can’t YET!”

Pupil voice:

Lucy – I enjoyed Easter structured play.

James – I enjoyed learning about food technology.

Klaudia – I liked playing with the soft toys at Golden time.

Isla – I like my new reading book.

Mark – In number work we have been learning about subtraction. I can do my sums in my head.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the spring sunshine while it lasts!!

Weekly update

Another busy week in P1R.

In phonics we met a rude clown who taught us about the ‘Th’ sounds, Mrs Roy made us all stick our tongues out when practising this sound, have a go at home. We played a cool game on the smartboard which revised sh, ch and th where we had to fill the rocket tank with fuel. The game was called Letter Planet and it is on the Topmarks website if you want to play it again. We also made th books and practised spelling th words using magnetic letters.

Subtraction was the focus in numeracy this week and we learned more about mathematical language, did you know there are different words that mean the same as subtraction? We enjoyed playing the Lego subtraction board game with a partner to help us in our numeracy learning and also made subtraction ice cream cones. We also went on a visit to the local shop to finish off our money topic. Everyone had 20p to spend and had to look at the price labels before making our choices. Klaudia and Isla had a great idea to team up and put their money together as they saw something which was 30p, well done girls, good problem solving and teamwork! Nathan found it tricky choosing as there were so many things he liked. Dexter was able to buy 4 things with his 20p, he added the prices together to make 20p.

In RE we were looking after the new life we had planted and we were delighted to see how our seeds had grown. We’ve taken them home now to show our families. We decided to make our Lenten promises and came up with some lovely ideas – Ephraim will help look after his little brother, Brooke will give to the poor, as a class we decided to say an extra prayer every day in school. We also learned about St Patrick while listening to some traditional Irish music – Mrs Docherty visited us to show us her Irish dancing!!

Our pirate adventures continued this week and we all made pirate masks to use in some role-play activities. Isla enjoyed taking videos and pictures as we acted out our pirate adventures. We also wrote stories about being marooned on a desert island which we are going to submit to the Young Writer’s competition. There were some great imaginative ideas and a selection of WOW words.

Continue reading “Weekly update”

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.

Bookworms in P1R

What a busy week it has been, we have lots of things to share with you this week.

As the title suggest books have been a big focus in school as we celebrated World Book Day, lots of us dressed us as characters from books.

Our P7 buddies continue to visit us weekly to do paired reading during smart start time. We always look forward to their visits. The PM nursery also visited us this week for a shared reading session with Mrs Young. The boys and girls from the nursery have started their transition programme so will be visiting us more often. James commented that he remembered coming to P1 for World Book Day when be was a nursery boy. How time flies… We decided to become authors in our writing lesson and made our very own picture books. We had to remember to put a title, author, page numbers and pictures, just like in real books. Here are some of the titles chosen by the children:

Lloyd – The Busy Road

Lucy- The Busy teacher

Brooke – The wizard of Oz

Nathan- The tornado

Everyone wrote independently and some even took on the fantastic challenge to add sentences to their stories. Dawid asked if we could go and share our stories with Mrs Purdie AKA Gangsta Granny so that’s what we did. We have also downloaded some new ebooks on our iPads, ask us what ones we have read this week.

Money has still been the main focus in mathematics. We have been learning about more coins this week, 20p, 50p,£1, £2. We all agree that the pounds are the trickiest to remember. Next week we will focus on number names to 10 as we noticed that many coins have the words written on them but we sometimes found it tricky to read them. One of our favourite activities was coin rubbing although sometimes the coins moved around as we rubbed! Try some more rubbing at home, this is one of the homework tasks on the maths menu this term.

In PE we continued to practise our skills in hockey, dribbling, passing, tackling and shooting. Mr Mc Curdy was so impressed with us that he let us play small matches.

On Tuesday we learned about Shrove Tuesday, a day when we have a feast before the beginning of Lent. Mrs Caskie kindly brought in pancakes for us to join in with the celebrations. Then the next day we changed our altar colour to purple as this is the colour for Lent. We also added some daffodils to our altar to represent new beginnings, a sign of Spring, thank you to James for bringing these in. We all joined in with the Ash Wednesday service then came back to class to do some self portrait pictures using pencils and charcoal for the ashes on our foreheads. P4 also did their class assembly about Lent helping us understand more about this important time in the church year. The week ended with a visit from some boys and girls who go to St Margaret’s but used to come to St Ninian’s, they told us all about Malawi and how we can help children who love there. During Lent we are going to try to fill some bags with gifts for the Malawi children.

One last thing to share, we had some visitors in our classroom on Tuesday, they were impressed with how hard everyone was working on their phonics tasks, well done boys and girls, Mrs Roy is very proud of you all! You are all super stars!

Money, money, money

This week we have continued to celebrate Catholic Education Week in our school and discussed how we are developing as a community of faith.

We thought about how we could develop as a faith community at home, school and in our parish. We also made a beautiful display ‘Recipe for a faith community’ then wrote our very own recipes. We finished the week with a whole school faith assembly.

Real life contexts have been the focus in maths as we have started learning about money. We have learned to recognise coins from 1p to £2, ask us what colours they are or to find some in your purse! We have also been working out different ways to make totals, Paul M knew that 100 pennies makes £1 and Ephraim knew that 200 pennies made £2 – aren’t they clever!! Our pirate sweet shop opened this week which has allowed us to use money in a real life context and we have been sorting coins in the emergency money banks. Mrs Roy also let us look in her purse to identify what coins she had, this was great fun. She taught us about notes and bank cards too.

In literacy the sounds are getting harder, this week we learned ‘qu and j’, everyone worked really hard to learn these new sounds through our carousel activities – letterjoin magic words on the ipads, choice and challenge tasks, making jellyfish, qu bingo and lots more! Ask your child what challenges they chose this week in literacy and how they self-assessed themselves.

Mr McCurdy tried something new this week, you had to use a large stick and a ball…..it was hockey. We all impressed him with our dribbling skills and keeping our eyes on the ball when moving around the hall. Nathan really got the hang of this and earned an extra dojo point.

Mrs Purdie asked to see some of our jotters this week, she was really pleased to see how hard everyone had been working and how busy everyone had been. Thank you to the families who came along to Ninian’s Natter to have some learning conversations in the classroom, the children were really proud to show off their learning!

Next week we will be welcoming some visitors to our school and are looking forward to them visiting our classroom to join in with our learning.

Dress Down For a Pound Day

Today we held a ‘Dress Down for a Pound’ day to raise money for the St Margaret’s for Malawi project. The total raised was £163, well done to everyone who took part and donated to this worthwhile cause (thank you to 2 of our UN Ambassador’s, Erin and Neave for counting all the coins!) We will present a cheque to the pupils and staff from St Margaret’s during Lent as they are going to lead an assembly for us to share their plans for the Malawi project.

Keep checking the blog and class dojo for further activities during Lent!

Talking about learning

This week the children decided to write their own blog post and share their views about their learning this week. I managed to have my say too!

Klaudia – I enjoyed dressing up at Goldentime.

James – I’ve learned about subtraction.

Rafay – I was playing sumdog on the ipads.

Amber – I enjoyed Fr Kenneth’s assembly.

Dexter – I enjoyed Big Maths Beat that on Friday.

Brooke – I enjoyed phonics this week.

Bernice – I liked dressing up at Goldentime.

Isla – I liked learning about pirates.

Abigail – I enjoyed everything!

Dawid – I enjoyed playing the car game and sumdog on the ipads.

Lloyd – I learned 5 + 4 = 9.

Ephraim – I enjoyed playing the car game and the maths apps.

Lucy – I liked topic work.

Mark – I enjoyed lunch!

Paul M – I liked playing with my friend Isla.

Sahara – I liked using the maths apps on the ipads.

Mrs Roy – Catholic Education week has begun in school and we have been learning about the life and work of Mother Teresa. We watched a short video about her and then wrote 1 thing we had learned for our RE display.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHs2qlvms0k

We also started talking about what a ‘community of faith’ should look like, what would be the key ingredients. Next week we will continue our lessons on these themes. We also went to a very special assembly led by Fr Kenneth, he shared photographs and stories from his recent visit to Jerusalem.

Catholic Education Week 2017

Catholic Education Week 12th to 18th February 2017

THEME: “Developing as a community of faith and learning”

“What makes the Catholic school distinctive is its attempt to generate a community climate that is permeated by the Gospel spirit of freedom and love.”

This theme has been inspired by the Charter for Catholic schools and the work that school communities are currently embarking on as they “Develop in Faith”. All classes will be involved in lessons which focus on the above theme looking at different characteristics of the charter for Catholic Schools. There will also be a mass offered for the St Ninian’s family at 9.30am on Sunday 19th February in St Philip’s, all welcome.

Article of the Week

Message from UN Ambassadors:

Article of the Week: You should be able to keep things private, unless the law says there’s a reason you can’t. (Article 16)

This is a good article for discussion this week as Safer Internet Day 2017 will be celebrated globally on Tuesday 7th February with the slogan ‘Be the change: Unite for a better internet’. It is important that we promote the safe, responsible and positive use of digital technology for children and young people.

Celebrating our 40th Anniversary

This has been a really special week as we celebrated our 40th Anniversary on Wednesday. Archbishop Cushley celebrated mass with us which was really lovely. We all felt very special and joined in with the singing and mass responses. The celebrations continued onThursday when it was our Superhero funday. We did arts and crafts, had a special Goldentime, had a piece of anniversary cake and then finished the day with a superhero movie! Thank you to all the P3-P7 children who invited us to their dress rehearsal on Friday, we all thought you were awesome!

In literacy the focus was still on ai and oa. Having a second week on these sounds has helped us become more confident in word building and reading. We really liked the ai board game activity,we worked with an elbow partner to take it in turns to roll the dice and read the ai words. We really impressed Mrs Roy at the muddled sentences station,we worked with a partner to read the words and put them in the right order. We used our knowledge of punctuation to help us. We have added some new phonics apps to our iPads and had great fun trying them out.

Subtraction has been our focus in numeracy and we introduced the number line for taking away. We also remembered last week’s rule when writing subtraction stories, start with the biggest number first. Everyone enjoys using the interactive dice on the smartboard to help us choose numbers for our subtraction sums.

Our pirate adventure is in full flow as we on have our own pirate ship and lots of work on display. Mrs Thomson helped us make our own cutlasses which look amazing! We learned about what pirates like to do in their spare time as this was something we had wrote on our learning wall at the beginning of the topic. Then we had an afternoon of being a pirate and trying out some of their favourite hobbies – playing card games, singing, dancing, telling pirate stories, making own our music with recorders.

In PE we have been trying really hard to perfect our balances, jumps and rolls in gymnastics. We have been peer assessing one another by watching each other and then thinking of 2 stars and a wish to say about their performance. We also learned how to link our movements to make a sequence.