Mrs Roy

Ship ahoy in P1R

IDL has been really interesting this week as another message in a bottle arrived, Ephraim did a great job of finding it and sharing it with the class. Our task this week was to think about pirate ships and make our very own ship to allow us to join in with Captain Pete Pigeon’s adventures. First, we looked at examples of pirate ships, some big, some small, some fast and some colourful. We also learned about the different features of a ship, ask us to name some of them for you. This led to us building a ship in our classroom for us to play in, we’re almost finished it! In order to join the adventures we also linked our learning to literacy and completed some application forms, we had to choose what job we would like – helmsman, cook, quartermaster, captain, etc. No-one wanted to be the surgeon as we learned that they had the horrible job of cutting pirate’s legs or arms off!!

We love Fridays as we get to share our pirate homework tasks, some examples this week were: Dawid made a treasure chest, Isla made a treasure map, Lucy made a pirate ship, James made a pirate passport and Abigail brought in pirate cakes for the whole class (they looked and tasted great.)

Wednesday was a special day as we celebrated ‘Burns Day’. We had a traditional Burns Supper which began with an ode to an haggis, it was tricky to understand some of the words as they were in Scots language. This is something we would like to look at again and learn some traditional Scots words. Everyone wore a piece of tartan and then we raised a glass(of irn-bru) to toast the haggis. It was great to see everyone having a wee taste of some of the Scottish food – haggis, neeps, tatties, oatcakes and shortbread. Check your child’s online journal for a wee video!

Subtraction continues to be our focus in numeracy and this week we have been learning about words that mean the same as subtraction, ask us to tell you all about it. Our favourite activity was subtraction smash, all you need is 10 balls of play dough and a dice to play. Try it at home, it’s great fun and can get a bit messy! We also used our hopscotch mat to practise jumping back as that’s what we need to do when we subtract – Start at the biggest number and then jump back. Some of us are now realising that using cubes is also a good way of doing subtraction sums, it makes the sums easier to work out.

In phonics we have been working on ai and oa, these are sounds from our Vowel House story. We have sorted pictures, played smartboard spelling games, circled the ai words and made snails for our phonics display. Next week is a revision week so there will be no new sounds in the red jotter. Our reading is improving every week, we are all trying hard to sound out words and use our knowledge of Fry’s words, it’s really important to practise these as much as you can. Check your homework folders on Monday to see if you have any new ones to learn.

We finished the week by going to the P4/5 assembly, they taught us more about World Religions which linked nicely to what we had been doing in class last week for World Religion Day-thank you P4/5. We also completed a task to put in the time capsule we are making to celebrate our 40th Anniversary which is next week, we are all looking forward to the celebrations!

UN Ambassador’s update

Today we had some visitors from St Margaret’s Academy to speak to us about the ‘St Margaret’s for Malawi’ project.

We learned about a school in Malawi and how cramped some of the classrooms are. They are not brightly decorated like ours and rely on natural light as there is no electricity. The children are fed one bowl of porridge and for many of the children this is their only meal for the day, often eaten outside on the dirty ground. There can be over 90 children in a P2 classroom with only one teacher compared to our P2 classroom of 25 pupils and one teacher.

St Margaret’s staff and pupils have been working on the Malawi project to support these children in their lives and education. They are going over in July to help build a classroom and are planning on raising funds and taking over bags for every child that they visit. We are going to support them with this project during Lent. Watch out for more information on the weekly updates, dojo and Facebook.

A huge thank you to our visitors for taking time in their busy prelim week to come down and speak to us!

Ahoy there mateys!

What a busy week we’ve had in P1R, we have lots to tell you about.

The focus in phonics this week was our new sounds ‘l’ and ‘r’. We can’t believe how many sounds we have learned so far, our ‘big mouth’ on the wall is running out of space! In carousels we used letter join to practise our letter formation, we all agreed that handwriting is a skill for life and something we should keep practising at school and home. Mrs Scott took time today to organise a learning families event to show families how to use it at home. We also played phonics games on the education city website which is one of our favourite sites and used the letter cubes for blending activities.

Subtraction continued to be the focus in numeracy and we are quickly learning the different mathematical language associated with this, our pirate subtraction song, ‘when you subtract with a pirate’ has helped with this. Carousels were great fun as most of the activities were practical play based activities – ten pin bowling(using plastic cups and a sponge ball), takeaway tower (all you need is 10 pieces of Lego in a tower and a dice), subtraction screening( counters and coloured paper) and interactive smart board games (rabbit take away).

In PE we are really enjoying our gymnastics block where we are exploring how we use our bodies and the space around us. We used a ‘space soundtrack’ in our lessons, eg. Space shapes/jumps, astronauts game, mediation to music. Using the mats and equipment is allowing us to practise turn taking, sharing and teamwork.

IDL has been ‘awesome’ as we continue to learn about the life of pirates who lived over 300 years ago. Ask us what we have learned about Anne Bonny and Blackbeard. We linked our learning using what we had learned to make WANTED posters for our displays, they look great! We also worked in small teams to make and build a pirate ship for our display, we are really proud of our efforts and teamwork. To make us feel like pirates we all made pirate hats, even Mrs Roy, or Ruby Roy as she likes to be known in pirate land! Our motto for structured play this term is ‘Work like a captain, play like a pirate’. We have set up different areas in our classroom: treasure chest maths area, pirate writing table, pirate role play, pirate story corner, pirate puppets and the pirate ship station. It’s been lovely to see each other’s IDL homework tasks, we have been taking photos for our pirates display.

We celebrated World Religion Day on Wednesday and enjoyed learning about Christianity and Islam. We used a smartboard activity to help us learn about the different signs and symbols associated with the religions, we even tweeted about our learning.

The week ended with Committees:

Paul M- we learned about UNICEF’s day for loose change. Every class has to collect loose change in their wee box.

Abigail-we made posters about the dangers of litter.

Ephraim-we learned about Fairtrade food.

Lucy- we thought about how we could show love to others.

James-we learned about Chinese New Year.

Phew, that’s all for this week, remember to try out some of the activities at home if you have a spare minute or two!

Celebrate World Religion Day – Wednesday 18th January 2017

Article 30 of the UN Convention states that: You have the right to practice your own culture, language and religion – or any you choose. Minority and indigenous groups need special protection of this right.

Whether you’re Hindu, Jewish, Catholic, Shinto, Buddhist, or one of a million other faiths, World Religion Day is your chance to share your culture with others and take an opportunity to learn from others about theirs.

World Religion Day is easy to observe, you need merely take the time and effort to study the faiths of the world around you with an open mind. World Religion Day is about learning about the religions that shape the world around you, and becoming aware of how many there are.

Take some time to share openly and learn about what those around you believe, and maybe do a little research into your favorite culture to learn a bit about its foundational religions.

Whether you’re learning about the Hindu faith with its thousands of Gods, or precisely how the thousands of denominations of Christianity grew out of the Judaic faith thousands of years ago, World Religion Day is your opportunity to broaden your horizons.

Speak to another with an open heart and open mind, and share what your religion has to say, and then take the time to listen to them talk about theirs from a place of understanding and love.

Image result for world religion day

International week in P1R

This was the theme of the week across the school and the children took part in various learning experiences to explore the word ‘international’ and Global Citizenship. We looked at friendship as an important value for all to have and shared what we thought were good qualities in a friend. Here are some of our suggestions:

Klaudia-someone who plays with you

Lloyd-someone who likes the same things as you

Brooke- someone who is kind

Abigail-someone who loves you

We then asked some of our friends in the classroom to share their culture and mother tongue language with us. Klaudia and Dawid taught us some Polish phrases which we tweeted about! We continued this international theme by looking at children who lived in Malawi as we are linking up with St Margaret’s Academy during Lent to do some work with them on Malawi.

In addition to the above we also continued with our core learning and IDL learning throughout the week.

In phonics we learned all about the ‘ee’ and ‘oo’ sounds who live in Vowel House. We played sorting games, practised writing them and lots more. Did you know they are joining letters but only make one sound? We are really good at joining them and letter join helps us with this.

In writing the focus was to use our imaginations and think about he title ‘If I were a pirate…’ We listened to a song and a poem to inspire us then all had a turn at sharing our thoughts.

Lucy would shoot the cannons.

Dexter would sail the seven seas.

James would steer the ship.

Well done to our 4 star writers this week, check out your dojo messages to see if you were one of these!

Maths was great fun as we learned all about pattern and symmetry. We did lots of practical tasks, sponge pattern painting, smartboard symmetry, pirate symmetry using the smart pals, finish the pattern activities, Pom Pom patterns, peg board patterns. We all agreed that it was easier to stick with 2 colours when making patterns as using 3 got a bit tricky.

PE was exhausting as we have a started a new block of gymnastics, this weeks focus was on balancing and rolling. Ask us about the space shapes we learned and try some of them at home, the squatty alien was the trickiest!

Pirates have taken over the classroom, aarrrr…we’re all enjoying our new topic and have made a start at transforming our classroom and area into pirate territory. We did some fantastic pirate portraits using paint and oil pastels, they are on display on our new Art Gallery wall. We also drew pirates based on the descriptions we were given, they turned out well. We learned about the pirate code and some of the jobs the crew did. Check your letters in future, if you see a black spot it means the pirates are after you!! It has been great to see some of the activities you have been doing at home too-keep up the good work!

Finally we had something sad to think about on Friday, we had to say goodbye, Adios, Au Revoir to Miss Smyth. We have really enjoyed her visits to our classroom and playground and will miss her smile and laughter. Thank you for all your help and we wish you luck on your next adventure!

School-Home Learning: Here are some apps, websites and videos we have used to support our learning in class this week.

http://www.ictgames.com/dinosaurEggs_phonics/index.html

http://resources.hwb.wales.gov.uk/VTC/simple_patterns/eng/Introduction/StarterActivity.htm

http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/math/games/preschool-kindergarten/pattern-matcher/

http://resources.hwb.wales.gov.uk/VTC/simple_patterns/eng/Introduction/MainSession.htm

http://www.abcya.com/shape_patterns.htm

iPad app: spelling bug

iPad app: doodle app (use this to practise writing the sounds you know – make sure you use the correct colour)

Videos:

Article of the Week-Talk task

As we are celebrating all things ‘international’ this week in school we have chosen Article 30 as your talk task:

In St Ninian’s we are very proud of all the different nationalities we represent. If you know someone who comes from a different country to you, talk to each other about your language, culture, etc.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all our friends and family! It’s been a busy start to the year and P1R got straight back to business this week with lots of learning.

The focus of the week was Vision and Values.We spent time looking at our school vision statement and values in the classroom and what it meant to us. We discussed that we should try to be like Jesus when we are at school and here are some of the children’s thoughts:

We should work hard-Dexter

Be kind-Brooke

Make friends and play together-Amber

Pray together-Ephraim

Share with one another-Klaudia

Have good manners-Lucy

Respect everyone in our school-Dexter

We then decided to look at our class charter and refresh this for the New Year, we chose a pirate theme.

In literacy we had some revision of all the sounds we know and spent time wordbuilding. Next week we will move onto ee and oo.

In maths we finished off our addition topic by learning the number bonds for 10. We watched a news flash to help us and also watched a video about rainbow facts which helped us remember the linking number facts for 10. We also had another go at missing number facts using the number line to help us.

IDL was exciting as we found a message in a bottle, a pirate hat and a pirate eye patch. The letter was from Pirate Pete Pigeon asking us to join him on the Squeaky Sail for some pirate adventures. We’re really excited about this. We used our talking book and visible plan to think of ideas for our adventures. Over the coming weeks we are hoping to transform our classroom and area with some pirate props.

All about numbers in P1R

This week our school took part in a numeracy review and our learners were able to showcase what they have been learning in numeracy. James and Lucy were selected to meet some special visitors and talk about their learning-well done to both of them for speaking so confidently!! On Wednesday Miss Smyth and Mr McDowall, the Depute Headteacher from St Margaret’s visited our classroom and joined in with our number talks lesson and a numeracy carousel. They were really impressed at how well the children could talk about their number work and enjoyed using play dough, the ten frames and the iPads. Everyone was keen to share what they had learned about addition and number stories.

The children were all excited this week when we began learning about Advent. We all went over to our class altar and set up our purple colours and the manger were baby Jesus lay. We all learned that Advent is a time of waiting and preparing. On Thursday we also began opening our Advent calendar to help us count down the days to Christmas.

Looking after ourselves is really important to us and we managed to get outside to do our daily mile. Everyone is managing to run more and walk less! In PE we are getting really skilled at dancing and impressed Mr McCurdy in the Grand Ole Duke of York dance. We are also looking after our teeth and brushing them during the school day.

In literacy we learned our last sound for this term, z. Everyone made their very own z zebra and thought of different words with z in them. Bingo was one of the favourite activities of the week. Our focus for the rest of term will be blending all of the sounds we have learned and spelling. We have been continuing to work on our Frys words and our word wall is looking very busy. Some of us are now using these words in our writing and are looking for them in our reading books.

Article of the week -Talk Task

This week’s article for discussion is: Article 12 – You have the right to give your opinion, and for adults to listen and take it seriously.

Image result for article 12 UN Convention

Think about how you can have your say at home or at school in decisions that affect you.

Busy little elves in P1R

This week the elves have taken over our blog and want to share their highlights of the week:

Bernice: We have been learning our Fry’s words.

Dexter: We have been started practising our Busy Busy Bethlehem show.

Dawid: Our new sounds this week were ‘v and x’.

Isla and Brooke: We wrote stories about Santa’s workshop and played in the different parts of Santa’s workshop.

Paul L: I like playing the car and the Santa game on the ipad.

Klaudia: We have been learning our number stories.

James: We have all been trying hard to earn lots of dojo points.

Mark and Amber: We made a pictogram showing our favourite toys.

Abigail: In Art we were making Christmas trees.

Ephraim: We got to sing our Snowflake song and record it for a Christmas CD.

Wow elves I can’t believe how much you have managed to fit into the week. Well done everyone!

We need to say one last thing and that’s thank you and goodbye to Miss McGuire who is leaving us today to return to University. She has been a great help in the classroom and we hope she comes back to visit soon!