Mrs Roy

Little rays of sunshine

The sun has been shining outside and P1R have been little rays of sunshine in class this week!

Our buddies came to visit on Tuesday morning to do some paired reading with us, we were all really excited to see them. They read to us using the library books we had chosen last week. We can’t wait to see them again next week.

We didn’t learn any new sounds this week, instead we spent time practising all the ones we have learned already – m,c,p,s,t,n,a,i,ck,k. We are really good at recognising them in colour or when they are all black. It was fun trying to make words using 3 sounds at a time. We’ve learned that if we say them slowly to begin with, then faster, it helps us say the words, eg. m-a-t says mat, t-i-n says tin. Mrs Roy has asked us to keep practising this at school and at home, it’s called oral blending. We enjoyed using playdough to make the shapes of the letters during our carousel.

In maths we had our final week of learning about numbers to 10 making sure we are all confident in counting, writing the numbers and ordering the numbers. We had some new activities at carousels this week, some of our favourites were lollipop ordering and threading beads. Ask us at home about what we did.

We took advantage of the lovely weather this week and took Trex for a walk. The children decided to go to Dedridge Primary School as this was somewhere we had talked about in class. On our walk we stopped at various points when we saw something of interest – Bernice spotted the local shop, Lloyd spotted the Chinese Take-Away, Paul M spotted Dedridge Primary School, Paul L spotted the big bridge. We also chatted about the importance of using the underpass as the road is very busy in Dedridge. Everyone was very well behaved and passers by commented on this, I was a very proud teacher!! When we returned to class we made a lovely collage of all the places we saw, it’s on display in our P1 area, remember to have a look when you’re next in school. We also wrote super stories about walk and Dawid and Rafay were our star writers – well done boys!

Our wellbeing is very important to us and we are trying to create a wellbeing culture in our classroom. Every morning we check in with Mrs Roy and Mrs Stewart and discuss how we are feeling before recording this on our wellbeing chart. We have also enjoyed circle time and circle games allowing us to work together and share our thoughts. In October our GIRFEC focus is Healthy so we are taking time to discuss this and make sure we are looking after ourselves at school. We are now brushing our teeth daily at school and have all been given lovely new toothbrushes. As well as this we have our 2 slots in the gym hall for physical activities and take part in the daily mile.

We ended the week with a learning conversation with Mrs Purdie, James, Lucy and Ephraim chose to go along to Mrs Purdie’s office with our talking book to discuss their learning. They enjoyed this and especially liked meeting with the nursery children to look at their floorbook too!

Have a great weekend!

Being active and reflective in P1R

Wow, where has this week gone, it’s been full of fun, learning and reflection.

Monday started with European Day of Languages and we decided to start the day by greeting one another in different languages:

Amber chose to use French and said “Bonjour” to the class.

Dawid and Klaudia taught us how to say hello and good morning in Polish “cześć and dzień dobry”.

Ephraim chose to use Spanish and said “Buenos dias”.

Mrs Roy chose to use Italian and said “Buongiorno”.

This theme continued throughout the day and during Maths Klaudia and Dawid taught us how to count to 10 in Polish, we found it tricky but had good fun trying! Then before hometime we did a fun Spanish fitness song which is Mrs Roy’s favourite. Click on the link and have a go at home!

This week we introduced ‘k’ and ‘ck’ to the class and we quickly realised that they sound the same but are written differently. We spent most of our phonics lessons revising our set 1 sounds and blending sounds to make words. Some of the activities we did were: musical sounds, using our ‘big mouth’ to match the sounds, blending with cubes and the mats and using the ipads to practise forming the letters correctly. Next week we will begin to do some assessments with set 1 sounds so will spend some time consolidating and reflecting on what we have learned so far.It has been lovely to read and hear about what the children have chosen to do at home using our new literacy homework menu. Keep up the good work!

In maths we are almost finished learning about the numbers to 10 and progressed onto ordering and number names. We are all getting better at putting the numbers in the right order and did some super independent work during our carousels to show this. We did a cut and stick ordering task and played some fun ordering games on the smartboard, you can do these at home too using the maths homework menu links. Have a look at our Talking Book when you’re next in our class to see our progress so far – we enjoy looking back and reflecting on our learning.

Trex was at the forefront of our IDL this week as we had to do lots of tasks to help him settle in and find his way around the school and local area. In our writing lesson we wrote him a letter which was tricky as we had to do it all by ourselves by having a go and using our phonics and tricky word walls. Mrs Roy was so proud of us all! We received another letter from Trex and decided to make him some picture maps and routes that he could follow to find places near our school. Next week we are hoping to go for a walk on Wednesday to visit one of these places. The most enjoyable activity was using Google Earth to find out where our school was on the map. We all sat down, put on our seatbelts and enjoyed travelling down from space and landing in our school playground. As an extension of this task many children wanted to visit other places so that’s what we did!

Bernice wanted to go to the beach so we went to ‘Burntisland’. Paul L wanted to go to ‘Bubbles’, James wanted to go to ‘his house’ and Klaudia wanted to go to ‘McDonalds’. Try using Google Earth at home to find your own address, it’s great fun!!

PE was all about teamwork and developing our movement skills. We set up lots of different stations to allow us to practise throwing, catching, balancing, running, travelling, etc. These are all really important skills to develop as later on in PE we will look at some specific sports which use these skills. We worked in trios and had to sometimes wait for our turn to use the equipment, share resources and help one another. This links in with our value of teamwork and friendship which is really important to us in P1R.

Peace and unity in P1R

As the title suggests the theme for this short week has been ‘peace’ as we celebrated International Day of Peace on Wednesday.

We began our day by taking part in some yoga to relax our bodies and minds in preparation for the day ahead. The children enjoyed this smartstart and have asked that we continue this next week. Everyone agreed that we all felt ‘peaceful’ when it was finished, even the adults in the room joined in too! We enjoyed learning a song about peace and decided to add some of our own actions to accompany it. The children suggested that we make a video of our singing so that’s what we did! It was fun watching it back in class on the ‘big screen’. In Art we made our very own peace pictures by doing some handprinting and drawing. They all looked lovely and everyone tried really hard to make their doves. These were then used to make a path of peace to our friends in Dedridge Primary School on Friday morning. We were really proud of James and Paul who represented our class and helped to lay the path of peace. Check out our school facebook page for photographs of the community event.

Here is the link to the song we have been learning. Ask your child to sing along and show you the actions.

In literacy we managed to learn 2 more sounds – ‘i’ and ‘n’. We tried out some new carousel activities and two of the favourites were the ‘butterbean sounds’ and the ‘n’ craft activity. Now that we have learned another vowel sound we are quickly realising that we can make more words.

On Thursday we attended our first Achievements Assembly led by Mrs Purdie. It was nice hearing about all the achievements children are having outside of school. Amber shared her success with the whole school and brought in something to show us all.

Finally on Friday we got to take part in ‘Committees’ – all the children were asked to select a committee they would like to be a part of for the school year. Everyone was really looking forward to this as they would get to work with children in other classes and with other members of staff. These will run throughout the school session and many of the children will be involved in projects and events. Ask your child which committee they have joined and what they liked about the morning.

A new addition to P1R

The children are all looking forward to their holiday weekend as a reward for all their hard work and effort in class this week.

Our literacy work got interesting this week as we introduced our first vowel sound ‘a’. The children were excited to slide sounds together to make words and were very proud of themselves when they could read CVC words. Next week we’ll introduce another vowel sound. In writing we used the heading ‘my pet dinosaur’ and I introduced the children to my friend ‘Dino’. We all enjoyed giving Dino a cuddle and then talking about what we would do if we had a pet dinosaur. This then prepared us for writing our stories. Ask your child what they wrote about, there were some super stories.

In maths we continued to work on our counting skills enjoying a variety of tasks to help us with this. We joined in with some counting songs, drew numbers, used pom poms to count, used the number fans for number recognition. One of our favourite activities was ‘subitising’ – this is where we had to count the dot patterns as quickly as we could looking for patterns to help us.

IDL took a twist this week when the boys and girls received a letter from Trex. They were given some tasks to do in preparation for Trex joining the class on Thursday. They had to listen to a description of him and draw a picture, they had to tidy the classroom and lots more. As he was a little shy we had to go hunting to find him and James found him hiding behind the puppet theatre. We’re all excited at the new arrival and can’t wait to teach Trex about our school and local area. We took him on our daily mile on Thursday. Have a look at our topic plan on display in our P1 area.

We decided to do our structured play in the lunch hall this week and set up lots of games. We chose values to focus on and picked teamwork and friendship. It was a lovely afternoon where the children worked in teams and played together.

We rounded off the week with our feast day celebrations. We learned all about our school saint and attended our first school mass. It was a lovely way to end the week.

Enjoy the holiday weekend!!

Learning through play

What a busy week we’ve all had in P1R!

In literacy we introduced ‘s’ and ‘p’ – the children are quickly picking up the sounds and looking forward to introducing our first vowel sound next week. They had fun in the glitter tray finding the hidden sounds, playing literacy games on the ipad and smartboard, sorting out the toys by their beginning sound and lots more.

Our story writing lesson, linked to our topic work, was really productive and everyone had a go at drawing a dinosaur and then describing it using their own words. We chose Nathan and Amber as our star writers this week as they had managed to sound out some of the words in their story. Their work will go on display in our classroom for everyone to see.

In maths we have been working on our counting skills through play based activities. We enjoyed playing hopscotch, tracing number shapes in flour and counting stickers in a matching game. We even had a go at Mrs Roy’s fitness challenge – we had to exercise and count at the same time.

IDL has been great fun as we have continued to work on the theme of dinosaurs. We made dinosaur masks to use in our drama and structured play, made playdough dinosaur models which we then used to film our very own mini-movies using the ipads.

Play was again at the heart of our Goldentime activities where the children chose an activity as a reward for gaining lots of dojo points. Here are some action shots.

I can’t wait to see what we’ll all get up to next week. Remember to bring your biggest smile for the Courier photographer on Monday.

Full timers in P1R

As the title says, P1R were in full days this week and lasted well, the children had bags of enthusiasm and energy for learning across the week. They enjoyed having lunch in the hall with the other classes.

Our phonics focus was ‘m’ and ‘c’ and the children learned about where in their mouth the sounds came from and how to form the letters correctly. They went on a sounds walk around the school looking for objects beginning with ‘m’ and ‘c’ taking it in turns to photograph what they found. Ask your child what colour the sounds are and I’m sure they’ll be able to tell you. They also enjoyed the carousel activities where they were able to use the smartboard and ipads, playdough, strawberry jam and lots more!

using strawberry jam to make the ‘mmm’sound

In maths we continued to practise our counting through games and songs. What great movers we have in P1R! We also used our book study topic in maths and spoke about the size of dinosaurs using mathematical language – tall, short, long, big, small. We had a great idea to then measure our dinosaur drawings from a previous lesson using cubes, I thought this was a good suggestion! We have put our findings on our classroom displays for you to have a look at.

In IDL we also went on a tour of the school as we have some children who went to different nurseries and were keen to have a look around. Mrs Purdie let us all go into her office, it was a bit of a squeeze but we managed to all fit in. Thanks Mrs Purdie! We also made our very own school ties.

The children designed some really nice book covers for Harry and the Dinosaurs and they learned about some of the important features of books – when you’re reading at home see if you can find some of these features.

We wrote our very first stories about our favourite things in big school with a little bit of help from the grown ups, it was great to see all of the children having a go at emergent writing.

PE and the Daily mile was good fun, we only managed half a mile this week but some of us chose to include this in our goal for the term. We played lots of teambuilding games and got used to the big hall. Well done to everyone for remembering their gym kit.

We finished the week with a whole school assembly and then set our personal goals for the term. Come along to Ninian’s Natter and discuss this goal with your child.

We’re all looking forward to next week!

Settling into P1R

What a fantastic start we’ve had to the new school year in P1R! The children have settled in nicely to the routines of the classroom and have kept themselves very busy. Time has been spent getting to know one another and where things are kept in the classroom.

In literacy we have been working on our pencil control making different patterns in preparation for starting our phonics lessons next week.

The children have also been introduced to our book study ‘Harry and the dinosaurs’. We read a story about Harry starting school and shared our own feelings about starting school. We have started a display and played with our class bucket of dinosaurs.

In maths we are developing our understanding of numbers to 10 – counting, sequencing, number formation and lots more.

We went to our first whole school assembly today and earned dojo points for being well behaved and responsible. We then started making our class charter deciding what rights we felt were important to us in our class.

We are all looking forward to starting our full days next week finishing at 3pm, Monday-Thursday.

PE lessons will be on Monday and Wednesday, full gym kit needed on those days.

Here is a glimpse of some of the children in action this week. Individual photographs have also been sent via class dojo – hope you like them!

Memories of P1R

I can’t believe I’m writing the final blog post for P1R this year and what a year it’s been! The children have been amazing and have achieved so much which we are all very proud of.

This week we have enjoyed Sports Day (photographs on dojo), a surprise performance of Treasure Island where we could all show off our pirates knowledge, making memory mindmaps and a Moving Up afternoon with our new teachers.

The children would like to share their favourite memories of P1 in this final blog:

“I have liked science, when we made the 3 little pigs houses and tried to blow them down.” Matthew

” I liked going to the Tall Ship because I got to clean and scrub the decks.” Harry

“I loved Sports Day because I was first and got a special sticker.” Oma

” I have enjoyed playing with my friend Angelina and she let me play on her magic watch.” Alice

“I liked learning about life in the 1950’s and all about pirates.” Angelina

“My favourite memory was going to the Tall Ship because we got to ring the bell and I found the treasure.” Ahmad

“The funniest thing was when Miss Proudfoot wore the dunce hat.” Dominic

“I liked making scarecrow puppets and paintings.” Madison

“My favourite memory was meeting Santa.” Alishba

“I love PE especially when we go outside.” Filip

“I liked going to the Tall Ship because I found some treasure.” James

” I enjoyed going to the Tall Ship because we got to look for mice hiding in the ship.” Maeve

” I liked dressing up, especially as a pirate.” Ryan

“I liked going to the Tall Ship because it was fun.” Ana

As you can see the children have many memories to treasure as I will too! It has been a privilege getting to know each and everyone of them this year and I wish them every success for the future!

Have a safe and happy holiday! (Remember we still have 3 days of school next week.)

Mrs Roy

Strength and determination to succeed!

I can’t believe that our time in P1R is almost ending, we’ve been using the time we have left to consolidate our learning and prepare ourselves for next session.

Monday started off with a fun filled judo session with our friends in P1D where we got to show off our moves. We worked with a partner using our strength and determination to try to defeat one another. I can’t believe how strong everyone is!!

In literacy we have been focusing on the alphabet – revising all the letter sounds/names, putting the alphabet in order. We were very creative with this and made letter shapes using pipecleaners, used the drawing apps and small whiteboards on the ipads to write the alphabet, played alphabetical order games on the smartboard.

Our friends from P6/7 visited us on Thursday morning for some paired reading which we always look forward to, the older children were amazed at how well we are all reading now, some of can even read with expression!

Maths this week has been about addition and subtraction as it has been a little while since we worked on this. Everyone remembered the strategies to use, eg. counting on or back, using the numberline, using our fingers. I tried to trick the children by giving them challenging missing number sums but as always they rose to the challenge and completed them successfully. As the children are so clever they took it in turns to be the teacher at addition bingo, they did a better job than me!!

We ended the week with Ninian’s Natter and our class bake sale. Thank you to everyone who supported this event, the total raised was £172 which will be shared with the nursery as they also donated cakes. The children will decide how best to spend this money next week.

Have a lovely weekend!

Busy bees in P1R

This has been a very busy week for P1R as for two mornings they worked in the P7 classroom to allow the nursery children to spend some time in the P1 classrooms in preparation for next session. The children enjoyed sitting on the ‘big chairs’ and working at the ‘big tables’. As always the children showed how responsible they were and continued with their carousel activities in the P7 classroom.

In literacy we have been revising all the sounds we have learned by doing lots of word building and spelling activities. Next week we will focus on the alphabet particularly looking at vowels/consonants/alphabetical order/letter names in preparation for P2. Mrs Gardner was working with the children on their Fry’s words and they all ‘blew her socks off’ as they know so many words now -well done everyone!!

In maths we have been learning about estimation, which to begin with was tricky. We have been estimating in our carousel activities, here are some of the activities we did: guess how many cubes will fit in our shoes?, measuring with cubes, estimation games on the smartboard, and many more. We all agreed that we are making more ‘accurate’ estimates now.

In IDL we started a mini-topic about minibeasts and enjoyed playing guess who?, writing our very own clues for a guess who game, matching minibeasts, drawing minibeasts and learning about minibeast habitats.

Here were some of the clues the children made up, see if you can guess the minibeast they are describing:

” I have 8 legs and I make webs. I eat insects. I am creepy and black.” Dominic

“I fly beside water. You can almost see through my wings. I have a sharp tail.” James

“I have black spots and I can fly. I have six legs. I am red and black.” Alice

“Butterfly’s are beautiful and pretty and they can fly. They are colourful. They like to go to warm places.” Oma

PE was great fun as we learned a new game, ‘Rounders’. Everyone listened carefully to the rules then split into 2 teams – fielders and batters. I was really impressed at how quickly everyone picked up the rules and we all had good fun out in the sunshine.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!! (Sorry no pictures, technical issues with blog this week)