Mrs Keegan

P2/3 Weekly Update

What a fun and busy week we have had in P2/3 to round off a fabulous term.

Firstly, congratulations to our P3 children who made their First Reconciliation on Saturday. The children were a credit to St Ninian’s!

We were all so excited to be the audience for the upper school production of The Gospel Show and were so impressed with the talent in the upper school.

We have continued to use our new learning ladders this week and made our own movie to share our learning . You can see our movie in the OneNote profiles. We’re all very proud of it.

Our writing this week was inspired by last week’s tennis festival. When we left James Young High School to head back to St Ninian’s we all had tired legs and were tempted to hop onto one of the waiting coaches and ask the driver to take us back to school! This made us think – what kind of adventure could we have on a bus journey? So we worked in pairs to create imaginative adventure stories. We read our stories to P5 this morning using Microsoft Teams and then P5 gave us feedback on our writing.

Multiplication has been key for P2/3 and we have worked on the five and ten times table. Everyone was multiplying with great confidence by the end of the week.

We rounded off our Science topic by investigating the changing states of water and had great fun helping little lego figures escape from blocks of ice. Much team work and excitement was involved.

Our digital learning skills developed this week as we not only programmed our Beebots, we programmed them to race against each other.

Have a lovely Easter break.

From Mrs Keegan, Mrs Caskie and P2/3

Primary 2/3 Weekly Update

This week our highlights have been:

We loved the tennis festival at James Young High School. It inspired us to play more tennis and we enjoyed meeting new friends from other schools.

We have been busy making Mother’s Day Cards (sshh, it is a secret!). Everyone used a range of skills to create beautiful work.

In Art we created Easter pictures with Mrs Young.

In PE we had great fun playing ball and running games.

Miss Young, a B.Ed student, has been working with us this week and we have loved having her in our class.

We have been busy caring for our potatoes in Science and we have been so excited to see them begin to grow.

Look out for our new ladders which we have created to help us when we are stuck. Everyone brainstormed their ideas then we created our own ladder.

Our multiplication and subtraction skills are really improving and we’re looking forward to moving on to division soon.

We have all got our own ‘fuzzy’ and they help us when we’re sad, as part of our Building Resilience with Skipper programme. Everyone has shared experiences of when their ‘fuzzies’ have helped them this week.

In PM Writing we have continued to work on recounts. Everyone agrees that it is easier to write our recounts in stages and that our recounts have really improved. We have loved looking for verbs and adjectives in the texts.

Some children are looking forward to making the Sacrament of Reconciliation tomorrow and have worked really hard to prepare for this important step in their Sacramental journey.

Update from Blake, Mark D., Abu Bakr, Joshua, Lloyd, Paul, Mirren, Nathan and Abby.

Primary 2/3 News

This week in P2/3 we have been writing recounts about our experiences in the lunch hall. We’ve thought about structuring our recounts to include an orientation, a sequence of events and a personal comment. We’ve thought lots about using past tense verbs and ambitious vocabulary too and were all very proud of our recounts.

In Maths we have used our new rekenreks to make numbers by swooshing the numbers along the number rack. Everyone loved sharing their strategies with partners and with the class. Our work on addition, subtraction and multiplication is continuing and it is lovely to see how the children are using their Number Talks strategies to support their work in Maths.

In Science we have planted cress seeds which are beginning to show signs of sprouting already. We also investigated the seeds of various fruits this week using magnifying glasses. There was great excitement when a tiny shoot appeared in our potato bag today and we can’t wait to see how big it is by Monday! We also developed our Science skills by classifying animals into agreed sets.

Everyone has been delighted to welcome our box of Buddy Bears to Primary 2/3. Thank you to all the kind and talented knitters who have made this possible for us.

Have a lovely weekend.

From Mrs Keegan, Mrs Caskie and P2/3

This week in P2/3

Here are some of our highlights from another busy week in P2/3.

Stay, Play and Be Well was a great success on Tuesday and it was lovely to have so many parents join us and share our learning.

In literacy we have focused on writing recounts with our new resource, PM Writing. Look out for our fabulous recounts in our writing jotters.

We had a lovely surprise this week when our new playroom opened for action. Everyone has had such a great time exploring all of the new activities.

In Spanish we have continued to learn weather phrases as well as learning our phrase of the fortnight. The children have taken the lead in next week’s learning and planned games to help them say the phrases now that they are able to listen to the phrases.

We were delighted to welcome Father on Wednesday as he helped us to prepare for Reconciliation.

Reading has been another highlight this week and everyone loved BEAR time when we read with out bears. We’re also reading a novel by ‘Attack of the Demon Dinner Ladies’ by Pamela Butchart which is making us all giggle.

In maths we have been using arrays to help us multiply and everyone agreed that their favourite way to create an array was to use Cheerios.

Have a lovely weekend.

From Mrs Keegan, Mrs Caskie and P2/3

Primary 2/3 update

This week we had a lovely visit from Arch Bishop Leo Cushley.

On Tuesday we investigated Shrove Tuesday traditions and sampled some pancakes. This led us to write imaginative stories about a runaway pancake on Wednesday. We also took part in our Ash Wednesday service to mark the beginning of Lent. We have spoken about our Lenten promises.

We celebrated World Book Day and had a super DEAR (drop everything and read). We also listened to one of our favourite authors, Alex T. Smith, speak about how he finds inspiration for his writing and then visited ‘Story Detective Stations’ to create our own stories. The stories we created were fantastic! There was much excitement as Mirren and Abby headed off to Waterstone’s to choose some new books for our class library and our new books have been much in demand.

Karen from RHET visited us on Friday and helped us to plant potatoes as part of our Science topic. We’ve entered a competition with other schools to see who can grow the heaviest crop of potatoes – but we’re most excited about eating our potatoes.

Another highlight on Friday was our story massage session when Mrs Stewart and Mrs McCabe taught us how to use massage. We all agreed that it helped us to feel peaceful and calm.

Our work in writing this week has focused on recounts and we’re developing our skills in using nouns, past tense verbs and time and sequence words. Look our for our recounts next week.

In maths we’ve been working on subtraction and multiplication. P2 developed their digital skills during maths when they made videos to demonstrate how we use arrays to solve multiplication problems.

Have a great weekend.

From Mrs Caskie, Mrs Keegan and P2/3

P2/3 Weekly Update

The final week in January has been a busy one in Primary 2/3.

P2 have continued their investigations into people in the past with local significance and investigated James Young this week. Look our for the fabulous fact files which they have produced!

P3 have continued with rehearsals for their show and it is looking great. The show promises to be fantastic!

Everyone is looking forward to Safer Internet Day next week. There are lots of great resources for parents at https://www.vodafone.co.uk/mobile/digital-parenting/archive .

This week has seen the start of our time topic in maths. We began by looking at the seasons of the year then the months of the year. Everyone loved learning the months of the year through this song.

We also had fun sequencing the months of the year by playing this game.

Now that we’re all confident with the seasons and the months we have moved on to telling the time to o’clock and half past – quarter to and quarter past will follow this week. We found this website useful to help us work on these times.

In reading we had the opportunity to reflect on our recent reading. Everyone chose their favourite character from their reading book and drew their character then explained why they liked that character best. It was great to see so many amazing adjectives in this writing.

Everyone was so excited to arrive in school on Friday and to see that our Mighty Writer board had been mounted on the wall so we can use it as much as we wish!

We had a fabulous discussion about feedback on our learning this morning. 23 of the 24 children decided that they liked spoken feedback rather than written feedback on their work so we’re trying to build more time for this into our classroom. We’ve explored Glow this week and tried recording feedback on our OneNote profiles- look out for more of this over the next few weeks.

Have a lovely weekend!

from Mrs Keegan and Mrs Caskie

P2/3 Weekly Update

What a busy week it has been in P2/3.

In Spanish we have revised our learning on numbers to 31 and have been working on saying our age to each other. We had great fun using our language to play games and sing songs.

Everyone loved listening to the story of Jack and the Beanstalk in Word Boost this week then discussing nouns, verbs and adjectives. Our learning then too k us on to write our own stories about Jack and the Beanstalk using Mighty Writer.

We have extended our digital skills this week by using Microsoft Word to type our spelling words. We had great fun changing sizes and fonts.

In maths we have worked on addition, giving change and number sequences to 100. You can work on number sequences at home by counting in ones from different starting points such as 21, 39, 43. Remember to try and cross a decade when you’re counting.

Work has continued on our One Note profiles and it has been lovely to read of the children’s activities in the Wider Achievement section.

P2 have continued to investigate historical figures with local relevance and made fabulous fact files about St Margaret this week. Do visit our classroom to read the fact files.

Rehearsals continue for our P3-5 show and P3 are working extra hard to learn their lines and songs.

from Mrs Keegan and Mrs Caskie

Happy New Year from Primary 2/3

Welcome back and a very Happy New Year from Primary 2/3!

It has been a really fun and busy week with lots of exciting learning.

In Maths we have been learning to give change and we have been counting coins, making different amounts of money, ordering amounts and working out change.

Everyone loved listening to our Word Boost story, The Dragon Machine, and we’ve been trying hard to use our new boost words – havoc, consult, wreck, advice, rattle and sink.

Our digital learning has focused on word processing this week and we have been experimenting with size, font and colour as we logged on then typed Happy New Year. We were able to use our expertise to write instructions for other children on how to type using Microsoft Word. This gave us a chance to use lots of fabulous sentence openers and amazing vocabulary.

Primary 3 took to the stage on Friday as they auditioned for parts in our forthcoming show, A Blast From The Past. We’re all looking forward to rehearsals beginning on Tuesday.

We all thought hard about our school vision and values during Vision and Values week. Look out for our work on our values in our learning journals.

Everyone loved learning about the weather in Spanish and in particular making Spanish fortune tellers to help us learn.

Next week we will start our home learning again so look out for the homework bags and jotters coming home on Monday.

Have a lovely weekend.

From Mrs Caskie and Mrs Keegan

Primary 2/3 Update

It is the last week of school for 2018! What a week it has been, with so many fun activities.

Everyone had a fabulous time at our Christmas party on Tuesday and we even had very special visit from Santa Claus. Our dancing was amazing – we’d worked really hard to perfect our dances.

In literacy we wrote character descriptions of Santa Claus and did a great job describing him. Look out for all the adjectives in our writing jotters.

On Tuesday we had a very special visit from Joshua’s mum who came to help us round off our Community topic by telling us all about her work at St John’s hospital. We loved listening to Joshua’s mum and asking lots of questions!

Digital learning has been a focus in class this week as we used Microsoft Word to write ‘Merry Christmas’ then chose our own fonts, colour and size. We even managed to record this learning using the iPads.

Our Christmas shop opened for business this week and we’ve had great fun using our numeracy skills to count money and give change.

Everyone has now updated their GIRFEC wheels and reviewed their learning for the term. These are now on the One Note profiles and the children would love it if you could leave a comment once you’ve read them.

Another highlight of the week was a ‘Movie and Mince Pie’ afternoon where we all made our own mince pies – the pies smelt delicious!

Tomorrow is our Christmas singalong and we’re all looking forward to singing ‘Ring The Bells’l.

Have a wonderful Christmas.

from Mrs Caskie and Mrs Keegan

Primary 2/3 Update

What a busy week it has been with 3 Nativity performances for our P2 children and then a visit to the pantomime for everyone! Primary 2 did such a super job in the Nativity and we were all very proud of them.

We also all loved the pantomime. It was so exciting to go on the bus, to watch the pantomime and we even got ice-cream at the interval! On Wednesday we made posters to advertise the pantomime and remembered to include all the key information needed.

We have been busy working on our song for the Christmas sing-a-long on Friday. Please try singing at home if you can.

Have a lovely weekend.

From Mrs Caskie and Mrs Keegan