Category: Primary 1

Learning Highlights 

Literacy

• One of our rainbow learning activities this week has been writing a letter to our naughty elf – Snowflake.
• We have been listening carefully to the difference between the b and d sounds.
• We have been finding the ‘g’ and ‘u’ sounds tricky and we have extending our knowledge of these by spelling and reading words with these sounds in  them.
• During our reading activities, we have been developing our higher ordering thinking skills and answering tricky questions about our book.
• Our reading aloud was excellent this week and we had a discussion about what different strategies we could use if we find it tricky to read a word.

Numeracy

• We have been using the rekenreks to show different amounts during number talks. This has been helping us with our mental addition.
• One of our rainbow learning activities was an addition smart board game. We have been trying to put a number in our head and count on. Link for this game is below.
• We enjoyed playing some fairy tale games which helped us to count on when we rolled a number on the dice. We would try to guess what number we might land on by counting on.

 

Pupil Voice

Chloe: I liked practising for the Nativity. My favourite bit is the singing.

Sophie F: I liked making the stockings and using the new pens. A snowman was on my stocking. My made the stockings for the Christmas Fair.

Sophie J: I liked practising the Nativity because I like singing.

Carly: I liked when I got the golden ticket because I done really good work.

Grace: I liked colouring in with the pens.

Ollie: I liked drawing the stockings.

Reka: I liked PE, we were playing fruit basket.

Max: I liked making the stockings.

 

Parental Involvement 

We played this game as one of our rainbow learning activities:

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/Flash.aspx?f=PostSortingcalculationsv2

We are going to be singing this song for the ‘Cakes and Carols’ event next week. Please have a go singing along at home.

We are looking forward to sharing our Nativity performance with you all next week.

Have a nice weekend,

Mrs Davenport and P1

Overview Of Learning

This week we were inspired by the Autumn leaves.  We talked about the Autumn colours and used these in pictures and then P2 started to write poetry about the leaves falling from the trees, this will be completed next week.  P1 wrote a sentence describing the leaves using colour or touch adjectives.

In Numeracy P2 have been continuing their work on subtraction and also starting to look at how many more are needed to make an amount.  P1 have continued their focus on addition within 10 by focusing on all the different ways they can make the same amount.

As a class we have also been learning about time, this week we focused on the past side of the clock and the vocabulary “quarter past”.

Most children from P2 have now completed their personal talk in class.  We all learned so much about some of the important jobs people do in our community.  Well done everyone your feedback sheets will be in your home learning jotter next week.

At Home

Practise telling quarter past times.

Highlight the difference between words that begin with f or v and s or z.

When reading at home, once you have read a book try to use three statements to retell the story (beginning, middle and end) in your own words.

Pupil Voice

Khyla – I have completed my numeracy goal (numbers to 100) and I have set myself a new goal (telling the time).

Lewis – I made the boost word scowl out of play dough.

Lucy and Hareem – We earned the golden ticket this week for our writing about Autumn leaves.

Well done everyone,

Mrs Currie

 

Teacher Voice

Our literacy highlights this week have been:

• Listening to the difference between the v and f sounds. These sound really similar – we sorted out pictures of things with the v and f sounds at the beginning. We repeated this activity with the z and s sounds as these sound familiar too.
• We created a wanted poster for the missing three little pigs. We had to ensure our sentence had a capital letter; full stop; finger space; included the word ‘and’ and had a describing word or phrase.

Our numeracy highlights this week have been:

• Learning about doubles to help with our mental addition skills.
• Creating a bar graph on our outdoor learning morning. We then using our adding skills and use the information we gathered to add different transport types together.
• Developing the strategy of putting a number in our head and counting on (see our example video on twitter so you can use this strategy at home too).

Pupil Voice

Harry: the red rainbow learning was a train numbers game. You add 2 numbers, put a number in your head and then count on numbers.

Sophie F: the green rainbow learning was for a competition, you had to draw your favourite part of school. The winner will get their picture painted on the wall in the hall.

Chloe: you need to cut out the ‘b’ and ‘d’ and then stick them in the right place. All of the b was on one side and the d on the other side.

Ethan: you had to put the colour dots into the 10 frame. I made 8, 3 red and 5 yellow.

Kian: we learned the v and z sounds. The z sound starts for zebra for zoo.

Parker: v is for van.

Carly: we made a wanted poster for the three little pigs. I wrote the pig had yellow trousers.

Sophie J: we have been learning about doubles. If you double a number you add the same number, double 2 is 2+2 and the answer is 4.

Amelie: You could put number 6 in your head and show 4 fingers and count on.

Max: we were looking for vehicles for a traffic survey – we saw vans, aeroplanes and buses.

Mason: we got our little bookbug bags with 3 books inside it and pencils. My favourite book was The Unicorn Expert book.

Parker: we had an assembly 5 sisters zoo. They told us that bears are dangerous and they told us about their job.

Parent Ideas

• Use the whiteboard and pen in the bookbug bag. Adult to say either f/v or s/z sound and children to write down what they hear.
• Use this song to help with your doubles

• Use this link to play an addition game – try to put a number in your head and count on. https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/mental-maths-train

Have a lovely weekend,

P1 and Mrs Davenport

It has been a very chilly week but our learning in P2/1 has been keeping us warm.  This week we have continued to learn about our topic of Our Community and we have focused on Fire Fighters. We heard the story of Charlie the Fire Fighter, we learned about her uniform and the skills she has to have to be the best Fire Fighter she can be.

In literacy;

P2 – We have rounded up our work on writing descriptions, we have used lots of adjectives and learned that colour and number words can be used as adjectives to describe things.  We used our PM Writing programme of work to help us with this.

P1 – We have learned the sounds g and d this week. We have been colouring pictures that show these sounds.

In Numeracy;

P2 – We have been adding this week.  We explored how numbers get bigger when we add.  We used rekenreks, counting beads and ten frames to help us.  We developed our learning of adding on ten and nearly ten, and we could do this in our heads.

P1 – We have been exploring through play and concrete material as well as pictorial representation addition within 10.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Currie and P2/1

Learning Overview

Literacy

We have been learning the ‘d’ and ‘g’ sounds this week. We are using these sounds when we are spelling and reading. Some of our activities this week have been:

• Snakes and ladders with CVC words – when we land on a square we need to read the word we land on.
• Played ‘I spy’ and found things beginning with ‘g’ and ‘c’. These sounds can sound quite similar so we had to listen carefully for the difference.
• Found lots of things beginning with the ‘g’ sound.
• Learned and wrote the correct formation for ‘g’ – making sure we kept the tummy on the line and the tail goes underneath.
• Developed our higher ordering thinking skills in our reading groups and answered lots of ‘why’ questions about the story.
• Used the Velcro mats and magnetic letter boards to spell words using the new sounds we were taught.

Numeracy

We are continuing to learn about adding numbers together. Our number talks focus this week has been ten frames. Some of our numeracy activities this week have been:

• Smart board games looking at formal written addition stories.
• Recording the answers to pictorial addition stories and formal written number stories e.g. 3 + 2 =
• Developing our mental addition by thinking about questions such as “if I have 3 counters and then I get 1 more, how many will I have?”
• Putting a number in our head and counting on rather than going back to the start to count again. E.g. 5 + 3. Put 5 on your head, show 3 fingers and count on 6, 7, 8. Rather than showing 5 fingers and then 3 fingers and counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Pupil Voice

Cinema Trip

Kian: We went to the cinema to see How to Train your Dragon 2.

Parker: we drew a picture of our favourite part.

Ollie: we were movie critics.

Chloe: I wrote ‘the film was amazing’.

Sophie F: I wrote ‘the film was OK and sad.’

 

Nativity Rehearsal

Carly: we are signing songs. I love the one about the little grey donkey.

Kian: we sign a song called ‘we’d like to tell you a story.’

Sophie J: I’m a star in the nativity.

Mason: I’m an innkeeper.

Lucy G: I’m an angel.

Grace: I like being Mary.

 

Numeracy

Anaiya: we are learning about adding numbers together.

Kian: 1 and 8 is 9.

Ollie: 5+4=9

 

Literacy

Riyah: we learned the ‘g’ sound. G for gorilla.

Reka: it is an orange sound, it comes from the back of your mouth.

Amelie: an orange sound means a loud sound.

Mason: we learned the ‘d’ sound. D is for dog.

Parker: it’s a blue sound, it comes from your tongue. It’s dark blue and that means it is dark blue.

 

Home Learning Ideas

Listen to the ‘d’ and ‘g’ songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKW89UcvuCQ

Use the online 10 frame to explore how many different ways you can find to make numbers. E.g. how many ways to make 3?

https://apps.mathlearningcenter.org/number-frames/

We played this game as part of our rainbow learning today. We have to listen really carefully to the ending sound in a word.

http://www.literactive.com/Download/live.asp?swf=story_files/slides_US.swf

This game will help us with our formal addition stories.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/Flash.aspx?f=PostSortingcalculationsv2

We are beginning to learn about colours in Spanish.

Have a lovely weekend,

P1 and Mrs Davenport.

Literacy

 

We have been learning about the ‘b’ and ‘f’ sounds this week. The children completed a range of different activities to develop their knowledge of these sounds. Some of the activities have been:

• Finding the difference between the ‘b’ and ‘p’ sounds. We had lots of different ‘b’ and ‘p’ sounds and we had to colour in the ‘b’ sounds red and ‘p’ pink.
• Played ‘b’ bingo – this allows us to think about different objects which begin with ‘b’.
• Listening to lots of different words and identifying what sound these words begin with.
• Extending our sentences in writing by including the word ‘and’ – we were writing a story about who lived in a haunted house.
• Using our knowledge of skills for writing and trying to use these independently – capital letters (only at the beginning of a sentence); full stops (this means our sentence is finished) and finger spaces (in between words).
• Reading words with the ‘f’ and ‘b’ sounds in them. Can you slide sounds together to read the words fit, bat, fan, and bin?
• We used the Velcro spelling mats and magnetic letter boards to spell words using these new sounds.

Numeracy and Maths

In numeracy and maths we have been ordering numbers and beginning to think about the language of measure. Some of our numeracy and maths activities have been:

• Learning that when we order numbers, some numbers can be missing and how we can still put these in order from largest to smallest or smallest to largest (this language is helping us think about different ways to measure e.g. by amount or by size). We played these games to help us understand this concept. https://www.topmarks.co.uk/ordering-and-sequencing/coconut-ordering

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/ordering-and-sequencing/chinese-dragon-ordering

• Cut out some numbers and stuck them in the correct order. How could you order the numbers – 4, 0, 9, 10, 5 – from smallest to largest and then largest to smallest. Challenge yourself and try it with these numbers – 19, 14, 20, 11, and 15.
• We explored what ‘2 more’ meant in numeracy. We used a number line to make 2 more jumps from a number to find out what this meant. What is 2 more than 5 or 2 more than 17?
• Collected sticks from the garden and measured these against pegs (a non-standard unit of measure). We had to ensure our stick was taller than 5 pegs but shorter than 9. Ask your child what we then used these sticks for.

Hallowe’en

We enjoyed engaging in different activities to celebrate Hallowe’en. One of our favourite things this week has been our themed reading area. The books in our library this week are:

• Room on the Broom
• Aliens love Underpants
• Magical Muddle
• The Princess and the Sleep Stealer (this has been a favourite!)
• Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam

We explored how to turn a solid into a liquid by melting chocolate to make witches hat biscuits (this was an idea after reading ‘Magical Muddle’ story).

We also developed our fine motor skills by making a spider’s web by threading string.

Finally, our tuff tray had turned into a Witches and Wizards Lab. We were able to create different potions – did you see our picture on twitter?!

This week P2/1 have been exploring their new topic of People In Society.  We have looked at where we live in our local community but also explored how we are part of our country’s community as well as the world community.  We have started to recognise important jobs that people do in our community and we have been given the opportunity to learn about some of the skills that these jobs require.  This is reflected in our P2 playroom where there are many opportunities for us to explore these skills and investigate how we can develop these.  P1 have been taking in part in some of these activities too as well as engaging with some of the Fairyland activities in the P1 playroom too.

In Literacy this week we have all been very spooky and P2 wrote a description about a haunted house and the P1s wrote about who lived in the spooky house.  Some great imagination from everyone!

In numeracy we have started learning and exploring addition.  P1 have been using pictures to add this week (with numbers to 10) and P2 have looked at using cubes and ten frames (with numbers to 20).  P2 have focused on sister/switcher calculations, they have learned that 2 + 3 makes the same altogether as 3 + 2.  We have also discussed a lot about ODD and EVEN numbers and used our outdoor learning this week to make our playground look chalktastic with odd numbers!

In Number Talks we have been becoming much more focused on EFFICIENT strategies, the children know that they are looking to find a quick and easy strategy to count.  We have used skills such as counting in 2s, grouping in 5s and 10s and counting on from a number we know.

Have a lovely weekend

Mrs Currie

Grace: I liked learning about numbers because I love writing them.

Max: We learned the ‘o’ sound, it looks like a circle.

Carly: I liked PE and we had to try to jump over the crocodiles on the ropes.

Sophie J: I liked learning about the ‘e’ sound, it is a black sound.

Anna: I got the golden ticket for super work.

Lennox: I liked number work.

Parker: I liked learning the ‘e’ sound, it lives in the vowel house.

Sophie F: I liked building Fariyland.

Zaki: I liked learning about numbers.

Myron: I liked PE and doing exercise.

Amelie: I liked learning the ‘o’ sound, o is for orange.

Kian: I liked learning the new sounds.

Anaiya: I liked swinging over the crocodiles.

Mason: I liked learning about the ‘e’ sound – you do the smiling egg mouth first then go around the shell with a flick at the end.

Joanna: I liked learning about letters.

Chloe: I liked trying to build Fairyland.

Reka: I liked doing number talks.

Harry: I liked using the bricks to build Fairyland.

Lucy G: We got a letter from the dragon and he asked us to help him.

Ethan: I liked building Fairyland because the dragon doesn’t have anywhere to live.

Literacy

We haven’t been learning any new sounds this week as we are now finished learning our first set of sounds. We have been using our knowledge of these sounds to read and spell words. We have also been working on our letter formation, this is something you could practise at home too.

We are developing our writing skills. We know that sentences need a capital letter; a full stop and finger spaces between words – you will be very impressed at our Stay, Play and Write on Tuesday.

Numeracy

In number talks we have been finding as many different ways as possible to make the numbers 5, 6 and 7. We were using our fingers to show these amounts.

5 can be 5 and 0, 4 and 1 or 3 and 2.

How many ways can you find to show 6 and 7?

Our numeracy focus this week has been ordinal numbers – first, second third etc. and putting numbers into a sequence.

What numbers are missing in these sequences?

0, 1, ____, 3, ____, 5, 6 ____, 8, ____, _____

10, 9, ____, ____, ____, 5, 4, ____, ____, 1 ____

Did you see our tweets for Maths Week?

IDL

We have started to learn some Spanish. This week we learned how to say ‘hello’ in Spanish. We played a game whilst listening to this song. When the song was playing, we were walking around the classroom, when the music stopped we found someone to say ‘Hola’ to.

We were learning that plants are living things just like animals. We spoke about what plants need to survive. We were very excited to plant our own seeds and we have checked on them every day – making sure we water them. Can you remember what type of seeds they were?

Our Learning Highlights of the Week

Anaiya: I liked numbers because I liked doing the number 1.

Joanna: I liked doing numbers and the number 2.

Sylvia: I liked number work and learning my numbers.

Grace: In number work I was counting seahorses. There were 7. For 7 it is – across the sky and down from heaven, now I’ve made the number 7.

Carly: I liked getting the golden ticket because I done great work. I had to do the numbers in the right order.

Lucy: I counted how many leaves we collected outside. I got 7.

Kian: I liked learning how to count on from 10. You add to count on more. If there were 10 dots then 4 it would be 14.

Sophie J: I liked counting on from 10. If there were 10 and then 6 there would be 16.

Ethan: I liked number work and learning the number 10. 5 and 5 is 10.

Riyah: I liked finding the leaves outside. I put them in order from big to small.

Lennox: I liked the robot talking.

Myron: I liked counting,

Reka: I liked finding leaves outside. We found big ones and little ones.

Zaki: I liked working with Mrs Docherty and I read the words.

Max: I liked writing the letters.

Harry: I liked writing about a mat. A dog sat on the mat in my story.

Mason: I liked hopping in PE.

Chloe: I liked PE and skipping with the big ropes.

Sophie F: I liked planting seeds. We need to water the seeds to make them grow.

Parker: I liked planting the seeds because I want to see them growing.

Oliver: I liked counting backwards from 10 to 1.

Anna: I liked collecting the leaves and sort them out.

Most days in class near home time we have our Spanish learning time,  we have been learning some basic Spanish vocabulary, we have focused on saying hello and asking how someone is feeling.  To do this we have been using this catchy song.  Try it out at home.

P2 – For literacy this week we have started our PM writing programme of work.  This programme helps us focus on different types of genres and purposes for writing.  The genre we have looked at this week is a recount.  We read a recount by a little boy who had helped his mum in the house with some jobs.  This made us think about a time that we have helped someone and what we did to help them.  We have written a plan which includes a title, orientation, sequence of events and a personal comment.  Next week we are going to turn our plan into a full recount.  We have also focused on the spelling pattern _ay.  This makes the same sound as -ai-, so we learned that ay usually comes at the end of a word (there are always exceptions such as crayon) and ai in the middle of a word.  Watch this little teaching video, it gives us some good advice about adding tails onto words such as _ing or _ed or _ er, this is something we will be looking at in more depth over the course of P2.  For our reading our comprehension work was based on finding the title, author and blurb on the book.  Keep practising this at home everytime you are reading together.

P1 – In literacy P1 have been using the sounds they have learned to blend and make CVC words.  The phonic sounds we have learned are s, m, t, p, c, a, i, k and ck.  To learn to blend we have used our magnetic boards, written on whiteboards, jumped in lettered hoops and match pictures and words.  Try asking your child to either tell you the sounds or write the sounds they hear in the following words; mat, map, cat, cap, sit, sip.  For writing this week the children were thinking of something or someone who might be sitting on a mat and they wrote a short story and drew a picture of it.

P2 – In Numeracy for our learning about numbers to 100 we have been looking at counting backwards as well as identifying the largest/biggest number and the smallest number.  The children learned a dice game where you make one of the dice the tens die and the other the units (ones) die.  When you roll them you put the two digits side by side to make a two digit number, your opponent then repeats this and whoever gets the largest number wins a point (or takes a counter).  Have a go at this game at home.  For number talks we have been looking at dot patterns, the children are given some dots to count and we are trying to find efficient ways to count them.  They have realised that it can be quicker and easier to not lose count if you group them, however you have to be able to add the groups together as you go, that is the tricky part.  Have a go at this number talks;

P1 – For numeracy P1 have reached the number 10 and are now learning about forward and backward sequences when counting out loud.  Some children have started to group amounts into a bundle of ten and then count on from this to reach a total within 20.

For our IDL topic we have completed our learning about water by exploring the three states, solid, liquid and gas and we used our pupil voice to help us plan some activities.  Thanks to Isla’s question about how does water help food cook, we boiled pasta in class to see the changes and why they happened…we then got to taste it too!

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Currie