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.
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.
This week P1M have been working very hard as well as enjoying all of the 40th anniversary celebrations for our school. We started off our week be refreshing our knowledge of the sounds we have been learning recently – l, r, ee, oo, ai and oa. We were given a challenge to sort out sentences. The sentences were all out of order and we had to fix them. This was a tricky task but we remembered to look for clues – capital letters fro the start of a sentence and a full stop for the end. This left 2 more cards to be put in the correct place, we had to read these cards to check which order would make sense. This is something you could do at home too – write sentences on paper, cut them up and put them in the correct order.
We love reading in our class. We had been working hard on our reading books in class. Please note, we won’t be given reading books as homework next week but we will be practising our reading skills in class. We also really enjoy e-books in our class. Have you used the oxford owl website at home to listen to and/or read books? Miss Meechan sent the login details home a few months ago. We also love listening to e-books on the ipads. This week, Kyle was listening to ‘toy story’ on the ipads. He really enjoyed it because the characters move about.
We are also continuing to work on our spelling. We complete some spelling tasks with a partner this week. One person had to spell a word using cubes and the other person had to try to read the word. We checked if we had spelt the word correctly by looking at the picture on the card. Sophie and Casper completed this task very well together.
We have also being playing fun games on the smart board. Check out some links below for the games.
In maths this week we were working on subtraction word problems and addition number stories. We refreshed our memory of how a subtraction sums looks and acted out this subtraction sum on a number line – remembering that when we subtract the numbers get smaller. We also played ‘dice subtraction game’ with our partner. In a pair, both people rolled a dice e.g. 4 and 6. We then had to make a subtraction sum with both these numbers. This task taught us how to set out a subtraction sum – when you take away the biggest number is at the start of a sum. E.g. 6 – 4 = 2. This another task that you could do at home. We also used play-doh and play-doh mats to read and solve subtraction and addition word problems. Again, below are a list of apps and games we used to support our learning this week.
Finally, happy 4oth anniversary St. Ninians. We had a fun filled week to celebrate St Ninians turning 40. On Wednesday, we celebrated mass with Archbishop Leo Cushley. Before mass, Miss Meechan has showing us pictures on the Archbishop and we had lots of questions to ask about his special hat! On Thursday, we had a superhero fun day! We were given the opportunity to dress up as a superhero. In the morning, we completed some art and craft activities. Before lunch time we had a party in our classroom and we had some of St. Ninians anniversary cake. Finally, in the afternoon we watched ‘The Incredibles’ movie in the big hall. What a fun day. Today we were treated to a sneak preview of the P3-7 Show “Movies Through the Decades” – we were so impressed with the talent of the older children in our school.
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.
Another busy week for P1M. In literacy this week we have been learning more about the ‘oa’ and ‘ai’ sounds. These sounds come from the vowel house. As part of our literacy activities this week we have been sorting out pictures of ‘oa’ and ‘ai’ sounds. This was quite a tricky task as we had to decide what the picture was and then listen carefully for an ‘oa’ or ‘ai’ sound in the word. We have been doing lots of spelling activities using these sounds too. This week we were using the letter cubes to make words. Do you have letters at home that you could use to spell ‘oa’ or ‘ai’ words?
We are continuing with our numeracy topic of subtraction this week. We have a very solid knowledge of subtraction so far and we will be continuing this topic for a while yet. We have been really enjoying the different activities in our numeracy lessons and a favourite has to be subtraction bowling. Have you had the opportunity to play this at home yet? This week we were solving word problems subtraction style as well as ‘acting out’ a subtraction story on the number line. Miss Meechan was very impressed with us during this task as we all remembered that when we subtract the number gets smaller and we had to jump backwards on the number line. Well done everyone!
We started our new Play: Plan, Do, Review session this week – pirate theme. All of the 6 groups are literacy and numeracy based. Here is a sneak peak and what we have been doing this week during play:
Red – Pirate ship design challenge. We use 2D shapes to build a pirate ship and then count how many of each shape we used. We also make addition sums using the information we have gathered.
Blue – Letters to a pirate. At this group we can write letters to a pirate or draw a picture of a pirate. We have a special treasure chest to put in our letters and drawings.
Yellow – Pirate books – at this table we can make pirate books, either literacy or numeracy based. There are maths themed pirate books made up which we can complete and there are also blank books for us to create and write our own pirate stories.
Orange – At this group we build our very own pirate ship. It is important to listen to what others what to do to the pirate ship as well as talking to our friends about what we think would be good on the ship – have a look at the photos below, we’re making great progress already!
Purple – Role play station. At this station we act out pirate stories. We have small pirate puppets to do this or we can dress up as pirates ourselves. We can even make our own pirate masks and then act out the story. There are also the ipads at this station to record our stories too.
Green – Pirate jewellery. At this group we can make our own pirate treasure – bracelets, necklaces, rings! Pirates like their jewellery to be in a pattern so we must make sure we use patterns when creating the jewellery.
As part of our RE this week we listened to the story of Samuel listening to God. We have been learning about how God always listens to us but that it is also important for us to listen for God. We created these listening ears to remind us of this. There is a link for the video we watched below.
Here are some links for the activities we completed this week:
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!
This week we started our new topic in numeracy: subtraction. To introduce this topic we played lots of fun games and participated in fun activities. You could try out some of these at home too. We made a tower of 10 cubes (you could use lego), our partner done the same. We then had to roll a dice and subtract the number of cubes as shown on the dice. The winner was the person who gets to 0 cubes the quickest. Remember if you have 3 cubes left and roll a 6 you can’t take away your cubes!
We also participated in subtraction bowling. Set up 10 plastic cups (ten pin bowling style) and roll a ball at the cups – you only get one shot! Then make a subtraction sum showing the amount of ‘pins’ you knocked over. E.g. if you knocked over 6 cups your sum would be 10-6=4.
This week we have also been using SEAL strategies to develop our understanding of number further. Miss Meechan showed us some counters and then covered them with a piece of paper. Miss Meechan took away some counters and told us how many she had taken away. We then had to figure out how many counters were left. We really enjoyed this task too.
We are continuing with our number talks session and this week we were focusing on dot patterns. We were shown a dot pattern which had 4 dots at the top and 4 at the bottom, we very quickly recognised that this made 8. Kyle was able to show us a different way to make 8: 5+3=8.
This week we were given a box to collect some loose change in. We were very interested in the picture of the little girl on the box. Miss Meechan was telling us about how the little girl is not as fortunate as we are. Here is a link if you would like to discuss this further with your child at home: https://www.unicef.org.uk/?gclid=CNP_i6nX0dECFUkQ0wodkkUKaA&sissr=1
Here are some of the videos/games we used in class this week for you to use at home too.
This week was world religion day. We had a chat in class about the different religions in the world. You could do this too. We used this image to show us the different religions:
Say a quiet prayer to God and remember that he is always listening.
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!
This week we visited the library. We enjoyed returning our old library books and were given the opportunity to choose a new book. We can’t wait to read our new library books. When we were at the library we met Shona who works at the library. She was telling us lots of things that happen in the library. We were also given a bookmark to use with our new library books. Shona also read us a story called ‘Delilah Darling is in the Library’.
Our sounds for this week are ‘ee’ and ‘oo’. We participated in lots of different activities to help us use our knowledge of these sounds. We played games on the smart board; writing ‘ee’ words on play-dough mats; making sentences with ‘ee’ and ‘oo’ words; sorting out ‘ee’ and ‘oo’ words and spelling words too. Find some links below to play these games at home too.
This term we are using a reading scheme called ‘muckle reading’. In our muckle reading lesson this week we completed a task called ‘picture it’. We had to read or listen to some instructions and draw what we read or could hear. When we finished with the instructions we had drawn a picture of a pirate! We have also been working on our tricky words this week too. Mrs Stewart quickly showed us one of tricky words and then she hid it, we had to try to remember the word and write it on our whiteboard. In class, we enjoy listening to stories on the oxford owl website. Have you used this at home yet?
Maths highlights this week:
We have enjoyed taking a break from number lessons to participate in some practical maths this week. Our focus for practical maths this week has been patterns and symmetry. We started our week by creating patterns with colours and then moved onto shape patterns. Our favourite task was creating our own patterns. We made colour patterns by using the pegs and peg boards and we created shape patterns using a range of 2d and 3d shapes. We had to finish patterns, copy patterns and match patterns too.
During our symmetry learning we initially found it quite tricky but soon grasped the concept quickly. In the pictures below Patryk and Poppy had sorted out 6 pictures into ‘symmetry’ and ‘not symmetry’ headings. We were also given the opportunity to finish a picture to make it symmetrical – these were pirate themed pictures.
This week we were introduced to our new Play: Plan, Do, Review where we were given 6 more choices. Ask your child what they completed in play this week and which play task they would like to join in our next session?
Red: Numbers to 50. We have to drive a car around a course ensuring my follow the numbers in the correct order. We try to count out loud to make our car drive even faster! We have to really concentrate doing this task as there are a few different turns we can take on the roads!
Blue: Ordering numbers. We complete pirate themed dot-to-dots at this group. We can choose some easier dot-to-dots or some tricky ones if we can manage!
Orange: We use the smart board and ipads to play our favourite numeracy and maths games and apps.
Yellow: Patterns – we use the peg boards and shapes to create patterns.
Green: Subtraction bowling. We use the game bowling to create subtraction sums
Purple: Jenga. We play the game jenga but on the end of each piece of jenga is an addition or subtraction sum which we have to say the answer to in order to keep the jenga piece.
After we finished our first session of this play we spoke to a partner about what we had been doing and what we would like to do during the next session.
Health and Wellbeing highlights:
We began our new PE block of gymnastics. This week we have been working on balancing – we try to hold a balance for 3 seconds. We have also been working on our strength and ensure when we jump that we land on our feet with squishy knees.
Our GIRFEC focus for this month is active. We completed a page in our talking book where Miss Meechan helped us to write all of the different ways we keep active in our lives.
Did you hear about our letter we received this week? On Monday, we found a letter, in a bottle in our sink! We guessed that it might have been from a pirate, and we were right! It was from a Pirate called Pete Pigeon. Pete is part of the Squeaky Sail Ship and they are lost in the North Sea somewhere and have asked for our help. We thought of lots of different ways we could help. Then, on Thursday we received another letter in a bottle. It was Pirate Pete Pigeon again and we was so pleased with all of our ideas that he asked us to join us crew. Before we were allowed to join the crew we had to write in our Pirate Passport. Have a look for these in our writing jotter!
School-Home Learning: Here are some apps, websites and videos we have used to support our learning in class this week.
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