Primary 2 – Page 42 – St Ninian's Primary School

P2M Weekly News

What a busy and eventful week in P2M! It is safe to say we are now well and truly in the Christmas spirit.

Firstly I would like to thank you all for bringing the children along to both the evening performances of the nativity, it was a fantastic turn out for both shows. Also, thank you very much for supporting the children by buying the tickets and watching the performances. We hope you enjoyed it as much we did. As you know, the nativity was filmed which will be able to buy on DVD soon. However, P1 and P2’s were allowed a sneaky preview and all gathered together on Friday morning to watch back their performance. Everyone was fantastic!

We have done lots of consolidating on long vowel sounds, digraphs and constant clusters this week. We have been consolidating the following sounds: ay, ow, ing, sh, ch, th and ea. One of our favourite activities we done on this was the fly squat game. We had lots of fun and we were all very competitive!

We are coming to the end of our North Pole topic but not without some more fantastic art work. This week we completed chalk drawings and worked on the art of blending colour by smudging the chalk. We create Arctic snowy scenes and then completed these off with foam shapes. Children will be bringing these home next. I can’t wait to hear what you think of them.

We loved our teamwork task this week where we had to create a paper chain (frozen themed of course!) This was quite a tricky task to do with a partner but some pairs showed excellent teamwork skills. Maliha and Teegan had a super strategy. Maliha was gluing the sheets and Teegan was threading them through into the chain. After we stuck all the chains together we checked to see how long it was. We were very impressed with how long it was!

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Meechan and P2M

Fascinating finds in P2B

To start the week we learnt about St. Andrew and watched a clip which told us the story of his life. Following this Scottish theme we listened to the story “Sweetieraptors.” The book is written in scots and it is all about different dinosaurs.

We found the story very funny! We worked in pairs or trios to make up our own dinosaur names.

Since we enjoyed the story so much Miss Boyes then read us “Wee Animal ABC”. This book let us learn scots words from A to Z.

We worked together to pick out our favourite Scots words in the story and we took a guess at their meaning.

In writing this week we wrote imaginative stories. To begin the lesson we watched the clip from the song “We’re walking in the air”. We got to pretend that we had just built a snowman and it had come to life. We had to write about where we went with the snowman and what happened when we were there.

Everyone came up with a wide variety of fascinating ideas for the snowman adventure.

We have been trying super hard to beat our big maths score. We have been practising our learn its lots during numeracy and smart starts. We are becoming faster at answering the calculations. We have continued to learn about place value and have now moved onto adding in tens. Miss Boyes was happy to hear during our learning conversations that we have really been enjoying numeracy and learning about the tens and units.

Our science lessons this week have been super fun! We completed an experiment to find out how a polar bears blubber keeps them warm. We put oil into two bags and put our hand in the middle of each bag. We dipped our hands into the chilly water and pretended we were polar bears diving. We compared the difference of having the blubber to protect our hands and not having it. From this experiment we have discovered that our hands did not get cold when we had the oil (blubber) protecting them.

We then found out about what polar bears eat to gain this fat that protects them from the cold. We listened to a piece of non-fiction text which told us about the food chain of a polar bear. We then recorded the information that we learnt. An interesting fat which we learnt from the book was that polar bears are “omnivores”. We have learnt that an omnivore is “an animal which eats other plants or animals.”

Another science activity which we completed was all about icebergs. An iceberg is a large piece of ice from a glacier. We had a short discussion on what global warming means and how it affects the polar bears. We thought of different ways that we could get the ice to melt. We decided to put 1 at the window, 1 in hot water and 1 near the radiator. The largest piece of ice we wrapped in a piece of cloth.

We made predictions about which piece of ice would melt first. Half of the class thought the piece wrapped in cloth would melt first because it would be too warm. However we were fascinated to find out that this was not the case. This was the only piece of ice that did not melt. We found out that the ice did not melt because the cloth acted as an insulator keeping the heat from getting to the ice.

Keep posted for more fascinating finds in P2B! We are super excited about our nativity shows next week!

A Cracking Time in P2M

This week was Scottish week and we have enjoyed learning some new Scottish things this week. We explored some of the Scots language by listening to the Gruffalo story read in Scots. We then had Paula, who is Spanish read us the Gruffalo in Spanish which we thought it was very funny.

Here is a link for the Gruffalo in Scots:

We have also started our new number topic of subtraction. We played some subtraction bowling to help us remember the different vocabulary that is used in subtraction work. It was lots of fun.

We have continued with our North Pole topic and as part of Scotland week we decided to compare the North Pole to Livingston. In our reading routes groups we completed a cloze procedure about these differences. In a pair we then made posters detailing the differences in weather, clothes, housing, animals, food and travel between the two places. Have a look at our posters.

We have been enjoying our CLIC sessions this week and working on adding in 10’s. Here is a picture of during one of our active show me sessions.

On Thursday we had another egg delivered to our classroom and this time a note was left with it. We have put the egg in water just like the letter told us to and it is starting to crack so we think that something is going to hatch from it. We wrote stories about this and Miss Meechan thought everyone’s story was fantastic!

P2B weekly blog

In numeracy this week we have been learning about place value. We used dienes blocks to show how many tens and units each number had. We know that 1 ten stick is made up of ten individual units.

Our favourite station in our place value lesson was the dice and place value frame game. We had to take turns and roll the dice which had different numbers stuck on each side. We then rolled a dice which had a H T and U on either side.
H is for hundreds- Seamus
T is for tens – Zuzanna
U is for units.- Lennon

If you rolled the number 5 and the landed on the T then you would put the number 5 in this part of the place value frame.

We had a competition to find out who rolled the biggest number.

In reading routes this week, we read a text in our trios and then working together we had to organise the facts in the order which they appeared in the text. We had different roles: the recorder, the time keeper, the reader and the checker.

Igloos- This week we made igloos. The materials we used were: marshmallows, paper bowls and glue to make the igloo.
We followed the steps from the instructions we wrote in our writing lesson last week on how to build an igloo.
– Emma

We were very lucky this week and got to go to the Travelling Tuba performance in the hall.

“It was funny.”- Maya.

“I was so amazing.”- Kornel

I liked seeing all of the different instruments.”

A Visitor in P2M

We have had another busy week in P2M and we would like to share with you our highlights.

On Wednesday we had a visit to the school from ‘Travelling by Tuba’. We were treated to a performance in the morning and some of us were even lucky enough to get involved. Richard helped to hold out a tube to show how long a tuba would be all rolled out. Ava then helped to get a sound out of the pipe by holding the bell part in place. Pawel had to blow really hard into the tube to try and make a sound and Alexis even played a tune using an animal horn! What an eventful and exciting morning.

We have also been putting in a lot of effort to our nativity this week and we are looking forward to showcasing this to you all very soon. Don’t forget to buy your tickets!

We continued with our ‘North Pole’ topic and took part in a science experiment. As a class we wanted to learn about how polar bears stay warm in the cold weather. The first thing we had to do in this experiment was put our hand into a bucket of ice cold weather… it was very cold! Polar bears would be freezing swimming in water this cold so we know that they must have a special way of keeping warm. We learned that polar bears have lots of fat under their skin and they get this fat from eating seals. We put oil in 2 bags to represent the polar bear fat and put our hand in between these bags and into the water. Our hand didn’t even get cold. This is a very clever way that polar bears stay warm in the Arctic. With a partner we then labelled different parts of a polar bear using the knowledge we had gained this week.

On Thursday when we got to school there had been more strange things happening in our classroom. A giant egg had been left! It was left safely in a nest and there was a trail of straw coming from our garden door. We wrote stories about who we think left the egg behind and why they had left it. We then decided that someone would need to come back for the egg and we wanted to find out who. Sophie R had a great idea to set up an iPad in the classroom and fill the action overnight. You will never believe what we found…

Come chill with P2B!

When we went into class on Wednesday an igloo had been built in our library corner. We were extremely excited and we cannot wait to read our books in the igloo.
Zuzanna- I love the igloo lots!

This week we learnt about the northern lights. After looking at images of the northern lights on the smart board we created our own chalk drawings. We focused on line and shape throughout our drawings. To begin we outlined a template of the hills and trees to create the landscape. We then chose different colours of chalk and used our finger to smudge them together.

Look at our beautiful chalk drawings displayed on the wall.

In numeracy this week we have continued to learn our subtraction sums. We played a new game at one of our carousel stations. We called this game “subtraction skittles”.

This is how you play the game.
First you have to roll the dice to find out which bottles it will hit. –Aaron.

You read the numbers on the bottle which you have knocked down and then you do an addition sum. –Cameron

Find the total number and take away how many fell down. – Kate.

This was such a fun way to practice addition and subtraction sums.

For our writing lesson this week we watched an animated video clip of an Arctic explorer walking through a blizzard. This video clip was our stimulus for our writing. Before we began writing we thought of lots of different words that could be used to describe the explorer’s adventure. We wrote them down on our whiteboards.
Then we pretended to be Arctic explorers and we wrote a diary about our adventure. – Emma
We had to include dates and write them in chronological order.

Also this week we had a visit from the SSPCA. The officer told us lots of interesting information about her job and the equipment which she uses to help the animals.

Strange happenings in P2M

Our week started off by learning the ‘ch’ sound. Here is the song we sang along with to remind us of this sound.

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

We are really enjoying our ‘North Pole’ topic. This week we looked at the Arctic landscape, in groups we discussed some features in a range of photographs of the Arctic. Using our ideas we gained from the photographs we drew and then painted our own landscape picture.

When we got to school on Thursday we couldn’t go into the classroom because something strange had happened during the night. Everything had been turned upside down! No one knew what had happened. We found lots of things that had been turned upside – all the tables and chairs, the books, our homework boxes, the ipads, our daily timetable, the finished work tray and even cuddles the dog! A few people thought Mrs Gardner had done this to our classroom so we tracked her done and asked her… it wasn’t her! We then thought it might have been Mrs Purdie… but it wasn’t her either! Ava thought the nasty fairy had done this to our classroom. Ethan thought it was a magical bat and Imogen thought it was a mermaid fairy with magical powers. We still haven’t found out who it was… it is a mystery but we hope it doesn’t happen again because it was very tricky to do our work on upside down tables! We hope nothing strange happens next week…

We worked with our friends in the class to put our class back to normal!

On Thursday we also had a visit from the SSPCA. We were shown lots of different equipment the SSPCA officers need to use to help animals. We also know if we see an injured animal to tell an adult and they will phone the SSPCA.

Arctic breeze in P2B

Our new topic has been unveiled and it is “The North Pole”. We are super excited to learn all about it. We had a whole class discussion and thought about what we already know about the Arctic/North Pole and what we want to learn. We put all of our ideas on a big poster.

This week we began our writing lesson by watching a video clip which showed the Inuit people building igloos. We had to listen to all of the information given in the documentary and then we used it to write our own instructions. We now know that when writing instructions you give each step a number and you give the instructions a title. We will try to use our instructions to build an igloo in our story corner.

Miss Boyes: 3 boys in class showed a real interest in writing instructions of how to build an igloo. Their enthusiasm of the topic also showed during golden time. Calvin asked me “Can you come and take a photo of our Jenga igloo Miss Boyes?” I was more than happy to as I thought this was fantastic. Jakub, Calvin and Seamus had worked together on the construction and they were able to link this straight back to their writing lesson from Wednesday. I asked them how they built their igloo and they informed me that

” you pretend that the jenga blocks are ice.” Calvin.
“You start at the bottom and build them in a spiral.” Seamus.
The boys were extremely proud and so they should be too!! I hope they have a nice surprise to see that their jenga igloo has made it onto the blog!

In numeracy we have been continuing with our subtraction sums. Miss Boyes is super impressed by how confident we are becoming with completing these calculations.

We are now using our number lines more independently and we can subtract single digit numbers from teen digits. We have been working together in groups on different activities around the classroom. We really love the dice game because Miss Boyes lets us write our sums on the big board like we are the teacher.
To check our learning from the lesson we use our special spinning wheel. It is really important that we go over what we have learnt at the end of a lesson and we think this is super fun. Sometimes Paulo the parrot joins in too as he likes to make sure we have been listening to Miss Boyes.

Here we are showing off what we have learnt.

Keep posted to find out more about the clever clogs in P2B.

P2M Weekly News

This week in P2M we have been working on our teamwork skills. In our ‘reading routes’ lessons we have to work in teams of 4 and everyone has a different role – reader, recorder, checker and noise monitor. All children worked great in their roles and even earned a ‘teamwork’ dojo point for their efforts.

We have also been working on the concept of measure in class. This week we were measuring a range of things using non-standard units of measure (our hands and our feet). The children had to measure the classroom door, table and cabinet using their hands and their feet. We are already looking forward to learning more about measure next week.

We were also introduced to our new topic this session – ‘The North Pole’. We created a poster showing what we already know about this and what we would like to learn about the north pole. Did you see the poster when you visited our classroom this week?

On Thursday we were writing imaginative stories. Our stories were inspired by this video called ‘dream giver’. Miss Meechan is very impressed with our writing and hasn’t managed to pick a star writer yet!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXVY0cCnF_c

In our number work we have been working on counting up to 200… this is quite tricky! We have also been working on counting in 5’s. We know that when we are counting in 5’s the number always ends with a 5 or a 0. We have been singing along to this song to help us:

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Meechan

P2M Weekly News

What a wonderful week we have had in P2M. We rounded off our ‘Fairyland’ topic in spectacular style on Thursday at our ‘Fairyland Ball’, thank you to all the parents who came along to support the children at this event.

Sophie R said: “I loved going to the ball as a princess.”

Before the ball we all made crowns and tiaras just like Princes and Princesses would wear to a ball.

Emily said: “I liked making crowns especially putting decorations on them.”

We also used recycled materials to create images of castles. We had to use a range of skills and resources to make these: cardboard tubes, paint, PVA glue, sellotape and paper.

Teegan said: “I loved making the castles because I like painting.”

On Thursday we used our imagination to write an imaginative story about a haunted house. We used a picture of a haunted house as our stimulus.

Alexis said: “I liked writing about the spooky house. A blood witch lived in the house I was writing about.”

Mr McCurdy was challenging us with some fitness challenges in PE.

Maliha said: “I liked climbing on the bars in PE.”

Jack: “we were squatting.”

Alexis: “I liked stretching my legs.”

Sophie YM: “I liked dancing.”

Emily: “we had a dance off with P2B.”

Please check out the blog next week for photos and videos from the ‘Fairyland Ball’.