St Ninian's Primary School

Wanted…harrrd sailin’ children…last seen in P1R!!

Ahoy there mateys, good to see ye all!

It’s been a grand ole week in P1R with lots of learning and fun. It all began on Monday when we learned a new sound, ‘ai’, we’re flying through the sounds now and getting better every day at blending. We used letterjoin to practise joining the a and i together to remind us that even though it is two letters it only makes one sound.

In maths we continued the sharing theme but focused on learning all about fractions/halves. Chocolate was aplenty in our lessons, we were given a challenge of working out how to share 1 mini-roll with our partners, we decided to cut them in half meaning each person got 1 piece. On another day we looked at whole chocolate bars and counted all the square pieces, we then had to work out half. We even found out that half of 5 is 2.5!! The best bit was getting to eat our share of the chocolate!

We also had a go at making fraction flags using 2 colours and decorating half a pizza (don’t worry they were pretend pizzas!)

In PE we were trying to combine the skills we had been learning and apply this to the different apparatus.

Famous pirates were the talk of the class this week. We learned all about Blackbeard and Anne Bonny. Ask your child to tell you one of the facts they found out. We made Wanted Posters for our class display, puppets and pirate hats for role play, sang Pirate songs, danced like a pirate, wrote some facts about famous pirates and used the Morfo app to create talking and moving pirates.

Outdoor learning was also part of our week although unfortunately the rain changed this slightly, we brought the outdoors indoors! All the children were set a challenge by Mr Hunter to make a ‘Crow’s Nest’. They had to think about which of our school values would be important, the children thought ‘teamwork’ would be the best way to approach the challenge.

We’re all now looking forward to tomorrow’s skills academies and going along to the dress rehearsal of the ‘Great Scots’ show!

Back in full swing!

We are back in action in P1D after our first full week. We have been learning new sounds and have loved reading and building new words. We really enjoyed word bingo!

We have enjoyed lots of different activities which have helped us learn more about sharing equally! Sharing the ‘Counter Soup’ was a real favourite!

Anther highlight of our week has been our gymnastics lessons! We have done lots of exercises to strengthen our core and this week, we moved on to rolling! We had a go at pencil rolls and forward rolls! Some of us even managed to stand up onto our feet after our forward roll! Can you believe it?

We hope you have enjoyed looking at out learning!

Have a great weekend!

Ahoy me hearties!!!

It’s been all systems go this week in P1R as we continued our Pirate Adventure. The children enjoyed learning about the different jobs pirates did when they were on their ship, made pirate portraits using oil pastels, sang pirate songs, did some pirate dancing, started our pirate displays with P1D and chose facts to write about and illustrate. In reading they heard about the adventures of Captain Pugwash and had fun finding examples of VCOP in the story. Ask your child to tell you all about Punctuation Parrot, he has been helping us recognise different punctuation marks in stories. In writing they had to complete the sentence, “If I were a pirate…”, there were some super ideas:

Ahmad – I would have a battle with other ships and shoot the cannon.

Matthew – I would have a ship race.

Elenta – I would fight the pirates and push them in the water.

Ryan – I would drink rum (I think Mrs Gardner liked this answer the best)!

Why don’t you ask the children to teach you this song, they even made up some actions for it!

In phonics we learned all about ‘l’ and ‘r’ having a go at blending the sounds to make words, writing the sounds using letterjoin, finding objects that began with the sounds and lots more!

Sharing continued to be the focus in maths and the children have picked this concept up really quickly, we all had fun sharing out the pasta and toys and playing interactive sharing games on the smartboard. We also met some pirates who needed to share out the treasure they had captured!

Try some of the games they’re good fun! Here are the links:

http://pbskids.org/curiousgeorge/busyday/dogs/

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/Flash.aspx?f=sharingv2

In PE we developed our gymnastics skills and started transferring last week’s floor work to apparatus. The children were amazed when Mrs Roy was able to demonstrate a forward roll to the class (I amazed myself!!!!) Well done to all the children who were finding this difficult to begin with, they persevered and by the end of the week everyone could do a forward roll!

In RE we learned about the importance of speaking to God, we revised how to make the sign of the cross properly and learned how to say the ‘Our Father’. We were asking children of other religions how they prayed and next week Ahmad is going to teach us a new prayer which we are all looking forward to.

We also got some good news on Friday, congratulations goes to Matthew who was a winner in the road safety competition organised by the JRSO, we were all really proud of him! This week we took part in a Robert Burns colouring in competition for Morrisons, fingers crossed we do well!

Next Friday we will be starting our Skills Academy, all the children selected a skill they would like to develop, the choices were amazing, we’ll tell you more next week.

Mapping our way through the week in P2B!

In numeracy we have been learning how to identify, sort and order even and odd numbers. Miss Boyes showed us lots of patterned gloves. We were wondering why she had all of these different gloves. However, Miss Boyes challenged us to find the odd gloves and the even gloves. We put them into the correct categories and then had to count how many odd gloves and how many even gloves there were.

There are 2 special rhymes which we have learnt. These rhymes help us to remember the odd and even numbers.
0, 2, 4, 6, 8 even numbers are GREAT!

1, 3, 5, 7, 9 I love odd numbers all the time!

This rhyme tells us that if a number ends in 0, 2, 4, 6 or 8 then it’s an even number.
If a number ends in 1, 3, 5, 7 or 9 then it’s an odd number.
In our maths carousels we have been completing many different activities to develop our learning of odd and even numbers.
We played an interactive odd and even number game on the netbooks. At another station we had to match the patterned socks and find out which ones were odd.

We have enjoyed reading our new books. To show our understanding of the stories we have been completing task maps. This involves us using a variety of different skills to complete the tasks. We complete two tasks each time and we have come up with some great answers.

In literacy we have been learning how to use openers in our writing. We know that our writing will be more interesting and make sense if we use different sentences openers. We wrote a summary for the story “Katie Morag Delivers the mail.” Here are some examples of the words we used to start our sentences: first, last, next, after, at the beginning and at the end.

Through topic we have been learning lots about geography. We have been learning about the differences and similarities in human and physical features of mainland Scotland and the Scottish Islands.
We worked together to find the Island of Coll in the Atlas, we then used technology to compare looking in the atlas to looking at google maps.
On Google maps we wanted to find Livingston. This then lead us to making our own whole class maps for The Isle of Struay and Livingston (We will show you the maps next week once they are complete.)

Structured play was great fun this week. We really enjoyed completing different activities with our friends from P2M. There were lots of different stations such as, completing subtraction sums in the shop, learning new words (related to Katie Morag stories) at the playdoh station and using the smartboard to complete different Katie Morag challenges.

Have a lovely weekend and check out our blog again next week!

Miss Boyes and P2B!

P3’s super week!

After our first 5 day week back, we can see that our show rehearsals are starting to come together very nicely. Please keep practising our class song, My Love is Like a Red Red Rose, and keep practising lines at home too!

In Maths we have been counting up in 2s and 3s, 4s and 5s and recognising missing number patterns. We found different ways to help us with our counting, including using cubes and drawing tally marks.We have also been revising our 2, 5 and 10 times tables. We have our own tables challenge sheets and when we know each table very well, we can sign it ourselves, bring it back to be tested and receive a time stable sticker from Mrs Howley. In Spelling we have been revising word patterns covered last term and we even chose our own challenging words from our reading books to write sentences with.

We have been busy with pupil planning and linking the learning for our new topic, Scotland. We have our own pupil planning wall which shows what we already know and what we would like to learn more about. This means we are helping our teacher to plan exciting lessons for us!

We have been learning all about the life of Robert Burns. This has been a popular choice for interdisciplinary learning, as this is the focus for our Burns’ Supper show. This week our writing was all about the life of Robert Burns and we really enjoyed remembering the facts and writing them in sentences. We also enjoyed reading the song words for our Red Red Rose song, looking for rhyming words and repetitions of phrases.

In PE we have been enjoying gymnastics and learning basic floor skills on mats before we progress to the apparatus! In Music, Mrs Steele revised our Burns’ Night songs which she has been teaching us.

We also got a surprise visit from baby Holly from the Roots of Empathy session. We were able to see lots of differences in her since her last visit. Holly was able to sit up on her own and she enjoyed listening to us singing our class song to her!

Hope you have a lovely weekend!

P3 and Mrs Howley

Primary 3/4 News

This week we had a chance to make our very own Scottish dinner. We had time to think about the Scottish meaning for this.

Mark said “This is called haggis, neeps and tatties.

Jay-p said “I loved the tatties”

Gaby said “It was really good”

Aidan “You had to put holes in the neep to make it cook it better.”

Shannon said “I liked the haggis and I liked the tattie. I didn’t really like the neep.”

Adrin said “It was delicious!”

Lukasz said “I loved the haggis! I didn’t like the neeps and tatties.”

Nasim said “It was so delicious”

We have been impressed with our show rehearsal and we can’t believe that it’s only 1 week until we perform for the whole school.

Mark said “There will be lots of surprises for everyone.”

Jacob said “Our show is getting great. I am finding it funny when the Redcoats shoot the cannon at the Jacobite’s.”

Rachel said “I find it funny when there is a joke about Irn Bru” However you will have to wait and see what we are talking about.”

Have a lovely weekend!

Primary 3/4 and Mrs Kerr

P6/7 Weekly News

This week Primary 6/7 have been working very hard as usual! We started our new topic about the Victorians and the P7s in our class are now joining together to work with the P7 class to learn about Democracy. We linked drama with our topic this week, and we looked at several photos of Victorian children and created some short scenarios. We all think we are going to love our new topic!

In R.E. we have been learning about the seven sacraments: Baptism, Reconciliation, Confirmation, Communion, Marriage, Holy Orders and Sacrament of the Sick. For Maths we have started learning about decimals and fractions and we are now able to identify proper and improper fractions and convert them to mixed number. We have been learning about weather, days of the week, months, and seasons during Spanish and French.

During Writing we have been describing what we think of when we listen to happy and sad music and we have also been discussing how the differences in pitch can affect our feelings. We had some really varied ideas and thoughts!

We have been continuing with flight in gymnastics, making routines on our own and with partners. On Wednesday Dallas, Callum, Charlie, Alice and Aimee, along with a few more pupils from other classes stayed in after school to help Mr McCurdy with gymnastics with all the teachers. We really enjoyed helping out and demonstrating our fantastic gymnastic skills.

By Charlie, Orla and Dallas

Have a great weekend!

Primary 6/7 and Mrs Reeves

P2M Weekly News

What a busy week back in P2M. We started off the week by finding out what our sounds were going to be for our spelling this week. We have been finding the difference between the ‘e’ and ‘i’ sounds this week. This was done through lots of different fun and active spelling games. One of our active spelling strategies this week was choo-choo words. Why don’t you ask your child about how to make choo-choo words? We also played word bingo where we really had to listen for the difference in the ‘e’ and ‘i’ sounds. Bartosz was our bingo winner twice!

We have continued our numeracy topic of subtraction but our sums are getting much trickier now. This week some group have been working on finding a missing number in a subtraction number sentence. Other groups have been working on finding the difference between 2 numbers: they know that in take away sums we always have to start with the biggest number. Did you enjoy playing the interactive subtraction game for homework this week. Here is the link for you to play it again: (remember to select numbers within 20)

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

Our maths topic of measurement continued this week and we learned how to measure volume in millilitres and litres. We tried to get the water right on the line so the exact capacity was inside. We also estimated a range of volumes e.g. how many cups of water would it take to fill this jug. We used lots of different sizes of jugs during this task.

We continued our Katie Morag topic this week. Our art lesson this week focused on the skills of using different tones and shades of colour. Using this knowledge we designed and created our very own tartan. We have put some of these on display on our ‘Katie Morag’ display and the rest in our class book. Have a look next time you are at our classroom.

When we created our ‘Katie Morag’ topic plan last week we decided that we would like to learn some Scottish songs. This week we have been learning ‘Caledonia’ and ‘Ye Canny Shove Yer Granny’. We are looking forward to signing these at our assembly in the next few weeks.

We finished our busy week off with some structured play with our friends from P2B. Each structured play station was based on our interdisciplinary topic of Katie Morag.

Back with a bang for P4!!!

P4 have been working so hard to make sure our show is fantastic. A lot of work and commitment has gone into learning our lines, the songs and our positions on stage. It is coming along nicely and we are very excited to perform for you all.

In Writing this week we wrote letters to Father Paul to invite him to come and see our show. We really hope he can fit us in to his very busy schedule because we think he will really love it.

We used this week to secure our knowledge of multiplication in maths. We are feeling confident that we can multiply a 2-digit number by 1 digit (with carrying). We have also been learning the 8 and 9 times tables. Brandon shared a trick for the 9 times table with us.

Brandon: “When you are doing the 9 times table the tens column goes up 1 and the unit column goes down 1 e.g. 9×2 =18 9×3=27 9×4=36”

Chi Chi: “I know another trick for the 9 times table. If you add the ten and the unit together, they make 9. E.g. 9x 5= 45 4+5= 9”

This has been a very special week in P4 because we have started the Sacramental preperation for making our Confirmation. We have been talking about our names and how unique they are to us. Some of us found out the meaning of our name. It was very interesting.

Chloe: “My name means ‘green shoot’ (blooming)”

Isla: “My name is named after the Isle of Islay”

Ethan: “My name means ‘strong'”

We have been reading stories from the bible where Jesus and Mary were touched by the Holy Spirit. We have learned that the Holy Spirit can appear as fire, a dove and wind.

Another week of exciting learning for us all.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Mrs Wassell and P4

Primary 5/6

This week, in maths we learned how to add fractions together using cups, there was half cups, quarter cups and whole cups, this really helped us understand how to add fractions because we had a picture in our head. On Tuesday we revised lines of symmetry and we will continue this next Tuesday. During our short read this week, we worked in groups to find alternative words with the same meaning, practising our thesaurus skills. We also had to check definitions using a dictionary. During topic, we learned what primary and secondary sources are. By using secondary sources we learned new information about Mary Queen of Scots and created posters to display our learning in our class talking book. We used our knowledge of Mary Queen of Scots to write a diary entry about a key event in her life. We now know the various features of a dairy entry and we were able to use time connectives to write our own diary entries.

By Joshua and Isabella