Collaborative learning – St Ninian's Primary School

The Amazing P3 Weekly Update!

Abu Bakr chose our title today as he felt we had been amazing and we had!

Learning Overview.

IDL.

This week we learned more facts about the Sun and the Moon. We then decorated a Space picture and had to recall a fact we had learned and write this on our sheet.

Literacy.

In our P.M. writing we have been learning about Explanations. As a class we produced a shared writing explanation of the life cycles of a Red Admiral butterfly and a frog. We looked at the different sections of an explanation.

We are continuing to listen to our class novel of The Eejits and finding it so funny!

Numeracy.

In numeracy we are continuing to learn how to add and subtract two digit numbers and this week we looked at using an empty number line to work out where a number would lie between two given numbers.

Health and Wellbeing.

In P.E. we have been working on different types of balances and working cooperatively to help each other. Next week we are going to do partner balances. In our Resilience work we have been learning the importance of taking some time to relax and concentrate on our breathing.

Spanish.

We have been revising the days of the week in Spanish and noticing how they don’t start with a capital letter as they do in English.

Pupil Voice -Our Highlights.

Victoria ” I love listening to The Eejits. The words are so funny!”

Malakai ” I enjoyed eating the sweets when we were talking about washing our hands.”

Mati” Gymnastics was my favourite as I loved doing the balances.”

Kayla” I liked playing the find the number on the number line game.”

Home Learning Opportunities.

In Numeracy we played the find the number game. Here is the link for you to try at home.

https://mathsframe.co.uk/en/resources/resource/37/placing_numbers_on_a_number_line

Have a lovely weekend. P3 Mrs Caskie and Mrs Keegan.

P3 Weekly News

Learning Overview

Our Wordboost words this week have been ocean, ancient, spine, immediately, peciliar and shriek. We listened to the story of Hiccup the Viking who was seasick. We were very good at recognising the boost words and also putting them into WOW sentences. In P.M. writing we have been learning how to write an Exposition and understanding what a statement of position, a series of arguements and a concluding statement are. We then wrote an Exposition as a class on exercise and drinking water. We came up with fantastic arguements for both of these.

In Maths we have been learning about Time and and applying our knowledge of time facts to help us solve word problems.

As it is now the season of Advent we learned about the Advent wreath and the different meanings behind the candles and how we need to get ready for the birth of Jesus.

Our WOW walls on our one note profiles have been getting lots of fantastic and WOW work put on them. There has been lots of collaborative learning and model making with the Kapla and also in the Play room. Please log in and have a look at the amazing work that has been done.

Thursday was busy making posters for our stall at the school fayre and we were delighted that we sold all our sweetie cones!

Pupil Voice

Christopher has enjoyed learning Spanish this week.

Oliver loved hearing about schools in the past and he is glad he didn’t go to school then.

Evie and Hanna enjoyed learning about Time in Maths.

Malakai really liked making posters for the school Fayre.

Next Steps Home Learning Opportunities

We have been learning colours in Spanish. Here is a game that you can play at home to consolidate learning.

https://www.education.vic.gov.au/languagesonline/spanish/spanish.htm

We are also looking forward to hearing the childrens’s solo talks next week.

Have a lovely weekend from P3, Mrs Caskie and Mrs Keegan.

P2/3 Weekly Update

How quickly this week has flown by and super busy !

On Tuesday as part of Safer Internet Day we attended an assembly given by the Digital Learners. We followed this up in class by watching a short clip of children playing a game online, they had to make some choices and we all discussed what the safe options were and how we keep ourselves safe when online. It was also Chinese New Year and we found out that this year was the year of the pig.

We have really enjoyed having our Mighty Writer board up in class and as part of Smart start activity we got the opportunity to work collaboratively to compose a story using the board and put super openers and great conjunctions which we had as one of our success criteria in our writing. We then read our stories to the rest of the class. In our writing lesson we wrote fabulous wintery poems using lots of exciting adjectives.

In Numeracy we looked at quarter past and quarter to the hour and started to work on subtraction. In number talks we looked at different strategies to work out how we reached the total.

Our wordboost book this week was Mr Beast Charlie and Dad go Monster Mad and our words were delay, pleasure, lug, lurk, satisfy and yank.

P2 continued to work on their People of the Past topic and learned about St John who has the local hospital named after him. They have written invitations to their P3 classmates to their showcase this week where they will share their learning.

P3 have been working so hard this week on their show A Blast from the Past and performed their dress rehearsal today. They are so excited to perform on Tuesday and Wednesday in front of families and friends. You are in for a treat!

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Caskie and Mrs Keegan.

P2/3 Weekly Update on our Learning Adventure.

Another busy week in P2/3.

In our outdoor learning we were nature detectives and used magnifying glasses to look at a variety of things in the school garden. We had to work in teams and draw the object as it looked with our eyes and then draw it after using the magnifying glasses. It was amazing what we found and as it was frosty it was even more exciting.

In Literacy this week we read Hiccup The Viking which was our Word Boost book. We had to listen out for the following words ocean, spine, shriek, ancient, immediately and peculiar and remember if they were nouns, verbs or adjectives. In our reading we worked on our higher order thinking skills of Remembering where we had to write down the setting of our story, the main characters and what happened at the beginning of the story. We also worked on Understanding using our word boost knowledge of adjectives we had to write three adjectives to describe the main character, think of the main idea of our story and describe why the title was appropriate to our reading book.

We continued to work on our addition and counting in Numeracy and are becoming super at our number talks.

Here is a link to a game we used to help us with our addition.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/Flash.aspx?b=maths/addition

In our number talks we sometimes use ten frames and we can come up with lots of strategies of what do we see and how do we see it. Here is one you can try at home and you can post your strategies too!

In P.E. we are working on a fitness block and this week we became teachers and worked alongside P1D in a fitness circuit. We followed our school rules of READY, RESPECTFUL AND SAFE. We really enjoyed working with them and want to say a big thank you to Mrs Davenport for inviting us to join in.

In Digital learning this week some of us have logged onto Glow and we will continue with this next week. This will also be part of our Homework for next week and we are excited to be digital learners.

We have also been working very hard during our Smart start in the mornings with lots of focus and great collaborative learning.

Have a lovely weekend. Mrs Caskie and Mrs Keegan.

Nursery News

What a busy week!!

This month we have been learning about keeping our self ‘safe’, children take our register to the office each day. They wear high vis vests and keep themselves safe on the journey through the school.

We all wrote invitations this week for our McMilllan coffee morning next Thursday 27th of September. It is in the morning at 10.30 and the afternoon at 3.15. Donations of baking would be most welcome. A monetary donation box will be in the hall on the day for McMillan. Please come along and support such a great cause with a cup of coffee and a cake with your child.

Over the weeks the children have embraced the open ended resources. They take items and make their own toys or experiences in learning from them for example, in the picture you can see children working together to build a tower with the crates. They used their problem solving skills to try to figure out how to reach the top. Working together they were able to risk assess for themselves and reach their end goal.

Apples from a tree were brought in from a garden. We had a great learning experience investigating where these came from and what was inside. Children want to plant the seeds to see if we can grow ‘ a new apple tree’.

NEXT WEEK IN NURSERY

MONDAY– GROUP PHOTOS AM and PM

TUESDAY– LIBRARY VISIT 9.30 am and 1.30pm.

WEDNESDAY– EUROPEAN DAY OF LANGUAGES.

THURSDAY– McMILLAN COFFEE MORNING 10.30 am and 3.15 pm.

FRIDAY – PHEW 🙂

HAVE A FABBY FUN FILLED WEEKEND LOTS OF LOVE FROM THE NURSERY TEAM !!!!

Nursery News

Welcome to our first Blog post of this session!! We have had such a busy first two weeks with new children starting and new friendships being built. What a joy to witness. The children have enjoyed investigating and choosing from our new resources around the room and have had great fun outdoors in the garden. We started off the week on Monday with new children in the morning and the afternoon. Tuesday we has Chloe’s birthday celebration in the morning, we had more new children on Wednesday and Thursday was our P.E day with Mr McCurdy and Eva’s birthday too!!. Friday saw us out most of the session making friends and investigating all the garden had to offer.

NEXT WEEK:

GIRFEC – SAFE

Monday- 3 new children PM

Tuesday –

Wednesday – New Parent Helper’s meeting 9am in school.

Thursday – P.E.

Friday –

Have a lovely weekend from the Nursery team x

Nursery News

Today we had our Big Bedtime Read launch. It was a lovely day and I would like to thank all the parents, carers and grandparents who came along some even dressed in their pyjamas. It was fantastic to see so many and I know the children really loved you being there.

I hope you you enjoy reading your pack of 5 books which you have for a week . Once returned next Tuesday you can then pick another pack to take home. I can’t wait to see any photographs of the children enjoying this new learning adventure. Please don’t hesitate to ask either myself or any member of the nursery team any questions you may have about this initiative.

Here are some photographs of our exciting day.

Mrs Caskie

Nursery News

What a great health week we have had in nursery. We enjoyed all sorts of activities and had healthy snacks.

We started off the week with trips to the park and learning some football skills. On Tuesday morning our AM children had their visit to Almondell country park where they went on a Gruffalo walk, listened for sounds of nature, made pictures from natural resources and enjoyed the park. Both sessions loved expressing themselves in the dancing and yoga activities. On Thursday the children were encouraged to bring their scooter to nursery and had great fun ‘zooming’ up and down the playground . It was great to see so many parents and carers join us for the daily mile and also the Fun run. A big thank you to Mr McCurdy for arranging such a brilliant week and also to the parents and carers who helped us on our trip and activities. We couldn’t have managed these without your support. All the children had super fun as did the nursery staff.

Transition events continued this week with the preschoolers joining the Primary 1 pupils for the daily mile and a measuring activity.

PEEP classes with Mrs Beattie have started again with both groups learning sign language for the hello and goodbye song and being introduced to “The old woman who swallowed a fly.” Group 1 were also counting bubbles and trying to see how fast they could pop them. Group 2 were asked to draw round their hand and their parent/career’s hand and find words about their feelings.

Transition next week will be the Moving up mornings on Tuesday 6th and Wednesday 7th. Arrangements for both these days have been outlined in a letter given out on Thursday / Friday. If you have not received your letter please see a member of the nursery team.

There will also be menu options available on Monday for the preschoolers to choose what they would like to eat the following week at the lunchtime experience. Please note the choices depend on which particular day your child is going. These details were also included in the same letter. If you have any questions about any of these events please ask any member of the nursery team who will be happy to help you. We would also like to ask if anyone has the talking book at home as we are unable to locate it and some children have still to get the opportunity to take this home.

Our AM children will share their favourite Health week highlights this week.

Lucy” I liked the bus”

Christopher ” I liked the fun run”

Anna ” I liked the healthy food”

Celine” I like running the best”

Isabelle” I like the dancing”

Blake” I liked being outside with my friends”

Annabelle” I liked dancing n the playground”

We would also like to invite parents and carers to a drop in session on Wednesday 7th at 11.15 am to discuss ways in which we as a nursery can improve to make your children’s learning experiences better. This will be held in the P7 classroom and you will get the opportunity to chat to staff and other parents over a cup of tea. Children who come along will be able to watch Trolls on the smartboard! We would love as many as possible to come along.

Just a little heads up on some dates. Nursery sports day will be held on Wednesday 14th June at 10.00 am and 2 pm weather permitting. Nursery graduations for preschoolers only will be on Thursday 29th June at 10.00 am and 3.15pm.

For more photographs of our Health week please check out our Nursery parents Facebook page.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery team.

Awesome P3

Another week full of learning in Primary 3!

RE – NO POVERTY PRAYER

Following on from our activity last week to help understand what it might be like to not have the things we need, we discussed what that might mean. We talked about how it could mean not having a bed to sleep in or a warm house in the winter time or proper clothes to wear. The children were very receptive and each wrote their own prayer to Jesus which we have displayed in our classroom.

TALK IDEA – WHY DID THE COW JUMP OVER THE MOON?

Thanks so much for having this discussion with your child this week – here are some of the questions P3 came up with and their answers!

Jack – Why did he do it? For fun! – Kate

Richard – Was the moon big? Yes – enormous, gigantic! – Alexis, Huda

Ola – How did you actually manage to jump over the moon? Maybe he had jumping hooves ! Sophie YM

Emily – Did you feel big compared to the moon? Yes – I felt massive!

Emma – How did you survive going through the moon’s atmosphere?

Michael – Did you see stars? What did it feel like?

Sophie R – Did you see aliens?

Alexis, Seamus – Did you see rockets?

Sophie D, Sophie YM – Was the moon made out of cheese?

Robbie, Bartosz – If the moon was made of cheese, did you eat it?

Daniel – Did you see lots of planets up there?

Cameron – How did you breathe up there?

This is our talk question to discuss next week – we would love to see some of your responses on our blog and/or your comments on this as a task?

***************************************************************

Hickory dickory dock, The mouse ran up the clock.

The clock struck one, The mouse ran down,
Hickory dickory dock.

Why was the mouse running up the clock? What could he see?

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MATHS

VOLUME – We wanted to see what 27 litres of water looked like because Jess the RHET farmer told us that a cow gives 27 litres of milk every day.

Sophie R – Each person filled a jug with water and poured it in to a plastic box.

Kate – We used jugs that measured up to 1 litre and then we filled them ourselves up to the line.

Ava – It looked a lot! Orla – that’s a lot of milk from a cow in one day!

DATA HANDLING & TECHNOLOGY – We worked in groups to measure our heights and decide whether we were more than 1 metre, about 1 metre or less than 1 metre. If we were doing this task again we would challenge ourselves by recording our actual heights in metres and centimetres though! We showed this information on a tally chart then used it to make our own Bar Chart using technology. We used this online activity to make them https://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/graphing/classic/bar_pie_data.asp?ChartType=bar

INTERDISCIPLINARY LEARNING

Cameron – we got to look at Dedridge on Google Maps.

Jack – we had to look for places that we knew.

Sophie D, Maliha, Emily, Sophie YM, Sophie R, Jack, Cameron, Richard, Michael & Niamh – we found Lizzie Brice roundabout and Asda.

EXTRA CHALLENGE:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ and key in Saint Ninian’s Primary School, Douglas Rise, Livingston

How long does it take to get to school by walking/by car/by bus?

Click on directions then key in home address to find out!

Why don’t you post what you find out on the blog next week!

To reinforce their recent learning on what a noun is, Primary 3 had to read a passage about Lizzie Brice then spot all the nouns. Super work Primary 3!

WRITING

Richard – We wrote a thank you letter to Jess from RHET to thank her for coming in to visit us and telling us all about her farm. Mrs Scott was very impressed at how neat our handwriting was and our layout of a letter!

Have a lovely weekend from Mrs Scott and Primary 3!

Nursery News

Another week has flown by in nursery. First of all we welcomed another member to our St Ninian’ s family. Khyla has joined the AM session. We hope you enjoy your time with us. On a sad note we said goodbye to Liam in our PM session who has gone to another nursery nearer his new house. We wish him well and will miss him.

The transition programme for our children going into Primary 1 continues with the nursery children working together with the children in both Primary 1 classes on Numeracy and Literacy carousels . This gave the nursery children an opportunity to see how they will be working when they come to big school. They were all excited and again were a credit to us. Well done everyone. In nursery we also listened to a song about the letter ‘m’ and we tried to think of things that began with this sound. As a home link activity we would love it if the children could bring something in beginning with this sound and also if you are out and about have a look and see what you can find that begins with ‘m’. Next week the nursery children will be going out for a short playtime with both their buddies and the Primary 1 pupils. This will be in the nursery outdoor area and the following week it will be in the school playground. If they wish the nursery boys and girls can bring a snack and drink with them which they can have at this time. It is only 15 minutes so something small to eat will be great. As they will be outside we would ask that the children come in appropriate clothing and shoes. Thank you for your support in this.

The children also received a lesson on personal safety this week when we had a fire drill. Both sessions had to stop what they were doing and leave nursery quickly and safely. All the children were amazing and we were very proud of them.

Outdoor learning has been very busy this week with lots of exciting adventures in their learning. The children have been using their skills of curiosity and inquiry when using our natural open ended resources. They have been on the bikes, making lots of yummy recipes in our mud kitchen, sitting in the sand pit and role playing at schools! We hope the sun keeps shining for us next week. A wee reminder that children should come to nursery with suntan cream already applied and proper clothing for the sunshine. Please check out our Nursery Parents Facebook page for some photographs of our outdoor learning.

Mrs Beattie’s PEEP classes continue on a Friday and this is what they will be doing this week. The first group will be working together choosing different size balls and finding ways of rolling , bouncing and throwing them to each other while singing songs. They will then enjoy snack and a story together. The second group after nearly being blown far far away on top of their large parachute quite literally and having so much fun doing so have decided to go outside again! Hopefully they will find other ways that they can use and play with the parachute together and also use stop watches to time themselves going over the school assault course which they had tried last week for the first time. Another exciting PEEP session ahead!

It is the turn of the PM children to share their learning with us.

On Primary 1 transition.

Liam ” I made a snake ” ( this was linked to our shared topic of The Gruffalo)

Riley ” It was good”

There was lots of chat at the snack table.

Martin” I like to have this at home” ( yoghurt)

Emilie M ” I ‘m tidying up ”

Outdoor learning

Scott ” I like to play with the train”

A little reminder that there is a information meeting on Monday 15th May at 6 o’ clock in the school for new Primary 1 parents.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery Team.