Committees – St Ninian's Primary School

P3 Weekly Round Up!

A quick week it has been!

The boys in girls in P3 have packed in so much learning to three short days!

We are so excited to begin our science topics! Mrs Scott will be exploring the Skeleton with the class and Mrs Conway will lead the learning about the sun, moon and stars – with a focus on the patterns of night and day! We have started to think about both of these and the things we would like to learn about.

Wednesday saw a class vote for our new class novel! The choices were Fantastic Mr Fox, How to Train Your Dragon and Gangsta’ Granny. As How to Train your Dragon and Gangsta’ Granny got three votes each we asked those who chose Fantastic Mr Fox to vote again… which led to Gangsta’ Granny as the overall winner!!! We will read short parts of this novel as a class over the next few months at suitable times in the school day. We continue to promote reading for enjoyment in our class – if there’s a novel or book that your child enjoys at home, please allow them to bring it to school to read for enjoyment on Wednesdays/Thursdays 🙂

This week saw the end of our symmetry topic in maths – and a tricky topic it has been! Some of the boys and girls moved on to creating symmetrical block patterns, which we found quite tricky. Here is a great symmetry matching game which explores reflective symmetry, perhaps you could try it at home?

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/symmetry/symmetry-matching

This morning we had our first pupil committees! The P1-3 committees are play based and range from outdoor learning to games to Mini Glee! This was a big hit with our boys and girls and we are already looking forward to the next meeting!

Keep an eye on your post over the coming days as today we popped some important mail in the post box 😉

At the end of the day today we reflected on our week and the things we enjoyed the most;

Ephraim ‘we were playing a game called poisonous ball in PE, I enjoyed that you got to throw your ball and if it hit the other teams bench their bench would be poisoned’

Amber ‘I liked doing my committee today – it was arts and crafts – I made one painting and one drawing’

Klaudia ‘I really enjoyed the committees. I did the mini glee – we are going to perform on the stage!’

Adam ‘ I liked when we were doing our textbook work in maths’

Sahara ‘I loved posting my letter’

Kerr ‘I liked doing the picture of the world in RE’

We are looking forward to distributing homework on Monday which reflects the changes in our home learning policy following feedback from pupils, parents and staff – stay tuned! 🙂

Have a fantastic weekend!

A short week in P1R

Time continued to be the focus in mathematics and we welcomed some of the AM nursery children into our lessons. We learned about o’clock and the important job the hands on the clock do. We discussed why do we need to learn about time and sang a time song. In carousels we made clocks, played bingo taking turns to be the bingo caller, worked in pairs to match times and lots more.

During topic time we invited the nursery PM gps over to continue our work on The Gruffalo. We listened to the Gruffalo song as a warm up then discussed the characters from the story. We each made a Gruffalo story wheel which we will use later to retell the story in our own words.

On Friday we attended our committee groups,here are some of the highlights:
I learned all about cooking equipment-Bernice
I learned about Marie Curie, we are planning a tea party for charity-Paul M
I was outside and had to think of how we could make our playground more fun-Isla
We made posters about Fairtrade-Ephraim and Dawid
I was talking about my favourite thing this year – Lucy
I went on a litter pick-Amber
I listened to the Rainbow story and worked with Paige- James

P2/3 Weekly update

In maths we have been using coins to 99p then using our number skills to pay for items up to 99p. We’ve had to use our skills in counting in tens too. We enjoyed playing this game to practice using and counting money http://www.topmarks.co.uk/money/toy-shop-money

We have also been working on our counting skills, counting forwards and backwards from any number up to 100. This is a good one to work on at home. A handy activity is http://www.topmarks.co.uk/Flash.aspx?f=NumberSequences We’d love it if you leave a comment to let us know how you get on!

In Spanish we’ve been working hard to learn the months of the year now that we’ve mastered the days of the week. We’ve had great fun playing this game http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primarylanguages/spanish/my_calendar/games/magic_cards_months/ Try it at home and see if you can beat the magician.

Everyone worked really hard in our Literacy Carousel on Wednesday. One of our highlights was reading in pairs then giving each other feedback. We also worked on spelling using pipe cleaners, improving our handwriting skills and finding interesting vocabulary in our reading books.

Pupils from P2/3 and P3 paid a visit to St Philip’s chapel on Thursday for their Sacrament of Reconciliation rehearsal. Some of the children have been a little worried about the format so it was really helpful to have the opportunity beforehand to go along. All of the children have worked really hard completing their Sacramental lessons in school as well as their homework tasks. They know their prayers and the hymns well, so we have been reassuring the children not to worry about anything at all!

Some of our other highlights include:

Michelle – I liked writing about my friend. I used lots of connectives.

Matthew – I liked doing Sumdog because I got lots of coins. My maths skills are improving.

Kuba – I liked the maths carousel because I worked hard with number lines.

Oma and Maya – I liked the Health and Well-Being committee because we went outside today.

Alishba – I liked singing with Mrs Steele.

Chloe – I liked it when Mrs Smith came to do maths with us. I learned how to find the difference between numbers.

Levente – I liked learning about responsibility in Health and Well-Being. We thought about it in the school and in the community.

Brooke – I liked the STEM committee because we worked on the laptops to design eggs.

Carly and Angel – I liked preparing for my First Reconciliation on Saturday.

Maeve – I liked learning about Cleopatra and looking at her face so we can draw it in art next week.

Aaron – I liked Technology when I switched on the netbook, logged on, found a website then played a maths game. I used loads of skills.

What a busy week in P2/3. We’d love it if you would leave us a comment.

From Mrs Howley, Mrs Keegan and P2/3.

UN Ambassador’s update

Today we had some visitors from St Margaret’s Academy to speak to us about the ‘St Margaret’s for Malawi’ project.

We learned about a school in Malawi and how cramped some of the classrooms are. They are not brightly decorated like ours and rely on natural light as there is no electricity. The children are fed one bowl of porridge and for many of the children this is their only meal for the day, often eaten outside on the dirty ground. There can be over 90 children in a P2 classroom with only one teacher compared to our P2 classroom of 25 pupils and one teacher.

St Margaret’s staff and pupils have been working on the Malawi project to support these children in their lives and education. They are going over in July to help build a classroom and are planning on raising funds and taking over bags for every child that they visit. We are going to support them with this project during Lent. Watch out for more information on the weekly updates, dojo and Facebook.

A huge thank you to our visitors for taking time in their busy prelim week to come down and speak to us!

Ahoy there mateys!

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!

P2/3 Weekly News

It has been a short but busy week in Primary 2/3!

We celebrated ‘International Day of Peace on Wednesday and looked at international symbols of peace then we chose to create individual ‘Rainbows of Peace’. Our rainbows were used to create a ‘Path of Peace’ to our friends at Dedridge Primary School on Friday morning.

We were so pleased to see Father Kenneth when he dropped into our class on Thursday morning and loved telling him all about our writing on St Ninian last week.

On Thursday we started our Big Writing lesson with a VCOP game where we threw a ‘snowball’ with a mystery word on it to each table. The person who caught the ‘snowball’ had to come up with an interesting sentence which included the mystery word. The sentences were very creative!

In Science this week we investigated weather, finding out about thunder and lightning. Next week we’re investigating rainfall and would really appreciate it if anyone has any empty 2 litre plastic bottles which they could send in.

Today we all went to our new committees – everyone had chosen the committee which they would like to be on. Everyone loved being part of their committee and working with children from all stages across the school.

We’re continuing to improve our fitness with the Daily Mile and getting fitter each week.

Have a lovely weekend!

Mrs Howley, Mrs Keegan and P2/3

P1M Weekly News

P1M managed to squeeze a lot of learning into this short week. Our sounds for this week were ‘i’ and ‘n’. We completed lots of different activities to help us learn these. We have also started to blend our sounds together to make some words. We had fun playing with stones and building words – even Trex took part! Well done Trex!

As part of our ‘Travelling Trex’ topic we really wanted to show our buddies Trex. Therefore, this week we participated in a structured play session with our buddies. We only managed to complete a few stations so we are looking forward to finishing this on Monday. Here are some photographs of the different activities. I think Jakub makes a fantastic dinosaur! What do you think?

Finally, this week we celebrated ‘International Day of Peace’. We learned about what peace means and some symbols for peace. We created some art work displaying these symbols – either the peace logo or a dove. Today, we used our art work to create a path of peace between our school and Dedridge Primary. Well done to Jakub who represented P1M at this. Check out the school facebook page for the photographs. Also on ‘International Day of Peace’ we took part in some yoga. We enjoyed it so much that every day after lunch time or break time we are going to take part in some yoga.

Today we joined our first committee. Ask your child if they can remember their committee and what activities they completed during that committee?

Peace and unity in P1R

As the title suggests the theme for this short week has been ‘peace’ as we celebrated International Day of Peace on Wednesday.

We began our day by taking part in some yoga to relax our bodies and minds in preparation for the day ahead. The children enjoyed this smartstart and have asked that we continue this next week. Everyone agreed that we all felt ‘peaceful’ when it was finished, even the adults in the room joined in too! We enjoyed learning a song about peace and decided to add some of our own actions to accompany it. The children suggested that we make a video of our singing so that’s what we did! It was fun watching it back in class on the ‘big screen’. In Art we made our very own peace pictures by doing some handprinting and drawing. They all looked lovely and everyone tried really hard to make their doves. These were then used to make a path of peace to our friends in Dedridge Primary School on Friday morning. We were really proud of James and Paul who represented our class and helped to lay the path of peace. Check out our school facebook page for photographs of the community event.

Here is the link to the song we have been learning. Ask your child to sing along and show you the actions.

In literacy we managed to learn 2 more sounds – ‘i’ and ‘n’. We tried out some new carousel activities and two of the favourites were the ‘butterbean sounds’ and the ‘n’ craft activity. Now that we have learned another vowel sound we are quickly realising that we can make more words.

On Thursday we attended our first Achievements Assembly led by Mrs Purdie. It was nice hearing about all the achievements children are having outside of school. Amber shared her success with the whole school and brought in something to show us all.

Finally on Friday we got to take part in ‘Committees’ – all the children were asked to select a committee they would like to be a part of for the school year. Everyone was really looking forward to this as they would get to work with children in other classes and with other members of staff. These will run throughout the school session and many of the children will be involved in projects and events. Ask your child which committee they have joined and what they liked about the morning.

Read all about it!!

The school newspaper committee will be selling the December issue of ‘Awesome News’ every day this week for 50p a copy. They are really proud of what they have achieved this term in their committee time and can’t wait to share it with you. All proceeds raised will go to a charity chosen by the committee.

Stellar Awards 2015 Winner

We are delighted to share that St Ninian’s and Dedridge Primary won the award for Team of the Year – Sport at this year’s West Lothian Council Stellar Awards.

The award recognises the school’s commitment to sport, our sporting achievements and the hard work of our Sport Scotland Committee in supporting Mr McCurdy to enhance our after school sport provision.

This is a great achievement for the both schools and the local community. Well done to everyone involved.