Interdisciplinary Learning – Page 2 – St Ninian's Primary School

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

Time flies in P1…

As the title suggests we have started learning about time and this week the focus was on days of the week, months and daily routines. We listened to some catchy songs to engage us in our learning before doing some tasks. We did a cut and stick sequencing task, worked with a partner and in groups to discuss daily routines, made a class birthday chart and also tried to use simple timetables. Mrs Purdie popped in while we were making a birthday chart and we asked her when her birthday was, can you remember which month it was? Next week we will progress onto learning about analogue and digital clocks and how to tell o’clock times.

We planned out our new topic, The Gruffalo. We read the story and then came up with lots of ideas about activities we could do in class. We added this to our visible plan and our talking book. The nursery are working alongside us on this and we will have opportunities to share our learning as the topic progresses. One of the first suggestions was to create a collage for our classroom so we got to work in teams using different materials, felt, twigs, paint,crepe paper and feathers. It’s starting to look good on the wall and we add to it as we learn more. In reading we did a picture this activity when from memory we had to draw a detailed picture of the Gruffalo,we did really well with this. Then in writing we wrote a description of the Gruffalo using the drawings we had made. We added some of these to our class display.

Our transition work with the nursery continued and we invited the AM and PM groups over so we could share the Talking Transition Book with them. We told them all about school and answered some of their questions. Next week they will join us for a literacy and mathematics lesson.

Remember we are on holiday on Monday and PE kit (indoor and outdoor) needed for Tuesday.

Our weekly news

We can’t believe it’s Friday again, the weeks are flying by in P1! Here are some of the highlights of the week (sorry for the lack of photographs but we have been so busy that we forgot to take them):

In writing this week we learned a new skill, editing and redrafting. We all looked at each others pirate adventure stories and thought of ways to up level them and change the greens to pink. We then rewrote our stories onto a scroll. Some of the stories are being entered into the Young Writers competition and we decided to put the others into a book for our class library.

In numeracy we continued to learn about subtraction and focused on subtracting from 8 and 9. It’s important that we have good number sense and understand different strategies for solving subtraction stories. We enjoyed using the subtracting apps on the ipad and we all managed to log onto sumdog during our number carousels. Another of our favourite activities was the space subtraction puzzle. We played a new game this week ‘bus stop’. The aim of the game was to roll 2 dice then move your bus the correct number of spaces on the board. If you landed on a plus sign you got to add passengers to the bus, if you landed on minus you had to take away passengers. Well done to Paul L and Nathan who were our winner’s!

Image result for stop the bus game

To finish our pirates topic we made some healthy pirate snacks using cheese and apples. Before we started we had to learn about the skills and equipment needed. We also discussed the importance of washing our hands before handling food.

We want to share this video with you about being germ smart:

Everyone enjoyed the afternoon and the best bit was eating the leftovers!! We were also able to make lots of learning links, Paul M made links to symmetry when slicing the apple, James cut his apple into halves, Ephraim cut the cheese into cubes. Here are some photos of us hard at work!!

We finished the week by watching some growth mindset dojo clips. These reminded us about the importance of exercising our brains and not giving up, especially if we are finding things tricky to begin with. Instead of saying “I can’t.. say I can’t YET!”

Pupil voice:

Lucy – I enjoyed Easter structured play.

James – I enjoyed learning about food technology.

Klaudia – I liked playing with the soft toys at Golden time.

Isla – I like my new reading book.

Mark – In number work we have been learning about subtraction. I can do my sums in my head.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the spring sunshine while it lasts!!

Weekly update

Another busy week in P1R.

In phonics we met a rude clown who taught us about the ‘Th’ sounds, Mrs Roy made us all stick our tongues out when practising this sound, have a go at home. We played a cool game on the smartboard which revised sh, ch and th where we had to fill the rocket tank with fuel. The game was called Letter Planet and it is on the Topmarks website if you want to play it again. We also made th books and practised spelling th words using magnetic letters.

Subtraction was the focus in numeracy this week and we learned more about mathematical language, did you know there are different words that mean the same as subtraction? We enjoyed playing the Lego subtraction board game with a partner to help us in our numeracy learning and also made subtraction ice cream cones. We also went on a visit to the local shop to finish off our money topic. Everyone had 20p to spend and had to look at the price labels before making our choices. Klaudia and Isla had a great idea to team up and put their money together as they saw something which was 30p, well done girls, good problem solving and teamwork! Nathan found it tricky choosing as there were so many things he liked. Dexter was able to buy 4 things with his 20p, he added the prices together to make 20p.

In RE we were looking after the new life we had planted and we were delighted to see how our seeds had grown. We’ve taken them home now to show our families. We decided to make our Lenten promises and came up with some lovely ideas – Ephraim will help look after his little brother, Brooke will give to the poor, as a class we decided to say an extra prayer every day in school. We also learned about St Patrick while listening to some traditional Irish music – Mrs Docherty visited us to show us her Irish dancing!!

Our pirate adventures continued this week and we all made pirate masks to use in some role-play activities. Isla enjoyed taking videos and pictures as we acted out our pirate adventures. We also wrote stories about being marooned on a desert island which we are going to submit to the Young Writer’s competition. There were some great imaginative ideas and a selection of WOW words.

Continue reading “Weekly update”

Signs of spring

This week we have been continuing to look for signs of Spring or new life during our RE lessons. Many children have spotted some new flowers growing near our school or in their gardens. We decided to do some planting of our own in the classroom. We made lots of links in our learning when doing this:

RE – new life, Lent, preparing

Science – growing seeds, what will we need, what are the best conditions for growing things, seasons, weather

Literacy – sequencing, writing instructions

Numeracy – counting seeds, measuring soil

In phonics we learned about ‘ng’ and ‘wh’, we all agreed that they were quite tricky. Ephraim has been great at spotting ‘ng’ throughout the week in reading books or on the smartboard – well done Ephraim. We tried a new activity at our choice station this week – the ‘wh word hunt’ – we had to use magnifying glasses to spot the tiny wh words hiding in a colourful picture, it was good fun. We have also been using magnetic letters, playdough and written tasks to help us learn these new sounds. Another station was the peer assessment station, one of us read the words and the other person had to spell the words on the whiteboards, we loved taking it in turns to be the teacher! Next week we are moving onto the rude clown sound -Th.

In numeracy we worked on number names to 10 as this was something we chose as a next step after learning about money. We played games to help us do this, eg. Matching names to numbers, spelling number names games on the spelling bug app, number name wordsearches. We are all more confident now in reading number names and are ready to move onto something new next week. Remember to log onto Sumdog to take part in the West Lothian Contest this week. We will also make time at school next week during Smartstart and numeracy to do it too.

In IDL we learned about mapping and made our very own treasure maps for our pirate adventures. We discussed what you would find on a map: symbols, a key, a compass, a route. This will help us during Outdoor Learning Week where we will have a go at following some maps outside.

Pupil voice:

Dexter- I liked playing the sky phonics app on the iPads.

Klaudia-In PE we were playing hockey.

James-I enjoyed learning about Lent.

Amber- I liked learning about subtraction.

Isla- We made a treasure map.

Brooke- I liked our RE work this week.

Ephraim- I liked learning about number names.

Mark- We were planting seeds.

Nursery News

How the weeks are flying by in Nursery! On Tuesday we celebrated Pancake Day. We discussed what ingredients we needed to make pancakes and then the best part we got to eat them😊

The children decided that they would like to change our shop into a pet shop so we now have lots of pet food, toys and pets for sale. The children are really engaged in this learning experience using real money and trying to recognise the coins. Some are also extending this learning at home and even visiting Pets at Home to collect leaflets which is fantastic.

The children have also been enjoying outside learning with lots of cooperative play in all areas. We have had delicious food made in the mud kitchen and lots of imaginative play in our shed using lots of open ended natural resources. We were worried about the birds eating in the cold weather so we made more bird cakes we think they will be eaten very quickly. As it was windy we decided to make wind socks from cartons and material and we also used CDs to hang in the trees and we noticed that the sunlight caught these and made some lovely colours. Great work!

We celebrated World Book Day on Thursday with the children and the staff dressing up as their favourite book characters. Everyone looked fantastic! The children had the opportunity to talk about their favourite book at small group time and we talked about authors and illustrators. We also learned some new vocabulary. The children had even made their own Nursery story book and picked their favourite page in their books which we put out on our display. A very special visitor came to visit us too. It was gangster granny!! Luckily she didn’t get a chance to steal any of our Nursery toys and resources👍 Another special visitor was Szymon’s mum who very kindly read us a story in Polish. Thank you Mrs Dudek😀 We were also lucky enough to be invited to the Primary 1 classes to share a story time. We really loved going into school and getting to sit in a classroom. All the Nursery children were excellent at listening and even put their hands up to answer questions. We were all really proud of them. Thank you to Primary 1M and 1R for asking us😍

It is the turn of our PM children to share their learning this week.

Emilie M ” I like cooking in the kitchen of the house corner.”

Liam ” The Pet shop is my favourite as I love dogs.”

Rojin” I like making things at the play dough table.”

Robert ” I loved making the bird cakes.”

Mark ” We made wind socks and it showed us the direction of the wind.”

As part of our topic on shops we are planning a trip to Pets at Home for both sessions. Please let any member of the team know if your child has any allergies to pets or if for any reason you would prefer them not to take part in this trip. Thank you.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery Team😊

Weekly update from P2/3

Our trip to the museum to continue with our investigations into Ancient Egypt was a huge success and we would like to share our pictures. We loved the workshop when we found out about mummies then the Ancient Egyptian trail around the museum which took us all the way from the first floor to the fifth floor!

Our highlights included:

Matthew – I learned about mummies at the museum.

Aaron – We learned about being mummified.

Oma – We went to the shop and we bought some things to help us remember our trip.

Maeve – I liked when we did the quiz in the workshop.

Kuba – I liked seeing the huge aeroplane in the museum.

Andrew – We saw a stone coffin on the trail.

Pawel – We saw a real mummy on the trail.

Brooke – We got to hold real artifacts.

Harry – We looked for clues on the Egyptian Trail and I got to be a Pharoah in the workshop.

Levente – I liked when Harry was on the floor and we were finding out how to make him into a mummy.

Michelle – We did Egyptian investigations in the workshop.

James – I liked when we had to complete the missing half of some pictures.

Chloe – I liked it when we went to go and find the lion without the head dress.

Angel – I liked playing the ‘Man, woman or child’ mummy puzzle.

Rachel – I knew all about canopic jars and mummy brains.

Alishba – I liked filling in the log books.

Carly – I saw the coffin of a mummy with lots of drawings on it.

We all liked being on the bus in the snow and having our packed lunches!

Have a good weekend.

Primary 2/3 and Mrs Keegan

Celebrating our 40th Anniversary

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.

Ship ahoy in P1R

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!

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!