Interdisciplinary Learning – Page 6 – St Ninian's Primary School

Working together to become better learners!

Yet another jam packed week in P1r, it’s been so busy I haven’t had much time to take photographs so I’ll share the few I do have with you!

In IDL we have continued to learn about farming, with a particular focus on animals and how they give us milk, meat and lots more. The children wanted to make a new collage in the classroom so with some sighs we took down one of our pirate displays. Everyone contributed to this display:

“I helped colour in the farmer” said Madison.

“I made some farm animals and wrote some signs” said Ahmad.

“I worked with the blue table to make the barn” said Alice.

In maths we are learning about time and this week focused on days of the week and months of the year. We enjoyed this and used songs and games to help us learn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIvQOab00OQ

A few of us found day before/after tricky so for homework next week I’ve given you some activities to help with this. We have also changed our maths wall to help us remember the days of the week and months of the year.

In literacy we continued learning tricky sounds and words, this week we introduced the rude sound, “th”. The children enjoyed sticking their tongues out at me when making this sound! To help us learn our tricky words we tried 2 new games this week, bean bag toss and the fly swat game. We had to work together in teams and take turns at being the teacher. In our written tasks we had to be a codebreaker and try to break the code, we also had to read ‘th’ words and then draw a picture for each word. Some of us got to build words with the letter cubes, “I was very good at this” said Elenta. Everyone was very focused at the reading table and every week I am amazed at how well they are all reading – I can’t keep up!!

In PE everyone progressed from dribbling with a basketball to a football, it was agreed by all that good control and focus was needed in these lessons. At the end of the lesson we had a team game, everyone was a great sport!

To end our week we took part in a competition organised by our local Hobbycraft store, we had to design a class Easter Bonnet. Voting starts tomorrow so please go into Hobbycraft and vote for St Ninian’s, if we are successful we will win vouchers up to £150 to spend in the store. We are all really excited about this and hope we can be one of the lucky winners!

One final thing, thank you to all the children who donated to our Lenten Appeal today and wore their PJ’s to school, I loved coming to school dressed in my PJ’s too!!

Healthy, happy learners!

Well as you can see from the title Health and Wellbeing has been a focus for us. We have been doing our daily mile most days and yesterday we managed the full mile in the allocated time – go team 1R! Ahmad says, “I’m really fast”! In PE we have now started a new block focusing on travelling with objects, we have been working with a partner and as a team using balls and hoops. Tomorrow sees the launch of our school healthy tuck shop which we posted on our class dojo story page.

In phonics we have been learning about ‘ou’ which is from Vowel House and we are confidently making sentences and reading ‘ou’ words. We enjoyed a new activity this week which was highlighting words in a story, Angelina said ‘ I love this activity’! There was a challenge at the reading station as the children had to make longer sentences which were muddled up, Matthew said, “I’m good at this” and he was!!

In maths we revisited the concept of money but challenged ourselves by now adding combinations of coins to make totals. We played at being the people who work in a bank by counting all the coins, played a game on the smartboard where we had to do the shopping and then work out the change and we played a team game of matching amounts.

We also started a new topic, “Farming”, the children used their talking book to plan the learning experiences for the rest of the term and they came up with some really good ideas – have a look in our book when you’re next in class. They started by building their very own farm which is now proudly standing up in our library corner (if you have any soft toy farm animals to add to our farm we would be really grateful) and worked well in teams to colour all the different parts. In art they used printing to make fantastic farm landscapes, our hands got very messy! They learned about the parts of a plant and new life in Religious Education, watch out for next week’s homework which involves some outdoor learning about this. In music we made a sound story for Old McDonald has a Farm, the children had to select instruments to play for each of the animals, it was good fun but noisy!

Have a lovely weekend!

Pirates at sea

Today was the day we had all been waiting for, Pirate Pete had set us a final challenge to find the hidden treasure. We followed the map all the way to Glasgow and found the treasure(and some rats) on the Tall Ship. A great day was had by all, the children were a credit to us all!

This week’s news in P1R – our values in action!

The week may have been short but it’s been action packed in P1R!

In phonics we spent time looking at the Vowel House story and learned the trickiest sound of all ‘igh’, ask your child if they remember the special name given to 3 letters that make the same sound and leave a message for us on this blog post,it’s worth 20 House Points!! The children were sorting sounds with the igh sound that had different spellings then made their own sentences, they had to write from memory and play phonics games on the smartboard and ipad. We all agreed that this work was challenging but everyone rose to the challenge and succeeded!

In maths we continued to revise shape, addition, subtraction and money. We had good fun working in teams to make a number line to 20 using number names which earned us extra dojo points, played a shape matching game in trios, gave change from 10p using a smartboard game and completed a maths assessment!

In PE we had a choice lesson before starting our new block next week. The children could choose 2 aspects to focus on from our Significant Aspects of learning in PE to focus on, they chose Rhythm and Co-ordination. After some discussion we decided to do some pirate dancing to demonstrate this and film it to review our performance.

Digging for buried treasure was the theme for outdoor learning this week with Mr Hunter, everyone had great fun trying to find the hidden treasures!

As promised some of us went to visit the nursery to share our use of technology with the children, the P1 children from both classes visited the AM and PM groups. I was really impressed at the leadership skills shown by our P1’s, they had the nursery children engrossed in what they had to say and took it in turns to use the various ipad apps. We will continue to provide opportunities to share our learning with the nursery children over the coming months.

I think you will agree that we have made sure our school values are at the heart of what we do in P1R!

We’re going on a ………hunt!

Wow I can’t believe it’s Friday again, what a busy week we’ve had in P1R!

In reading this week we have been focusing on revising all the sounds we have learned and blending sounds together to make CVC words. We have used a variety of approaches and resources to do this, Miss Smyth even paid us a visit and spent the morning observing us as we worked. She was very impressed at how well the children used the apps on the ipad and their classroom displays as a tool for learning.

Maths has been great fun as we continued to learn about shapes, this week we looked at 3D shapes and spent lots of time exploring the shapes using our sense of touch and sight. We played games on the smartboard, went on a shape hunt, played shape bingo and dominoes and even wrote detailed descriptions for each of the shapes in our writing lesson.

In IDL we looked at how pirates defended themselves when at sea and how they used different weapons in battles. Everyone chose a weapon they would like to make using junk or recycled materials. We have put these on display for everyone to look at, hopefully we won’t have to use them too often!! On Wednesday we went outdoors for learning on a pirate scavenger hunt, we had to listen carefully to the clues and then go and look for evidence of pirates in our school grounds. We worked in two teams and chose names and captains for our crew – The Jolly Rodger and The Squeaky Sail. It was lovely to see everyone working together and helping one another in their search. The fun continued on Thursday when Mr Hunter asked us to create our very own sea monsters which were often a feature in pirate stories. We again took the learning outdoors for this and the children created fantastic monsters! Harry loved making the weapons and pirate play, Matthew enjoyed making weapons and Angelina liked finding pirate things in the school garden.

For Catholic Education Week we spent time discussing how we could show mercy to others, the children enjoyed watching the Pope Francis animation and all produced their very own Hands of Mercy for a whole school display.

Finally we finished off the week with an Achievements Assembly and our committees. Oma was awarded a special certificate for being a reflective learner – well done Oma! When asked how she felt she said, ” I felt really good.”

Well as I said at the beginning of the entry, it’s been a busy week! We’re all looking forward to next week when we have Technologies Week as our focus and Lent begins.

Sailing on the seven seas…

What a hardworking crew we have in P1R, it’s been another busy week!

At the beginning of the week we had a visit from our local librarian, Mrs Campbell to read us a story, we all had to vote for a book which she then read to us. We’re hoping to visit the library shortly to have a look at all the other books they have.

In maths we started a new topic learning all about shapes, we spent lots of time exploring 2D shapes. We used the feely bag to try and feel the shapes then describe them to our partners. We sorted shapes using the smartboard and flashcards, Mrs Roy was amazed at how quickly we could sort them! Our challenge of the week was to think of other 2D shapes and where we might see them in the environment.

We received another letter from Captain Pete this week who was delighted with the applications we had completed for homework to join his crew. He asked us to build our very own ship to use on our Pirate Adventure which we were really excited about. We had to learn about the different parts of a ship and try to recreate this in our design. Our crew have had great fun using the ship for pirate play. We also learned about Pirate life and spent an afternoon trying out some activities which pirates would do in their spare time – playing music, dancing, making things out of wood, playing cards, reading, etc.

The Olympics are beckoning for some of our budding gymnasts, we were are getting really good now at using the large apparatus. This week we focused on being responsible, leadership and core strength.

We ended the week with Ninian’s Natter where every child had a learning conversation to discuss their goals and progress. I will send a photograph to the parents who were unable to make it today of your child with their goal. You can use this as a tool for discussion at home.

A pirate’s life for me homework task.

Next week the children in both P1 classes are being asked to spend an evening in role as a pirate. We have been learning about what a pirate does to keep them busy or entertained. Ask your child about what they have learned. We’d love it if you could post a description of how you spent the evening for us all to read in class.

Here are some ideas:

Pirate dances

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6luwLbVftoI

Playing cards.

Reading or making up pirate stories.

Making things out of wood.

Making pirate food.

Enjoy me hearties and remember to leave us a comment below!!

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!

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.

P1R are going to blow your socks off this year!!

Happy New Year to everyone, we’ve had a very busy start to the year in P1R!

In maths we have started a new topic – division. We have been learning how to share objects fairly and had great fun sharing out sweets and toys.

On Wednesday we received a mystery message in a bottle, we were very puzzled and came up with lots of suggestions as to be what it could be and how it got in our classroom:

Maeve thought it might be a letter from Trex, Ahmad thought it was a special letter, Angelina thought it was a letter from a pirate because that’s what pirates do!

When we read it we discovered it was from Pirate Pete Pigeon, he has asked us to join him on his pirate adventures and we accepted immediately. Here is the plan we made with all of our ideas.

In PE we started a gymnastics block of learning and teaching, this week we were focusing on travelling and balance.

As this week was Vision and Values week we spent a lot of time discussing our school values and what makes our school unique. The children selected one of the values to illustrate in their Learning Journal. We also made a new class charter and used the theme of pirates to make a fantastic entrance display to our class.

In writing we had to think of how we were ‘going to blow your socks off in 2016’, there were some super ideas:

Oma is going to exercise more and become really fit.

Maeve is going to have the neatest handwriting.

Ahmad said we were going to be the best behaved class in the school ( I think we’re already that!!!)