Literacy – Page 8 – St Ninian's Primary School

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.

P2/3 Superheroes

Its been another busy week in Primary 2/3.

We found out that our new topic was ‘Planet Earth, Moon and Sun’ and we all had lots of great ideas about what we’d like to learn in our topic.

Rachel – ‘What is the earth made of?’
Alishba – ‘What’s inside the earth?’
Harry – ‘Why do we get day and night?’
Hasan – ‘What do animals do at day and night?’
Chloe, Carly and Annayah – ‘What is the moon made of?’
Matthew ‘What is the earth’s surface made of?’
James ‘What is the sun made of?’
Aaron ‘Is there ice inside the earth?’

Some other highlights from our week are:

Calvin We wrote a story about St Ninian’s cave. We read our stories carefully to make sure that they made sense.

Alishba In maths we’ve been focusing on a number of the day as a maths starter. Our skills are getting better every day.

Jakub We used felt tip pens to make the sun and the moon then we displayed them on our classroom windows.

Matthew We learnt about nocturnal animals. They have big eyes to help them see in the dark.

Kasia We learnt about day and night by making earth by holding hands in a circle and Mrs Keegan held the torch to show us the sun.

We also used the globe and a torch to help us learn about day and night.

Rachel We saw a video which shows us how the earth moves around to make day and night.

Hasan We learned about St Ninian and where his cave is in Whithorn. We decorated pebbles from St Ninian’s beach.

Have a lovely long weekend.

Mrs Howley and Mrs Keegan

Learning through play

What a busy week we’ve all had in P1R!

In literacy we introduced ‘s’ and ‘p’ – the children are quickly picking up the sounds and looking forward to introducing our first vowel sound next week. They had fun in the glitter tray finding the hidden sounds, playing literacy games on the ipad and smartboard, sorting out the toys by their beginning sound and lots more.

Our story writing lesson, linked to our topic work, was really productive and everyone had a go at drawing a dinosaur and then describing it using their own words. We chose Nathan and Amber as our star writers this week as they had managed to sound out some of the words in their story. Their work will go on display in our classroom for everyone to see.

In maths we have been working on our counting skills through play based activities. We enjoyed playing hopscotch, tracing number shapes in flour and counting stickers in a matching game. We even had a go at Mrs Roy’s fitness challenge – we had to exercise and count at the same time.

IDL has been great fun as we have continued to work on the theme of dinosaurs. We made dinosaur masks to use in our drama and structured play, made playdough dinosaur models which we then used to film our very own mini-movies using the ipads.

Play was again at the heart of our Goldentime activities where the children chose an activity as a reward for gaining lots of dojo points. Here are some action shots.

I can’t wait to see what we’ll all get up to next week. Remember to bring your biggest smile for the Courier photographer on Monday.

Full timers in P1R

As the title says, P1R were in full days this week and lasted well, the children had bags of enthusiasm and energy for learning across the week. They enjoyed having lunch in the hall with the other classes.

Our phonics focus was ‘m’ and ‘c’ and the children learned about where in their mouth the sounds came from and how to form the letters correctly. They went on a sounds walk around the school looking for objects beginning with ‘m’ and ‘c’ taking it in turns to photograph what they found. Ask your child what colour the sounds are and I’m sure they’ll be able to tell you. They also enjoyed the carousel activities where they were able to use the smartboard and ipads, playdough, strawberry jam and lots more!

using strawberry jam to make the ‘mmm’sound

In maths we continued to practise our counting through games and songs. What great movers we have in P1R! We also used our book study topic in maths and spoke about the size of dinosaurs using mathematical language – tall, short, long, big, small. We had a great idea to then measure our dinosaur drawings from a previous lesson using cubes, I thought this was a good suggestion! We have put our findings on our classroom displays for you to have a look at.

In IDL we also went on a tour of the school as we have some children who went to different nurseries and were keen to have a look around. Mrs Purdie let us all go into her office, it was a bit of a squeeze but we managed to all fit in. Thanks Mrs Purdie! We also made our very own school ties.

The children designed some really nice book covers for Harry and the Dinosaurs and they learned about some of the important features of books – when you’re reading at home see if you can find some of these features.

We wrote our very first stories about our favourite things in big school with a little bit of help from the grown ups, it was great to see all of the children having a go at emergent writing.

PE and the Daily mile was good fun, we only managed half a mile this week but some of us chose to include this in our goal for the term. We played lots of teambuilding games and got used to the big hall. Well done to everyone for remembering their gym kit.

We finished the week with a whole school assembly and then set our personal goals for the term. Come along to Ninian’s Natter and discuss this goal with your child.

We’re all looking forward to next week!

A Great Week in P2/3!

What a great week we’ve had in Primary 2/3!

Our literacy carousels have been a great success, with the children working on spelling, reading and handwriting activities.

Drama was a huge hit, when we played ‘Hot Seating’ and took it in turns to ask questions of George, from our novel George’s Marvellous Medicine. We explored healthy living when we thought about medicines and how we feel when we are ill.

We tried yoga on Thursday to help make our concentration even better and we all had great fun.

One of our favourite activities this week was our Go Noodle PE session where we improved some of our dance moves!

On Thursday we said goodbye to Father Paul with a surprise assembly and we all contributed to a special book which the school made for him.

We’re all looking forward to another exciting week next week in Primary 2/3.

Primary 2/3, Mrs Howley and Mrs Keegan

Settling into P1R

What a fantastic start we’ve had to the new school year in P1R! The children have settled in nicely to the routines of the classroom and have kept themselves very busy. Time has been spent getting to know one another and where things are kept in the classroom.

In literacy we have been working on our pencil control making different patterns in preparation for starting our phonics lessons next week.

The children have also been introduced to our book study ‘Harry and the dinosaurs’. We read a story about Harry starting school and shared our own feelings about starting school. We have started a display and played with our class bucket of dinosaurs.

In maths we are developing our understanding of numbers to 10 – counting, sequencing, number formation and lots more.

We went to our first whole school assembly today and earned dojo points for being well behaved and responsible. We then started making our class charter deciding what rights we felt were important to us in our class.

We are all looking forward to starting our full days next week finishing at 3pm, Monday-Thursday.

PE lessons will be on Monday and Wednesday, full gym kit needed on those days.

Here is a glimpse of some of the children in action this week. Individual photographs have also been sent via class dojo – hope you like them!

Strength and determination to succeed!

I can’t believe that our time in P1R is almost ending, we’ve been using the time we have left to consolidate our learning and prepare ourselves for next session.

Monday started off with a fun filled judo session with our friends in P1D where we got to show off our moves. We worked with a partner using our strength and determination to try to defeat one another. I can’t believe how strong everyone is!!

In literacy we have been focusing on the alphabet – revising all the letter sounds/names, putting the alphabet in order. We were very creative with this and made letter shapes using pipecleaners, used the drawing apps and small whiteboards on the ipads to write the alphabet, played alphabetical order games on the smartboard.

Our friends from P6/7 visited us on Thursday morning for some paired reading which we always look forward to, the older children were amazed at how well we are all reading now, some of can even read with expression!

Maths this week has been about addition and subtraction as it has been a little while since we worked on this. Everyone remembered the strategies to use, eg. counting on or back, using the numberline, using our fingers. I tried to trick the children by giving them challenging missing number sums but as always they rose to the challenge and completed them successfully. As the children are so clever they took it in turns to be the teacher at addition bingo, they did a better job than me!!

We ended the week with Ninian’s Natter and our class bake sale. Thank you to everyone who supported this event, the total raised was £172 which will be shared with the nursery as they also donated cakes. The children will decide how best to spend this money next week.

Have a lovely weekend!

Busy bees in P1R

This has been a very busy week for P1R as for two mornings they worked in the P7 classroom to allow the nursery children to spend some time in the P1 classrooms in preparation for next session. The children enjoyed sitting on the ‘big chairs’ and working at the ‘big tables’. As always the children showed how responsible they were and continued with their carousel activities in the P7 classroom.

In literacy we have been revising all the sounds we have learned by doing lots of word building and spelling activities. Next week we will focus on the alphabet particularly looking at vowels/consonants/alphabetical order/letter names in preparation for P2. Mrs Gardner was working with the children on their Fry’s words and they all ‘blew her socks off’ as they know so many words now -well done everyone!!

In maths we have been learning about estimation, which to begin with was tricky. We have been estimating in our carousel activities, here are some of the activities we did: guess how many cubes will fit in our shoes?, measuring with cubes, estimation games on the smartboard, and many more. We all agreed that we are making more ‘accurate’ estimates now.

In IDL we started a mini-topic about minibeasts and enjoyed playing guess who?, writing our very own clues for a guess who game, matching minibeasts, drawing minibeasts and learning about minibeast habitats.

Here were some of the clues the children made up, see if you can guess the minibeast they are describing:

” I have 8 legs and I make webs. I eat insects. I am creepy and black.” Dominic

“I fly beside water. You can almost see through my wings. I have a sharp tail.” James

“I have black spots and I can fly. I have six legs. I am red and black.” Alice

“Butterfly’s are beautiful and pretty and they can fly. They are colourful. They like to go to warm places.” Oma

PE was great fun as we learned a new game, ‘Rounders’. Everyone listened carefully to the rules then split into 2 teams – fielders and batters. I was really impressed at how quickly everyone picked up the rules and we all had good fun out in the sunshine.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!! (Sorry no pictures, technical issues with blog this week)

Fun and friendship

I can’t believe how quickly the weeks are flying by, not long to go now!

In our literacy this week we have continued to learn about ar/or/ir/er words. Everyone is getting really good at identifying which pattern they hear in the words even though they sound very similar. We enjoyed playing the Aar Pirate game with a partner and competed against one another to get four in a row. We also wrote sentences in our jotters keeping our writing neat in preparation for P2, used the magnetic letters to make words and played some games on the smartboard.

In maths we have been skip counting in 2’s and learning about odd and even numbers, we did this through songs, games, written tasks and practical tasks. We also had a visitor to the class, Mrs Gallagher, from the WL Numeracy team who did some fun counting on activities with us using counters, numicon and dot patterns, she was really impressed at how well the children were doing in their maths work!

In our PE lessons we got the chance to go outside and use the running tracks. We did the 200m and 400m races, everyone raced in heats before we then had a boys and girls final. It was lovely to see the children supporting and encouraging one another to the finish line. The 3 winners in each final will now earn points for their houses – well done!

In IDL and HWB we focused on friendship and everyone pointed out that this is one of our school values. We learned about friendly/unfriendly behaviour and we all agreed that we preferred the good friend traits. We were all given a challenge to try and make at least one new friend in school or at home and each day the children excitedly told us about their new friends – well done everyone! In our writing we wrote friendship recipes using lots of WOW words – “a sprinkle of happiness”, “100 grams of love”, ” a pinch of fun” and ” 3 cups of kindness”. We also worked with our friends in P1D to make friendship bracelets out in the school garden, this was tricky but good fun! To finish off our friendship week we decided to have Goldentime with P1D at the park, everyone played together nicely showing what good friends they all were, what a lovely way to end the week!

Feeling the heat in P1R

What a lovely sunny week we’ve just had although it’s not as bright today!

This week has been another busy one. In Religious Education we have been learning all about Mary and have been saying a Hail Mary every morning before we start our lessons. We watched a short Bible clip and then coloured in a stain glass window for our learning journals.

In maths we have continued to focus on ordering of numbers within 20 as some of us found this tricky last week, we’ve all got much better at it now. We enjoyed playing the loop card game and working in teams to order the numbers quickly before the timer ran out. The boys were victorious beating the girls 2 games to 1! We also played number bingo and a dice game to help us find the number more or less than. As a reward for everyone’s hard work we went outside to play ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?’, we all remembered our o’clock times.

In literacy we continued to challenge ourselves by reading and spelling s blend words, everyone did really well with this. Our spelling and reading continues to get better each day and we love to beat our highest scores in our tricky words.

IDL has been fun this week as we have been learning about the parts of the body and the skeleton. We all made moving people, cotton bud skeletons and labelled the body parts correctly. Have a look at our class display when you’re here for Parent’s Evening. We also listened to some stories and songs about skeletons.

Preparations have begun for our class assembly which is in 2 weeks time. All the children have been issued with a speaking part to learn as part of their homework – well done to the children who know this by heart already! We will try to find some time next week to get the microphones out and practise using these. Congratulations to our friends in P1D who did their assembly today – you were awesome!

Next week as you know will be our annual Health Week, a letter has been issued today and there is further information on our class story on dojo. I will update this daily with the next day’s activities to ensure everyone comes prepared. Get lots of rest over the weekend as we’ll be really busy next week, hopefully the sun keeps shining!!