Literacy – Page 9 – St Ninian's Primary School

P1R weekly news

Although it’s been a short week we’ve managed to cram it full of learning!

In maths we have been ordering numbers within 20 and identifying largest/smallest numbers. We worked independently, with partners or as part of a team.

In our CLIC lessons we have been doing lots of counting. Here is the link for our favourite song, give it a go over the weekend!

In literacy things have got pretty tricky as we are now learning initial blends focusing on ‘s’ blends this week, eg. sm, st, sw, etc. The children quickly picked this up and could guess what the word was going to be from its initial sounds. We also got some time to do a Fry’s word spelling test and some us can now spell 32 words independently – good job everyone! Try this game which helps you learn blends. Here is a picture of Ana playing it in class.

http://www.literactive.com/Download/live.asp?swf=story_files/bowling_alley_US.swf

In IDL and RE this week we have been discussing our families and how they are all different. It was lovely hearing the children talk so lovingly about their families. We made some lovely family trees using collage materials and different coloured handprints for every family member.

Last week the children made some ‘Me’ bags as part of their IDL homework, we presented these to one another this week and had fun looking at all the things that made the children happy, eg. photographs of memories, sweets, toys, jewellery, etc. Well done to all the children that made these, you earned extra dojo points!

We continued our inter house championship in PE and learned about sprinting this week. We all had a go at racing one another making sure we were using our arms and legs properly. Next week we hope to go outside and try sprinting on the new tracks on the upper field.

To finish off the week Miss Meechan brought some surprise visitors to our class, Jinky and Joey, her pet guinea pigs. Some of us had a cuddle with them. Thanks Miss Meechan!

I hope you are all outside enjoying the warmer weather, hope to see some of you tomorrow at our Summer Fayre 10-12pm!

Nursery News

Another busy and exciting week in Nursery. Our transition programme is well underway with the Talking Books making their way round the children. Our AM children visited Primary 1D in their groups to take part in a Literacy carousel. They all did extremely well and looked so grown up. A big thank you to Miss Diamond and her super class. Our PM children will have their visits in the week beginning 9th May. All details of our transition programme are contained in the transition booklet which was given out last week. If you have any questions on any of the activities please ask any member of the Nursery team.

In our consultative planning with the children the topic of Fairy Tales came out as the firm favourite. Our AM children chose The Gingerbread Man as their first story. This week they have listened to the story, drawn pictures of the gingerbread man, made headbands with their favourite character from the story on them. They also got the opportunity to smell real ginger and even made some gingerbread men biscuits which they then decorated and ate! They were yummy.

Our PM children chose Hansel and Gretel as their favourite story. They also listened to the story, made the cottage covered in sweets and managed to decorate it without eating the sweets! They also made puppets of the characters in the story and they plan to use these next week to retell the story in our puppet theatre. We can’t wait to see that! They also listened to a song about the story and sang along to it.

Just a little reminder that Nursery is on holiday on Monday and Tuesday. We look forward to welcoming all the children back on Wednesday.

Have a lovely holiday weekend. Hope the weather improves!

The Nursery Team.

Feeling happy in P1R

What a busy week it’s been.

In literacy the children have been learning the ng sound. They have been playing sound bingo, reading sentences with ng words and playing games on the smartboard. They are really confident at recognising Fry’s words and punctuation as you can see from these pictures.

In maths we have been counting objects up to 20 and have enjoyed some noisy warm ups with our counting songs.

Feelings have been the theme in IDL and we’ve had some great discussions. We listened to some music and had to guess what emotion it sounded like then drew feelings faces. We then made a feelings wheel using lines and colours for different emotions. These are now on our class display.

The competition continued in PE and this week we learned how to throw a javelin. Ask your child the rhyme which helps them remember how to do this. Kyle and Filip were very good at this and threw their javelins the furthest.

I was very proud of all of the children this morning when they led mass at St Philip’s. They all showed how responsible they could be and the parishioners commented on this. WELL DONE BOYS AND GIRLS!

Nursery News

First of all we would like to thank all the parents who came along to our focus groups as part of our review week. We really appreciated you taking the time to come along and we value your continued support.

We have been continuing with our Space topic this week and the children had the opportunity to make alien headbands and space play dough. The children also made a model of Earth using a football. What a great idea! Lots of rockets continue to be built in the construction area and some children even became human rockets!

In our Outdoor learning we have been looking at Numeracy and Literacy using ten green bottles and using books to look for signs of Spring and nature. The children then recorded their findings on paper. We have continued this indoors using matching games and Space pictures as a stimulus for writing. The children have also helped make a lovely Spring tree and painted some beautiful grass to go under it.

Our focus next week will be Easter. We will be looking at Easter traditions, take part in Easter crafts and of course looking for some hidden Easter eggs!

Just a little reminder that on Wednesday 23rd March the Nursery is joining the school to have Daily Mile with dad or grandad at 10.00am and 2.00pm. If you are free to come along and join in you are more than welcome to . No running required! Also on Thursday 24 March at 10.00am and 2.00pm we are having a Sponsored Bunny Hop where the children will be hopping round the school. Parents and Carers are invited to join us for this. There will be no sponsor forms issued for this but we would welcome any donations which will go towards the buying of new Nursery resources in consultation with the children.

Please note Nursery finishes on Thursday 24th March for the Easter holidays and everyone returns on Monday 11th April.

Have a lovely weekend.

Apologies for no photographs this week as our media space is full on the Blog. They will be added as soon as space becomes available.

The Nursery Team.

Time goes quickly in P1R!

Sorry we can’t post photographs this week but there is no media space on the blog, hopefully I can add these later.

As you may have guessed from the title we started a new topic in maths – time. The children have been learning about daily routines, clocks and recognising o’clock times. They have enjoyed taking part in a variety of activities this week to help them learn, eg. making a clock, playing time apps, using small clocks to make times, being teachers and checking others clocks, time bingo and using the time playdough mats. It has been great to see everyone making links in their learning and the children are now using the class clock with ease, especially to remind me when it is lunchtime!!

A game which we used for our plenary sessions was Stop the Clock, Oma is the current class champion with 18 seconds to beat. Try playing this at home and see how quickly you can match the times.

http://www.teachingtime.co.uk/draggames/sthec1.html

In phonics we were learning about ‘sh’ and ‘ch’, these are not easy yet the children were confidently reading and spelling words with these sounds very quickly. Some of the activities which helped us were glitter tray writing, sounds bingo, interactive games on the smartboard and much more! Here is a game to try out which practises sh,ch and th.

http://splash.abc.net.au/res/i/L7855/index.html

In IDL this week the focus was on Scottish produce – we had a great afternoon on Wednesday tasting lots of different Scottish produced food – salmon, tablet, porridge, raspberries, shortbread, oatcakes to name a few! Everyone had to choose their favourite which we then wrote about in Thursday’s writing lesson. It was interesting to see so many different foods being chosen, shortbread was very popular! My favourite was the tablet, delicious!!

PE was good fun as we continued to learn about travelling with objects, we introduced some new equipment this week and we are now using basketballs, footballs and tennis bats/balls. Some of the boys were showing off their dribbling skills they have learned at their out of school football clubs.

We ended the week with some outdoor learning, Mr McCurdy joined us on an environmental walk in our local area. We were able to spot many signs of spring and at the same time increase our fitness levels by walking 2 miles, yes that’s right, 2 miles! We used a map and followed the signs as we walked. It was only fair that the children were rewarded with some time at the playpark on the way back to school.

Thank you also to P7 for teaching us about the Stations of the Cross on Friday, we learned a lot about the Easter story. We will continue to learn about Easter next week.

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!!

Bookworms in P1R!

Happy World Book Day! We had great fun today with all our lessons themed around this – paired reading with P6/7, a reading carousel, writing book reports, sharing our favourite stories, reading a story with the nursery children and our Achievements Assembly. Well done to the children for making such an effort with their costumes!

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!

Successful learners in P1R

This week in literacy we introduced a really tricky sound, ‘qu’, the children enjoyed learning a little rhyme to help them remember the rule when writing qu. If you click on the link you can learn the rule too!

QU rhyme

Here are some pictures of the children showing off their spelling skills!

In maths we decided to revise all the concepts taught so far, the children amazed me at how much they have learned and remembered! They enjoyed revising addition, subtraction and money using a variety of activities during carousel time – smartboard games, money sorting, smartpal worksheets, using the rekenrek, question time, etc.

The theme for Religious Education this week was Lent, the children learned about Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. On Shrove Tuesday we enjoyed learning about celebrations around the world and thought it was really funny that in France and USA it is called ‘Mardi Gras’ which translates as ‘fat or grease Tuesday’. We had the opportunity to try some pancakes with our favourite topping, chocolate sauce!! I was really proud of how well they all participated in our whole school Ash Wednesday Mass, it was lovely to see so many children joining in with their prayers and mass responses.

Technology was a whole school focus and we decided to look at food technology but with a pirates twist! We learned about how to prepare our work surface for making different foods, how to prepare ourselves and how to safely use utensils. We enjoyed making treasure map pizzas and pirate ships. Some of us also did some extra food technology at home and made pirate snacks for Friday morning, thanks to Harry and James for making everyone a pirate cake, they were yummy!!

We also had a visitor called Sharon who works in the construction industry. She showed us lots of pictures of different buildings and we were able to link this to previous learning by telling her about different materials they were made from. She set us a challenge in teams to copy a building she had made using bricks, this was really good fun and all teams managed the challenge! To finish off we had a go at P4 work, yes you heard us right, P4 work!! We were able to build a city using co-ordinates and a grid. Thanks Sharon!

Safer Internet Day was on Tuesday and we watched an animation which taught how us about how to stay safe on the internet, we were all really sensible and identified what we should do if people were being mean to us online.

It was also lovely to see our nursery friends as they celebrated Chinese New Year, they certainly celebrated loudly as we could hear them before we could see them! Next week we are going to visit both morning and afternoon groups to teach them how to use the ipads in preparation for when they come to big school.

Have a lovely holiday weekend and I look forward to seeing all the children back in school on Wednesday!

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.