PE – Page 3 – St Ninian's Primary School

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!

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!

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!

Counting fun in Primary One!

It’s been a busy week in P1R with lots of learning and fun!

In maths we have continued to develop our understanding of numbers and have been using songs and games to help us achieve this. One of our favourite games has been paint splat, working out numbers before, after and between. Try it out for yourself on our maths resources blog.

We also enjoyed looking for dot patterns and explaining to the rest of the class how we worked out the answer. Here’s what some of the boys and girls said about this pattern:

“I counted the dots one by one”

“I just knew it was 5”

“I counted the 4 on the outside, then added the 1 in the middle”

Image result for number dot patterns

Look at this dot pattern and tell someone how many dots there are and explain how you worked out the answer. Leave us a comment below.

Image result for number dot patterns

In IDL we planned our new topic, “All about me”, the children came up with some really good ideas which we’ll keep you posted about in our weekly blog posts. This week the focus was on ‘We are all different’, the children took part in discussions, listened to songs, wrote personal descriptions, made a torn paper portrait and did an eye colour survey. I think you’ll agree that they managed to cover a lot of subject areas using their IDL theme.

We also started our inter-house championship in PE, this week’s event was high jump. Everyone tried their best to master the scissor jump and the children loved when the bar got higher and higher! Well done to Oma, Alice and Dominic who were our house winners this week for the event.

Next week we will be trying out the new route for our daily mile, watch this space for an update on how we get on. Some of the route will now be on grass so try to remember trainers for next week.

Well done to all the children for participating in Ninian’s Natter this week, all the children have now had a learning conversation with myself to review last term’s goals and set new ones. If you didn’t make Ninian’s Natter ask them about their goals, we will continue to review these as the term progresses.

Last thing to mention is today’s Achievement Assembly, our class winner was Harry who was chosen for showing creativity in his work – well done!

See you all next week, remember our class mass is on Thursday 28th April at 9.30am in St Philip’s (wee chapel), it would be nice to see some parents/families there to support the children.

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!!

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!

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.

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!

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.

Strange goings on in P1R

What a busy, but strange week!

It started calmly with our reading lessons where we were working in teams to sequence our stories without picture clues! We were also learning about true and false with Miss Proudfoot.

In maths we continued to learn about subtraction using a bug game and a new ipad app.

In phonics we learned about the letter ‘x’ and Miss Diamond’s mum kindly donated some real x-rays for us to use.

On Wednesday we observed the 1 minute silence to remember those who died in the war, we used our candle timer as a visual reminder. Everyone was very respectful.

Then things started to go wrong…..we went back in time to the 1950’s and learned about school life in the past. The teachers were really strict, the children had to write with slates, everyone sat in rows, if you were naughty you got the belt or had to wear the dunce hat (Miss Proudfoot was very naughty and we made her sit in the corner!). We also did a drill lesson for PE and it was tough, lots of press ups and star jumps.

We also learned about playground games and had a go at different activities – hula hoops, marbles, throwing the bean bag and hopscotch. Mrs Roy loved hopscotch!

Things got even stranger on Thursday morning when we came in from break to find our classroom upside down. We came up with lots of suggestions as to what had happened – a bad man broke in through the windows, the time machine had an explosion, the naughty fairy from nursery did it!! Everyone wrote a story about their ideas (on the floor as we couldn’t use our tables), Miss Smyth and Mrs Beattie came to help us investigate, Mrs Beattie left us the good fairy in her little fairy house to help us clear the mess. Thankfully when we were at PE she must have used her magic fairy dust to put our class back to normal, phew!!!

All in all it was a fantastic but strange week!!!!!! I wonder what will happen next week??????