Thank you to everyone who came along to Parents’ Night. It was lovely to have so many positive conversations about the children’s learning.
It has been another really productive week in Primary 2/3.
The class has set an ambitious dojo challenge! Ask your child what is going to happen when we reach 2000 points. Everyone is very excited and working together to reach our target.
We have been working hard to tell the time to o’clock and half past (Primary 2) and quarter to and quarter past (Primary 3). There are some great activities to consolidate these skills at Doorway Online .
In Spanish we have been trying hard to count up to 20 – there are some tricky numbers! We really liked playing the Magician game to help us learn the numbers. If you’d like to try it at home click here .
This week we tried our hand at playing Hoopla as part of our Funfair topic then we produced some fabulous instructions in our Big Writing lesson, explaining how to play Hoopla.
We also investigated how dodgems work. We found out about forces then did an investigation in groups and wrote up science reports. Everyone loved making the dodgems crash into each other!
In Numeracy we’ve been developing our addition skills to 20 (Primary 2) and to 100 (Primary 3). We’ve all used Sumdog to consolidate our learning, with lots of expert help from our Sumdog experts in Primary 6.
In Health and Well-being we thought about our November theme of ‘Achieving’ and told each other how we achieve both inside and outside school and our friends reported back to the class. What a talented class we have!
It has been another busy week in Primary 2/3 with lots and lots of fantastic learning.
We have reached the last chapter of The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark and we have loved listening to the adventures of Plop, the little barn owl. Ask your child what their favourite part of the book was and let us know in the comments.
We celebrated All Saints’ Day with a lovely whole school mass. It was great to have so many parents joining us for this special feast day.
In Spanish we have been counting to 20 and having great fun challenging ourselves to learn the trickier numbers.
In maths we have continued our work on telling the time. In numeracy P2 have been adding doubles and near doubles and P3 have been adding teen numbers.
We are so excited that our new topic is The Funfair! We had a busy and creative planning session on Thursday when we worked in groups to plan our topic. Our first challenge was to create a price list for a Fairground food stall – you can see our creative price lists in our Learning Journals.
Everyone has been busy setting their targets in literacy, numeracy and health and well-being. Our targets are all in our online learning journals – please log in and have a look.
In writing we thought about firework safety and created rules to keep everyone safe at the weekend. Look out for our stories appearing on our Learning Journals.
The highlight of our week was the multi-sports festival at James Young High School. We tried badminton, rugby, basketball, football and a mini assault course and we loved all of the activities. It was great to try so many new skills!
It has been another amazing week in Primary 2/3 and we would like to share some of our highlights.
Matthew – A highlight was learning about the layers inside the earth and what happens when a volcano erupts. I liked looking at diagrams of the mantle of the earth.
Maeve – I liked when we made a volcano then watched it erupt.
Hasan – I liked working on the Tig Tag website and watching the film clip which showed us what’s inside the earth.
Alishba – I liked adding to 20 and working in my maths workbook.
Maya – I liked art when we made pictures of spacemen with Mrs Thomson.
Annayah – I liked using our Spanish weather phrases to make weather wheels.
Carly – I liked writing about our science experiment.
Harry and Dominic – I liked playing dodgeball in PE with Mr McCurdy.
Pawel – I liked going to the library and borrowing books for our class.
We were all very proud of Alishba when she got a certificate in our achievement assembly this morning for working so hard in Primary 2/3. All the children from Glasserton and Calder had a fantastic time at the movie morning on Friday!
Another busy and productive week in P1M. Here are our highlights:
Monday was ‘European Day of Languages’. We learned how to say ‘hello’ in a few different languages. Polish “cześć”: pronounced “cheh-sh-ch”. French “bonjour”. Irish Gaelic “Dia dhuit” Pronounced “gee-ah-ditch”. Spanish “Hola”. We have been really enjoying learning more and more Spanish in class. Pedro our Spanish Parrot is very impressed. He even joined us on the daily mile on ‘European Day of Languages’. We also made Spanish flags to celebrate this day.
We have been learning all about God’s world as part of our RE lessons. We have watched and responded to the Creation Story. This is the link we watched:
This week we explored the school garden to look for evidence of God’s creation. We loved finding some animals, there were lots of bees in the garden and Patryk told us that the bees were collecting nectar. We found some plants which we loved the smell of, Miss Meechan told us that this plant was called lavendar. Trex enjoyed watching the bees too!
On Tuesday we went to the library. We were very excited to take Trex with us because this was part of our topic plan. We found out about how to behave properly in the library and all of the different things the library can help us with. We listened to a story called ‘The Library Lion’. We even got our own class library card and we all chose a book to take back to the classroom. We will return to the library in a few weeks time to return our books and choose a new one.
We have now learned all of our set 1 sounds and we are busy completing lots of different activities to consolidate our knowledge of these sounds. Ask your child to tell you about some of the activities from this week.
On Thursday when we came into our classroom we were very happy to find an office area! In the office area we have been very busy answering phone calls and writing out important notes and filing them away. It has been a very busy office! Trex sent us a new letter this week. He told us that his baby brother was going to be joining our class. He asked us to write his brother a letter to tell him all about our classroom. We can’t wait until Trex’s baby brother joins us! Watch this space…
Trex also wanted us to take some photographs so he could send them to his Mum and Dad. We have made a book for Trex with lots of photographs; all of our names in the book and some drawings too. Have a look for this next time you are in our classroom.
This week we have been continuing to order numbers to 10 as part of our numeracy lessons and we have also been learning about number names. We completed some dot-to-dots but instead of numbers, it was number names. This was quite tricky but we all tried our very best. We have been using a resource called numicon and ordering these from smallest to largest. One of our favourite games in our class is bingo and this week we played number name bingo. Miss Meechan has been so impressed with how well we are learning number names.
Pupil voice. Our favourite parts of the week:
Casper: “I liked getting dojo points.”
Kyle: “I like when everyone gets dojo points.”
MacKenzie: “I liked play time.”
Kaitlyn: “I liked handwriting.”
Jakub: “I like saying my prayers.”
Kerr: “I liked playing in the office.”
Kaimee: “I liked playing with Sophie.”
Jarred: “I liked going to the library. I like the book I picked from the library.”
Adam: “I liked taking pictures of Trex around the school.”
What an exciting week we have had in P1M and the highlight for all the children has been the arrival of Trex. On Tuesday we found a letter in our classroom. The letter told us about a new visitor that would be joining our class. This person is from a land far away and wants us to show them about our local area. The letter told us that the person is very tall, with a long tail and 3 claws on each foot, they also have green skin. We listened carefully to these instructions and drew a picture of what we thought they would like. We decided that it was going to be a dinosaur that was joining our class! Thankfully, the letter told us that it wasn’t a scary dinosaur and in fact he is very shy and nervous. Finally, after a long wait, on Thursday Trex appeared in our classroom – he was hiding on Adam’s chair! We took Trex a tour of the school (we loved visiting P4/5 and Mrs Wassell) and we even took him on the daily mile. We have decided that we want to teach Trex all of our sounds and numbers that we now know – he even has is own dojo account too!
In PE we have been developing our gross and fine motor skills. Our PE lessons with Mr McCurdy and Miss Meechan follow the same pattern where we make our way around 9/10 circuit stations with a partner. Each station helps us build and improve our gross or fine motor skills. Each week we add a few new stations to explore.
Have you heard about Pablo our Spanish parrot? This week Pablo was teaching us how to say our name in Spanish. Me llamo Pablo (my name is Pablo) – pronounced: mee yamo. Pablo has already taught us how to say hello (ola), adios (goodbye) buenos dias (good morning) buenas tardes (good afternoon) and buenos noches (good night). What a clever parrot he is! Here is Kaimee and Poppy telling Pablo their names in Spanish. Have you practised your Spanish at home?
We are continuing to work on our 1:1 correspondence and number formation in our number lessons. This week we took part in lots of fun activities to help us with this. Did you see our paper plate and pom-pom activity on display on our maths wall last night at Ninians Natter? We have also made different shapes and towers with cubes. We had to count out the correct number of cubes and make a tower with them. We played a new game on the smart board this week. Here is the link for it if you wish to play it at home too:
http://www.ictgames.com/newduckshoot.html
In the photographs you can see 2 photos of us participating in a counting exercise song. Why don’t you try this at home too?
This week we learned the ‘a’ and ‘t’ sound. The ‘a’ sound is a very special vowel sound. It is a black sound because to make the sound it comes through a big black tunnel in our mouths, at the back of the tunnel is a special house where all the vowel sounds live. Check out the ‘a jolly phonics’ video on youtube for our song for this sound. The ‘t’ sound is a blue sound as it comes from our tongue. Have you listened to this song on youtube too? This week as part of our literacy activities we played phonics hop-scotch, i-spy and bingo. We also used black play-dough to form the ‘a’ sound and blue paint for the ‘t’ sound. We have even started to stretch our sounds together to make some words – cat, map, cap etc. What a busy week!
Our writing lesson was very exciting this week. Last week, we created our own dinosaur character. This week, we had to imagine that our dinosaur came alive and jumped out of our jotters. He walked about the classroom for a little while and then decided he wanted to go somewhere. Some dinosaurs wanted to go to the park, some wanted to go swimming and some even wanted to go camping! We are beginning to share our ideas with our peers before we begin our writing and Miss Meechan is so impressed how much our listening and talking skills are improving through these tasks. Before or after we complete our story writing we can participate in a range of different literacy based activities. Below are some pictures of Patryk reading a book in the story; Sophie is watching a puppet show that Romera and Rutendo were putting on; Daniel is playing a phonics game on the smart board; Jarred and Esmee and drawing and colouring in pictures and Kaimee is writing her story. We are all really enjoying our writing lessons.
Have a lovely long weekend everyone, see you on Wednesday.
This week, Mrs Caskie, Miss Ford and Mrs Scott have been on a Spanish Immersion Course in Malaga, Spain. Funded by the British Council and run by LFEE , it has provided the opportunity for any staff to develop their knowledge and understanding of Spanish.
We arrived on Saturday evening and met our tutors as well as the rest of the group from regions across Scotland. Each day, we have attended classes and been ‘pupils’ for a change – taking part in active learning and working together to communicate in Spanish across a wide variety of contexts.
We have also had opportunities to take part in traditional Spanish culture including a visit to a historic village, a Flamenco dance workshop and sampling local Spanish food.
This has proved a fantastic experience for us all and we are looking forward to incorporating the exciting ideas and resources shared on the course.
Tomorrow is our last day and in groups, we will be presenting our learning from the week.
