teamwork – St Ninian's Primary School

P3 Weekly News

Learning Overview

Our Wordboost words this week have been ocean, ancient, spine, immediately, peciliar and shriek. We listened to the story of Hiccup the Viking who was seasick. We were very good at recognising the boost words and also putting them into WOW sentences. In P.M. writing we have been learning how to write an Exposition and understanding what a statement of position, a series of arguements and a concluding statement are. We then wrote an Exposition as a class on exercise and drinking water. We came up with fantastic arguements for both of these.

In Maths we have been learning about Time and and applying our knowledge of time facts to help us solve word problems.

As it is now the season of Advent we learned about the Advent wreath and the different meanings behind the candles and how we need to get ready for the birth of Jesus.

Our WOW walls on our one note profiles have been getting lots of fantastic and WOW work put on them. There has been lots of collaborative learning and model making with the Kapla and also in the Play room. Please log in and have a look at the amazing work that has been done.

Thursday was busy making posters for our stall at the school fayre and we were delighted that we sold all our sweetie cones!

Pupil Voice

Christopher has enjoyed learning Spanish this week.

Oliver loved hearing about schools in the past and he is glad he didn’t go to school then.

Evie and Hanna enjoyed learning about Time in Maths.

Malakai really liked making posters for the school Fayre.

Next Steps Home Learning Opportunities

We have been learning colours in Spanish. Here is a game that you can play at home to consolidate learning.

https://www.education.vic.gov.au/languagesonline/spanish/spanish.htm

We are also looking forward to hearing the childrens’s solo talks next week.

Have a lovely weekend from P3, Mrs Caskie and Mrs Keegan.

NURSERY NEWS

Welcome back to term 2!!

Lots of fun events await us this term and we cant wait to share them all with you.

This week saw the launch of our word boost initiative with the children. The story we read this week was “The Selfish Crocodile”.

The boost words that you can work speak about and encourage with your children are;

creep

creature

Brave

Astonished

Welly Wednesday was great fun this week as the children were rolling down the hill through the leaves and collecting leaves to build a fire pit.

Thank you to our parents who stayed behind for our first Breakfast blether and Noon Natter on Thursday. This is a time for you to have a break and get to know other Parents and guardians in the nursery Staff room, free of staff. We hope this provided a little bit of sanctuary in your day. The next one will be in November.

Halloween is a focus in the nursery at the moment, the children have been recording their ideas and memories in our Talking Floor Book.

Have a great weekend everybody!!! from the Nursery Team xx

NEXT WEEK

MONDAY-

TUESDAY-

WEDNESDAY- SPOOKY WELLY WEDNESDAY!!CHILDREN TO WEAR A WITCHES HAT AND WELLIES AS WE GO ON A PUMPKIN HUNT.

THURSDAY- NURSERY HALLOWEEN PARTY IN THE NURSERY SESSION, CHILDREN CAN COME DRESSED UP, BUT NO MASKS PLEASE.

A week of fun and laughter in P6/7

Our chosen lead learners this week were James and Isla who did a great job of capturing some of the highlights of the week for us to add to our blog and Talking Books.

Literacy

In spelling we worked as a whole class to discuss spelling strategies and words that are commonly misspelled. Each team had to think of as many strategies as they could and then share them with the class. We then focused on 3 of these: make a song, make a mnemonic and does it look right.

We enjoyed this catchy tune to help us with there, their and they’re.

Can you make a mnemonic for the word ‘people’, post your efforts on our blog post for an extra dojo point?

In literacy we also learned about the work of author’s and how many stages it can take before having a finished piece of writing. We had a go at this and tried to up-level our diary entries from last week by revising, editing and redrafting. This led us nicely into an online meeting with Pamela Butchart, author of many children’s books. We logged onto BBCLive to hear about her work and joined in with the session by making sound effects, answering questions, having a go at illustrating and tweeting, we were delighted when we were mentioned on the BBCLive event and Pamela even tweeted us privately after the event!

Inspirational Maths Week

Wow, where do we begin…This week was all about mathematical mindsets and being creative in maths. We started the week by working in teams to create 2D and 3D shapes with a 7 foot piece of rope in the outdoor space. Lots of laughter, confusion, creativity, frustration and success was had by all! We then examined our own mathematical mindsets and carried out a class questionnaire which led for some interesting discussions. We made some mathematical mindset keys for our tables and maths working wall.

We studied the work of a famous artist/sculptor, Sol Lewitt, and how his work connected to mathematics. The best part was then working in teams to create our very own sculptures using marshmallows and cocktails sticks. Mrs Howley had us learning more about symmetry and did some fun activities connected to this.

Thursday was one of the favourite lessons as we, the pupils, led the lesson by sharing the maths activities we had worked on for homework last week, everyone had made a great effort with these.

Throughout the week we also took part in Numbertalks , the Sumdog contest and Mathanagrams. It was great to see some of the parents getting involved to through dojo. Congratulations to Oskar, Shiv, Mia Stewart and Max for completing the 1000 question Sumdog competition and to Mrs Nicol for winning the parents mathanagram quiz on dojo. A big thank you to the parents who also came along to Ninian’s Natter, it was lovely to see you taking part in some of these activities.

On Tuesday the P7 children accompanied their P1 buddies to mass at St Philip’s. It was a lovely morning and well done to the P7’s for taking their roles so seriously and supporting the younger children.We celebrated St Ninian this week and participated in a beautiful mass on Friday morning. Mrs Purdie awarded us some extra playtime to celebrate the day. The Parent Council also organised a fantastic Scottish afternoon to continue the celebrations. Mrs Roy’s quiz team, the numpties, came 2^nd! Everyone got into the spirit and had a fun afternoon!

Have a lovely long weekend, see you all on Wednesday.

Primary 6/7 and Mrs Roy

Awesome P3!

Another very busy week for Primary 3!

SHELTER BUILDING – OUTDOOR LEARNING & TEAMWORK

The whole class showed their resilience and ability to cope well with change on Tuesday when our Shelter Building Activity was postponed at the very last minute. This was unavoidable due to the weather but we are delighted to announce that it will now be taking place on Tuesday 20 June in the afternoon (P1-P3 Sports Day in the morning)…..so watch this space!

RE/HWB

Primary 3 also discussed the importance of having enough sleep, rest and exercise each day. They were very good at explaining how they feel when they are tired and how this can impact on how well they concentrate in school.

In Maths, we were consolidating our understanding of Measure as well as looking at timetables and durations of time then combining this with some interpretation of diagrams. The boys and girls enjoyed using Mr McCurdy’s Health Week timetable to do this where they had to interpret the information to find out which day P3 were doing a particular activity, where the activity was being held, the time the activity started/finished then working out how long it lasted.

GLOBAL GOALS – Clean Water and Sanitation

Primary 3 have been really thinking hard this week about the availability of clean water in school (or at home) and clean toilets which flush – things we all take for granted. They saw images of poor toilets in some African countries for schoolchildren and had to imagine what they would do if they didn’t have access to either taps or toilets – not pleasant but the children were really engrossed and engaged in considering these situations. In writing they had to suggest reasons as to what might happen if there were not taps or toilets in St Ninian’s – ask your child to explain what they wrote about!

READING – Primary 3 have continued to develop their independence at making sense of what they read by accessing non-fiction texts and finding information from the texts to answer questions.

http://myonlinereading.com/

BIG TALK homework next week

Would you rather be the Three Little Pigs or the Wolf? Give your reasons!

Have a lovely weekend from Mrs Scott and Primary 3!

P2/3 Weekly Update

It has been another fantastic, busy week in Primary 2/3.

The children would like to share some of their highlights:

Angel and James – I liked looking at our Local Area. We thought about how land is used in our local area and made maps. We used Google Maps to help us.

Alishba and Aaron – I liked Big Writing because we wrote about how milk comes from cows. We made posters in groups too.

Andrew and Jakub – I liked PE because we played a game with the parachute. It was really fun! We played another game called Sharks and Lifeguards too. When you’re a shark you have to pull someone under the parachute and they become a shark. Then the lifeguard has to save you.

Harry and Matthew – I liked playing dodgeball in PE.

Zuzanna – I liked creating a character in literacy. I named my character Teresa.

Maeve – I liked making a character description. I called mine Yana.

Brooke – I liked the assembly when we found out the results of the elections for house captains.

Chloe – I liked the P1R assembly because it had Spanish songs.

Levente, Annayah and Pawel – I liked learning about Global Goal #6. We learnt about a school in Kenya where they didn’t have clean water and we listened to a song about clean water too.

Oma and Calvin – I liked doing Sumdog because I got more coins and a pet and I completed in the West Lothian contest.

Carly – I liked Spanish because we were learning high numbers up to 30!!

from P2/3, Mrs Howley and Mrs Keegan.

A busy week in Primary 2/3

It has been another busy week in Primary 2/3 with lots and lots of learning going on! Some of our highlights are:

Andrew – I liked designing a coffin for a mummy. We had to do lots of research first.

Michelle- I liked using the new Heinemann textbooks because I’m getting better at numbers.

Matthew – I liked taking away numbers this week. I used a number square to help me.

Carly – I liked doing our spelling test because it helps me learn words. We keep learning from our mistakes.

Brooke – I liked doing chimney sums in maths. We’re getting really good at them!

Jakub, Annayah, Pawel, Levente, James and Harry – I liked Big Writing when we wrote book reviews for the Killer Cat

Rachel – I liked today’s assembly because pupils from St Margaret’s came to talk to us about SCIAF.

Alishba – I liked when we were doing music with Mrs Steele. We got to dance!

Dominic – I liked doing Sumdog and I’m excited about the West Lothian contest.

Chloe and Maeve – I liked doing art when we made pictures of camels and pyramids.

Maya – I liked working in pairs on Heinemann Active Maths. Its fun working in pairs and it helps you learn.

Zuzanna and Kasia – I liked PE because we were learning tennis skills.

Oma – I liked investigating mummies in Ancient Egypt.

Calvin – I liked working in teams to make posters showing a healthy school in health and well-being.

Have a great weekend!

from Primary 2/3, Mrs Howley and Mrs Keegan

Nursery News

What an exciting and busy week we have had in Nursery! We have been very busy practising for our Nursery Nativity which takes place this Tuesday 6th at 10am and 2 pm. We are really looking forward to showing all our families our singing and drama skills. There will also be a bake sale half an hour before each performance and any donations of cakes would be greatly appreciated for these.

Our planning wall has changed to Christmas and the children have given lots of super ideas for this. Please feel free to add any other thoughts or ideas that may come from your child at home.

On Thursday something very strange happened in both sessions. We came into Nursery to find lots of glitter on the carpet and we all wondered how this had happened! It was a very special visitor he was the Elf on the shelf! He brought along with him a very special story which we listened to. We were asked to give him a name. The AM children decided on Sparkle and the PM children thought of Max. He explained that he was going to be in our nursery till Christmas and every day he would be watching us all to see who was being kind and he would whisper their names to the teachers who would write a letter which he would take back every night to Santa! Every day when we came into nursery we would need to look for him as he wouldn’t always be on his shelf and he might be doing something naughty! The kindness elves are his special friends. Look out for him when you are in the nursery.

Its the turn of the PM children to share their adventures with us this week.

Courtney ” I painted and used glitter.”

Mark ” I like the Artic animals”

Emalie B” I like drawing pictures at the drawing table.”

Kayla ” I made a bed in the brick area.”

Emilie M ” I like playing in the house area and looking after baby Jesus.”

Scott ” I like the trains”

Riley ” I helped make Christmas decorations.”

As well as our Nativity plays on Tuesday we have our Christmas Art Galleries on Thursday 15th at 230pm and Friday 16th December at 1030am where you will get the opportunity to buy your child’s special and individual Christmas art. Any money raised for this will go towards purchasing new nursery resources.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend and we look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday!

The Nursery Team.

Being active and reflective in P1R

Wow, where has this week gone, it’s been full of fun, learning and reflection.

Monday started with European Day of Languages and we decided to start the day by greeting one another in different languages:

Amber chose to use French and said “Bonjour” to the class.

Dawid and Klaudia taught us how to say hello and good morning in Polish “cześć and dzień dobry”.

Ephraim chose to use Spanish and said “Buenos dias”.

Mrs Roy chose to use Italian and said “Buongiorno”.

This theme continued throughout the day and during Maths Klaudia and Dawid taught us how to count to 10 in Polish, we found it tricky but had good fun trying! Then before hometime we did a fun Spanish fitness song which is Mrs Roy’s favourite. Click on the link and have a go at home!

This week we introduced ‘k’ and ‘ck’ to the class and we quickly realised that they sound the same but are written differently. We spent most of our phonics lessons revising our set 1 sounds and blending sounds to make words. Some of the activities we did were: musical sounds, using our ‘big mouth’ to match the sounds, blending with cubes and the mats and using the ipads to practise forming the letters correctly. Next week we will begin to do some assessments with set 1 sounds so will spend some time consolidating and reflecting on what we have learned so far.It has been lovely to read and hear about what the children have chosen to do at home using our new literacy homework menu. Keep up the good work!

In maths we are almost finished learning about the numbers to 10 and progressed onto ordering and number names. We are all getting better at putting the numbers in the right order and did some super independent work during our carousels to show this. We did a cut and stick ordering task and played some fun ordering games on the smartboard, you can do these at home too using the maths homework menu links. Have a look at our Talking Book when you’re next in our class to see our progress so far – we enjoy looking back and reflecting on our learning.

Trex was at the forefront of our IDL this week as we had to do lots of tasks to help him settle in and find his way around the school and local area. In our writing lesson we wrote him a letter which was tricky as we had to do it all by ourselves by having a go and using our phonics and tricky word walls. Mrs Roy was so proud of us all! We received another letter from Trex and decided to make him some picture maps and routes that he could follow to find places near our school. Next week we are hoping to go for a walk on Wednesday to visit one of these places. The most enjoyable activity was using Google Earth to find out where our school was on the map. We all sat down, put on our seatbelts and enjoyed travelling down from space and landing in our school playground. As an extension of this task many children wanted to visit other places so that’s what we did!

Bernice wanted to go to the beach so we went to ‘Burntisland’. Paul L wanted to go to ‘Bubbles’, James wanted to go to ‘his house’ and Klaudia wanted to go to ‘McDonalds’. Try using Google Earth at home to find your own address, it’s great fun!!

PE was all about teamwork and developing our movement skills. We set up lots of different stations to allow us to practise throwing, catching, balancing, running, travelling, etc. These are all really important skills to develop as later on in PE we will look at some specific sports which use these skills. We worked in trios and had to sometimes wait for our turn to use the equipment, share resources and help one another. This links in with our value of teamwork and friendship which is really important to us in P1R.

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.

Nursery News

Wow what an even busier week than usual in Nursery. We have been taking part in lots of activities during Health week. These included football, yoga, the Daily Mile, playground games with the buddies and dance clips on the Smartboard. We have been discussing what we need to do and eat to stay healthy and building on teamwork and working together.

The children in both sessions also visited the local library and enjoyed listening to a story about a baby kangaroo called, ” No room for Roo,” which was then followed by a talk about Australia using animal puppets. The children all enjoyed this fantastic opportunity to visit the library and we have planned three more visits which take place on Mondays starting with Monday 30th May.

Next week our transition programme continues with the children who are starting school in August joining the Primary 1 pupils for 10 minutes to experience playtime in the playground. This will involve both sessions. This will be outwith the normal playtime hours so it’s not too busy for them for their initial experience. We would appreciate it if the children could bring a small snack with them which they can eat during the playtime. The nursery children will also be joining the Primary 1 children for a shared learning experience which will be Science based. There will be a lesson in the classroom and one in the Outdoor area. We are sure they will all enjoy this collaborative learning. The nursery children will also be asked to choose their lunch for the following week as they will be able to have the experience of joining the school at lunchtime in the dinner hall. More details of this will be given out next week.

Also next week we are planning a Polish breakfast on Wednesday 25th May and Nathan and Leons’dad has very kindly offered to come in and help us with this. All AM children are welcome to come to this when Nursery opens at 805am.

Just a wee reminder that Nursery is on holiday on Monday. We look forward to seeing all the children back on Tuesday. If you haven’t received a time for our Parental consultations on Wednesday and Thursday and would like one please contact the school office and they will be happy to give you a time slot.

We hope the children have all enjoyed Health week and we are sure they would be very tired. The Nursery Team certainly were! Please check out our Nursery Parents Facebook page for more photos of Health Week.

Have a lovely holiday weekend.

The Nursery Team.