We are grateful for your continued donations of small, clean items of recycling for our STEM area

Many thanks

Independent learning

The children have been developing a wide range of skills through independent learning opportunities in class and outdoors..

Literacy.

This week we have introduced the vowel digraph ee as well as revising some of our ‘tricky’ words

We continue to use core reading book resources in school as we begin to develop developing the children’s reading comprehension skills, exploring the cognitive strategies of activating, inferring, monitoring/clarifying, questioning, searching/selecting, summarizing, and visualising.

We had another Friday ‘dictation/spelling’ written activity. Each week the children will be asked to spell two or three words using the sounds we know, and also to accurately write two of our tricky words. Please keep practising this skill at home.

Our Writing prompt was ‘I can see a bee….’

Numeracy and Maths

We have been working on individual numeracy targets this week, including finding the number between two given numbers, adding using the ‘counting on’ strategy, making equal groups, recognising numerals and naming the number after a given number.

You may wish to let your child play this BLAST OFF game at home. Choose a level for identifying numbers or counting on.

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Core numeracy skills this week included

• writing the numerals 1 – 10 ( and beyond) correctly
• counting backwards from 10 (or 20 for some pupils).
• naming the next number in an isolated short backwards number sequence. ie. I say, 10, 9, 8 (they say 7)
• establishing a collection (give me 9 counters/raisins/etc)
• counting a collection beyond 10 with accurate 1-1 correspondence
• recognising numerals
• sequencing a short selection of numerals ( e.g. 5,6,7,8)
• making instant finger patterns (show me 6 fingers without counting them)
• recognising dice patterns and clapping the amount of dots on the dice

Our challenge numeracy skills were.

• adding two collections with the second one screened ( e.g. here are 8 counters, there are 5 more hiding under this pot, how many altogether?)
• sequencing numerals within the range 0-100
• naming the number after a given number (0-30)
• counting backwards from 30, starting and stopping at different points
• investigating which equal groups can be made from a given number ( e.g. can I make 2 equal groups/3 equal groups/4 equal groups/5 equal groups from 12 counters? What about if I have 16 counters, or 18 etc)

Looking ahead to next week

On Friday next week, we will be going for a walk and play in the local woodland. This is dependent on there being no staff absences, and also reasonable weather. If it is very wet we will postpone – but a little rain won’t stop us, so please can children come appropriately dressed.

Other areas of the curriculum

We learned about honey bees and bumble bees. Some key vocabulary included , honey…. hive …. beekeeper… swarm…. nectar…. pollinate

In PE we choreographed our own dances using the Scottish Country dance steps we knew. We performed the Flying Scotsman and the Circassian Circle to Mrs Imrie. She was very impressed.

We looked at some Scottish castles – key vocabulary: moat… turrets…drawbridge… portcullis… defence…protect. If any children have photographs of themselves visiting a castle we invite them to bring the photos in to share ( alternatively you could email them FAO Mrs Cross )

A reminder to please name all items of clothing and shoes, and to check names on items brought home in case your child accidentally acquires a jumper belonging to someone else.