Category: Primary 2

Dear Parents/Carers

We hope you had a lovely week.

Here is a summary of our learning this week.

Literacy

• This week we have been learning to add the suffix -ing to long vowel sounds. For examples: feel – feeling, wait – waiting.
• We have been learning to read and write the following common words: different, picture, letter, better, earth.
• We have continued to work on our individual blocks of common words for spelling. It is great to see how motivated the children are and making good progress. Thank you for your support at home!
• In writing we wrote the story of ‘The clocktower’.  We watched a clip and thought carefully about the story. We had a special focus on adding adjectives. Each week we are getting better at writing a beginning, middle and end.
• We have been reading our reading books.
• We have worked on adding punctuation to sentences: full stops, exclamation marks and question marks.
• In handwriting we are learning how to write capital letters.

Ideas for learning at home

• Please work on spelling the tricky words sent home at parent consultations. If your child has moved block practice the new ones. Please see below.

• Reading books were sent home yesterday. Please continue to practise reading at home.
• Begin to prepare the talk on a subject of your choice.

Numeracy

• We have been recognising and naming 2 digit numbers (and for some pupils 3 digit numbers).
• We have been sequencing numbers.
• We have been learning to read o’clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to times on analogue clocks. We also have looked at o’clock and half past in a digital clock.

Ideas for learning at home

• Practise number formation and make sure that numbers are not reversed.
• Draw attention to clocks at home. Reinforce the fact that the minute hand is the long hand and when it is pointing to the 12 it is an o’clock time, and when it is pointing to the 6 it is a half past time. Point out that the small hour hand lies exactly on the number for o’clock but moves past the number for half past. The minute hand (long hand) is pointing to the 3 when is quarter past and the small hand has moved a little from the hour number. When it is quarter to the long hand is pointing at the 9 and the small hand ( hour hand ) is near to the next number.

You may wish to use this teaching clock if you only have digital clocks at home. 

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/time/teaching-clock

This is another game that you can use:

https://mathsframe.co.uk/en/resources/resource/116/telling-the-time

• Talk about the different moments of the day when you do things: what time do your child wakes up, what time does your child have breakfast, what time do you leave the house to go to school, etc.
• Ordering numbers:

https://ictgames.com/mobilePage/playYourCardsRight/index.html

Other areas

Loose parts: We had a great time outside. As it was raining when we went outside there was good teamwork and engineering while building tents to protect ourselves from the drizzle.

PE; We have continued to practice for Sports Day that will take place on Wednesday 10^th May. We are practicing skipping, relays, throwing to a target and dribbling a football. We are finding tricky skipping so it would be great to practice at home.

RHSP We have been learning about the lifecycle of a butterfly. We have continued to look after our window beans, look at the roots coming out!

Science We have been learning about the skeleton (names of bones) and germs.

We had a visit from Generation Science. We learned about day and night. “I learned that the moon goes around the Earth and it takes a month” “ I learned that a year is 365 days” “ I learned basically everything: the moon and the Earth orbit around the sun” “I learned that there’s different times in different countries”

Remember:

P2 Listening and Talking Term 3

In June, the pupils in P2 will be asked to give a short talk on a subject of their choice. We are making you aware of this now so that you can support your child over the next few weeks to prepare for this.

Pupils can choose to talk about a hobby/interest, how they look after their pet, a favourite wild animal, favourite film etc.

The focus is on selecting ideas and relevant information, organising these into a logical sequence and using words which will interest the audience.

Please see guidance below on how best to prepare for this.

1. Choose a topic.
2. Think about the ‘W’ questions: Who (who is this about?) What (What do they do?) Why (Why is it interesting?) Where? When?
3. You may wish to make cards for each heading with a picture and/or key words. Don’t write whole sentences to read out loud.
4. Once the information is organised, practise delivering the talk to family at home.

Thank you in advance for your support with this.

• School will be closed to pupils on Monday and Tuesday.
• No reading books for next wo weeks as we will be reading poetry books in class and there are not enough books to send home.
• Please bring an empty clean yogurt pot to plant our beans and take them home.

We hope you have a lovely long weekend!

Mrs de Bonrostro

Dear Parents/Carers,

It has been lovely having everyone back after the Easter break.

Important Information

Loose Parts

P2 have a session of loose parts on Monday 24^th April. Please send children to school in appropriate clothing.

P2 Listening and Talking Term 3

In June, the pupils in P2 will be asked to give a short talk on a subject of their choice. We are making you aware of this now so that you can support your child over the next few weeks to prepare for this.

Pupils can choose to talk about a hobby/interest, how they look after their pet, a favourite wild animal, favourite film etc.

The focus is on selecting ideas and relevant information, organising these into a logical sequence and using words which will interest the audience.

Please see guidance below on how best to prepare for this.

1. Choose a topic.
2. Think about the ‘W’ questions: Who (who is this about?) What (What do they do?) Why (Why is it interesting?) Where? When?
3. You may wish to make cards for each heading with a picture and/or key words. Don’t write whole sentences to read out loud.
4. Once the information is organised, practise delivering the talk to family at home.

Thank you in advance for your support with this.

Here is a summary of our learning this week.

Literacy

• This unit of Literacy Rich introduces the spelling rules required for adding the suffix ing to a root word. For example sing – singing, run – running. This week we have introduced this at a simple level. For words containing a short vowel sound followed by more than one consonant, just add ing. For example park becomes parking, turn becomes turning.
• We have been learning to read the following common words: your, called, sentence, follow, small.
• We have continued to work on our individual blocks of common words for spelling.
• In writing we retold the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Each week we are getting better at writing a beginning, middle and end.

Ideas for learning at home

• Please work on spelling the tricky words sent home at parent consultations.
• Reading books were sent home yesterday. Please continue to practise reading at home.
• Begin to prepare the talk on a subject of your choice.

Maths

• We have revisited number formation and are trying very hard not to reverse numbers.
• We have been recognising and naming 2 digit numbers (and for some pupils 3 digit numbers).
• We have been sequencing numbers.
• We have been learning to read o’clock, half past and quarter past times on analogue clocks.

Ideas for learning at home

• Practise number formation and make sure that numbers are not reversed.
• Draw attention to clocks at home. Reinforce the fact that the minute hand is the long hand and when it is pointing to the 12 it is an o’clock time, and when it is pointing to the 6 it is a half past time. Point out that the small hour hand lies exactly on the number for o’clock but moves past the number for half past.
• You may wish to use this teaching clock if you only have digital clocks at home. Teaching Clock (topmarks.co.uk)
• Roll a dice twice / three times to generate 2 digit / 3 digit numbers. Can your child write the digits down and name the number? Do this 5 times and ask your child to put the numbers in order from smallest to largest. Discuss the value of each digit.

Other curricular areas

• In PE we have started to prepare for Sports Day.
• We have been learning about all the things we need to do to look after plants. We are learning about how every living thing needs to be cared for and nurtured so that they grow and flourish. We planted broad bean seeds and hope that they will start to grow very soon.
• In Science, we have been learning about the human skeleton: why we need it, facts about the skeleton and we are learning the names of some of our bones. We are loving this!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs de Bonrostro

Dear Parents / Carers

We hope you had a lovely week.

The children took home yesterday their indoor shoes and the bag with the change of clothes. This is an opportunity for you to check if the items still fit your child. Please label all items (even the change of clothes) as we have some unclaimed items that aren’t labelled and the children don’t recognise them.

Here is a summary of our learning.

Maths

We have revisited a range of number skills covered this term and worked on 3D shape.

Home learning ideas

Here are some activities you could do at home to reinforce these skills.  

• Remember you also have your SumDog log in details.
• Practice sharing equally: give the same number of items (stones, pompons, etc.) to a number of people/ toys. E.g.: have 15 pompons and share it fairly/equally between three dinosaurs/ cars. With 8 pompons see how many groups of 2 pompons you can make.
• Practice adding and subtracting within 10 / 20/100 (with out carrying unless your child has done this at school, you would have been told at parents evening). Make sure your child adds/subtracts first the units and then the tens.

Literacy

This week we had a special focus on comprehension skills, summarising a text and spelling.

The text that we have been working on is Goldilocks and the three bears. Our writing focus was doing a recount of this well-known story. We are working hard on using the past tense as well as making a beginning, middle and end structure. 

At handwriting we have practiced our spelling words in cursive.

This week we will be not send reading books sent home because next week will be the Easter holiday. 

Home learning ideas

At parent consultations we gave you a copy of the tricky words (spelling) that your child is working on in class. Please practise spelling these at home.  You could use pavement chalk, paints or simply a pencil and paper to do the Look, Cover, Write, Check method.   

Please continue to practice reading at home. If possible, read to your child this will help to increase their vocabulary and you will be able to model reading.

Your child could help you to write the shopping list, write letters/postcards to relatives, etc.

Other areas

PE

We have worked on team games with a focus on speed. We had our gymnastics session with a focus on landing, jumping and pencil rolls. We had an amazing time and we were able to give feedback to each other. It was great to see the children looking at each other and giving positive feedback and things to improve in a polite way.

Outdoors we have done some Easter activities we looked for hidden carrots ( a challenge from P3!) and we made nests using twigs.

We had a brilliant time meeting online P1/ 2 class from Sgoil Dhalabroig which is a primary school in South Uist. We asked questions to each other about life in an island and life in Edinburgh, they taught us how to count to five in Gaelic and we sang to each other. They were fifteen children in the class and we are nearly 60! It was a lovely experience for us all!

Home learning ideas

Enjoy your time with your children: go for walks, read stories, play board games, cook together, …have fun!

You may have seen members of staff and myself out running after school over the last few months! This is why:

The Bucks (Mr Campbell, Miss Davidson, Ms Hastie and Mrs Cullen) and The Stones (Mrs de Bonrostro, Ms Dowds, Mrs Tweedie and Mrs Imrie) are challenging themselves to run the Edinburgh Marathon Relay on Sunday 29 May in support of Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland.

We really appreciate all the support and encouragement the school community have given us whilst we are out running – this is really helping us to keep going!

If you’d like to find out more about our fundraising, please visit our JustGiving Page

Thanks for all your support and encouragement!

Have a relaxing break!

Mrs de Bonrostro

Dear Parents/Carers, 

It has been lovely meeting up with you this week.

Loose parts next Tuesday, please come dress for the weather!

We hope that you have had a good week. Here is a summary of our learning. 

Literacy  

We have continued to learn about compound words and to use our knowledge of sounds to read and spell them.   

At home you could challenge your child to draw pictures to show the 2 elements of a compound word. Then they could write the word underneath.  

For example, they could draw rain + bow and then underneath spell the word rainbow.  

Here is a list of suggested words:  

• blackbird  
• firelight  
• catfish  
• speedboat  
• batman  
• daytime  
• lipstick  
• snowdrop  
• hotdog  
• starfish  

The tricky words for reading this week were: know, walk and talk. 

At parent consultations this week we gave you a copy of the tricky words (spelling) that your child is working on in class. Please practise spelling these at home.  You could use pavement chalk, paints or simply a pencil and paper to do the Look, Cover, Write, Check method.   

Reading books were sent home on Thursday. Please continue to ask your child questions about the text to check for understanding. There will be no books sent home on Thursday 30^th because the following week will be the Easter holiday. 

In writing we worked on retelling the story of Little Red Riding Hood. We are working hard on using the past tense as well as making a beginning, middle and end structure. 

Maths  

We have been revisiting a range of number skills covered this term. Here are some activities you could do at home to reinforce these skills.  

• Practise sharing out items. For example, give 3 dolls 2 cakes each.  
• Ask your child to design a simple dot-to-dot picture. They could count in 1s, 2s, 3s or 10s.  
• Roll a dice. What number do you add on to make 10?   
  
  We have also been learning to count in 3s and 4s and have enjoyed singing these songs. 
  
  Counting by 3s – YouTube 
  
  Counting by 4s – YouTube 

Remember you also have your SumDog log in details. We have set a new challenge for you to try. It is titled ‘Term 2 Number Work Revision’ and it goes live tonight!  

We have been learning about odd and even numbers.

Other areas of the curriculum 

• We enjoyed a session of loose parts on Monday. 
• We finished up our block of gymnastics in PE. Our main focus this week was on landing.
• We had a great time visiting the Anderson Shelters that P7 made! ” I learned that you could sleep there” ” I learned that bombs last two hours” ” In a ar you can go into the shelter and hide” … we learned lots of things!
• We had a great time at the P4 assembly !
  
    

Have a lovely weekend. 

Mrs de Bonrostro

What a week we had!

The show kept us extremely busy. We practiced and we performed in front of P3, P1 and, of course, in front of you parents/carers! We hope you had a great time and you enjoyed it as much as we did.

All children did and amazing job. We are very proud of them!

Here is a summary of our learning:

Literacy

This week we have continued our work on compound words and reinforced the syllable concept.

Our tricky words this week are idea, answer and usual.

On Wednesday both classes worked together at spelling time. Please continue to practice how to read and write spelling words at home. Your child should know which block they are working on at school. It would be very helpful if at home you work on the same block and revise previous blocks.

At writing we worked on retelling the story of the Gingerbread man. We are working hard on using past tenses and using beginning, middle and end structure.

Ideas to do at home

• Ask your child to think about compound words and write them. Cut them and try to mix with other words and see which other compound words they can make.
• Ask your child to count the number of syllables in familiar words. Can they work out how many syllables are in the name of each family member? What about their favourite foods? You can clap or alternatively, hold your hand under your chin to count the number of syllables if finding it tricky. Clap the syllables.
• Reading books were sent home today.

Maths

We have continued to work on 3D objects names and properties.

We also have worked on numeracy skills such as addition and subtraction. Please, if you wish, use your Sumdog account to revise these skills. You can also use grids ideas provided on last week’s blog.

Ideas to do at home

• Choose a 3D shape and ask your child to find as many objects as possible with that shape in a given time.
• With everyday objects explore how the number of faces, edges and corners/vertices.
• If you wish check your use the Sumdog account.
• Use last week’s maths grids.

Other areas

As mentioned above our main focus has been the show.

In PE we have worked on speed games.

Other

• Please remember that next week we have Parents Consultations on Wednesday and Thursday
• Loose parts on Monday.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs de Bonrostro