Good morning! We hope you had a lovely week. We had a busy week full of learning and fun, this is what we have been up to:

Literacy

• We have continued to use reading books in school. We are learning how to make predictions about a text with the information we have in the text and in the illustrations, we are using the words that are on our books to make sentences. We are working very hard on developing all our reading skills.
• We continue to introduce and reinforce some single sounds and have been using them to create and read words. This week’s letters were o and g, and we made words including hot, not, mop, dog and got.
• We enjoy listening to and discussing a wide range of texts.
• We have continued to work on our pre -writing skills.
• This week our writing was: ‘I am outside. It is Autumn’ . We did our writing after our wonderful walk in the woods. Look at our detailed drawings!

Home learning ideas

Please support us by spending time at home practising the skills of blending sounds to create and read words. Not too long but a little time every day is the best way to do it.

Please check your child’s purple folder regularly as occasionally we will send home learning ideas.

• Download the document below.   On the sheet you will find the letters we have been learning this week along with a list of words to create. You can choose to print the sheet, or simply write out the letters of small pieces of paper. Use the letter cards to create simple words and ask your child to firstly, identify each sound, count how many sounds (phonemes) they hear, then blend or squish the sounds together into one word. Next, say a word which can be made using the letters. say it slowly and clearly – asking your child to identify the sounds they can hear before they ‘make’ the word with the cards.

• Go on a letter hunt. Look around you for places where you can see any of the letters you know. Remember to say the pure sound of the letter not the name. ( so a= ah, not ay )
• Ask an adult to write all the names of the people in your family. Who has an ‘i’ in their name….. who has an ‘ a’ (etc)
• Play a game of “I spy” with our focus sounds.
• Encourage your child to make their name in different ways: in the sand, with flour, play dough, etc.
• If your child cannot yet write their own name, please practise this at home. Lower case letter please ( apart from the initial letter of course)
• Spend time reading books at home. Reading to your child is an excellent way of increasing your child’s vocabulary. You could use the reading caterpillar that we sent in the purple folder to make questions about the text you read to your child.

Numeracy

• We have been exploring numbers to 10 20, or 30.
• We have been practising instantly making and recognising finger patterns. Doing it on our head ( the bunny ears game) makes it a bit tricky as we can’t see our fingers, we just have to feel the pattern. We have explored doing doubles to 5.
• We have explored numbers to 10 (and beyond for some).
• We have worked on sequencing numbers.
• We have worked on counting forwards and backwards from different starting points.
• We have been naming the next number in a forwards or backwards sequence
• We have learning how to make a number (3-10) using different fingers: for 6 : 2 and 4, 5 and 1, 3 and 3. We have started doing the same using counters (0-10), we will work on number bonds to 10 after the holidays.

https://videopress.com/v/mg15RnPN?preloadContent=metadata

Home learning ideas

• We listened to this song. Maybe you would like to listen to it at home:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHuuuh9GgP8
• Count items using 1-1 correspondence. Put down a quantity of small items, for example raisins, buttons, counters, small stones or lego bricks. Ask your child to count them carefully, pointing to, or moving each one in turn. can they count the total accurately? Increase the level of challenge by using a larger collection.
• Number hunt: Ask your child to look for specific numbers in the street: buses, house numbers and ask your child to say the number that goes after and before that number.
• Practice number formation of the numbers 0 to 10 (or more if your child is confident with this already)
• You may choose to play this game. Please choose from sequencing or ordering (forwards) from 1- 10 or 1-20
• Play Three for me, one for you . The adult says three numbers in a sequence, either forwards or backwards, the child says the next number in the sequence. e.g. 6,7,8………9  or 14,13, 12…….11. You can choose the level of challenge by staying within 10, or going up to 20.

Other areas of the curriculum:

PE:

We are practising throwing, catching and passing a ball (big ones and small ones). It is quite tricky, so please keep practising at home.

On PE days the children should come dressed for outdoor PE, there is no need to bring a PE bag with a change of clothes. On these days, we would ask that the children wear trainers or similar for the playground and PE. It is really hard to hop when you are wearing wellies ! (Wellies are ideal on non-PE days though)

Outdoor learning: 

What a fantastic time we had yesterday at the woods! It was lovely to see all children exploring, helping each other and having a wonderful time.

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Independent Learning

Other information

A reminder that next week it is the October break. Children are back to school on Tuesday 27th October (Staff will be working on Monday 26th October).

The children are taking home today the bag with the spare clothes. This will give you an opportunity to check the items needed for next term.

Please remember to label all items with your child’s name. We still have items that haven’t been claimed since August. Remember to label hats and gloves too!

This term has been a great one! It has been lovely being back at school, we missed it very much. We had the pleasure of having your children on their first day ever at school (what a privilege!) and it is lovely to getting to know them a little bit better every day. They are all fantastic: they are a lovely, caring and welcoming class, a credit to you all!

We hope you have a wonderful break!

Mrs Cross and Mrs de Bonrostro

P7H, well done for getting to the October holidays! You have all worked so hard, and have had one of the toughest first terms any P7 have had in many years. Everyone has done such a good job at adapting and following the new rules to keep each person in the school safe and you have all set an excellent example to younger classes to follow. We have lots of exciting things for next term so make sure you come back well rested and ready to learn! Enjoy your holidays – you have earned them! Mrs Haynes 🙂

Literacy

This week we wrote an imaginative story as if we were an animal on Kensuke’s Island. We had to include similes and metaphors in it and make sure that we recorded our animals thought and feelings about Michael being on the island.

Our spelling sound was le and ly. Remember to look up some words in the dictionary to challenge yourself with spelling this week.

We also did a comprehension on Tsunamis. We had to make sure we wrote our answers in sentences.

Maths

This week we were focusing on dividing decimals! We divided by 10, 100 and 1000 as well as multiples of these numbers e.g. 400.

We found a cheat for dividing with decimals – if you divide by 10 then you just move the decimal forward one space.

The hot group did some decimal problem solving using calculators.

IDL

We made our natural artwork using leaves. Have a look at what we made in the pictures below.

We also had to try and escape the international space station! We had to use lots of problem solving skills as well as literacy, maths and general knowledge. https://eo-cdt.org/escape-room/

In natural disasters we started to learn about hurricanes. We discovered how they are formed and how they are measured.

To help develop reading, listening and talking skills we are going to give talks to the class about your favourite book!

Your talk should cover the following:

• The title of the book.
• The name of the author.
• The name of the illustrator.
• A summary of the story (remember the summarising skills we have been learning).
• A description of the main character; what is he / she like?
• What your favourite part of the book is, and why.
• How you would rate the book out of five (e.g. how many stars would you give it?)

You may want to make and use notes to help you when you give your talk or make a poster to help you (if you wish).

We will begin listening to the presentation talks during the week beginning 2 November.

I’m really looking forward to hearing all about your favourite books! Think carefully about what book you will do you talk about!

Good afternoon,

Apologises for the delay in this week’s words..

Have a lovely day,

Miss Martin

We would like you to prepare a talk to give to the class about your favourite book.

Your talk should cover the following:

• The title of the book.
• The name of the author.
• The name of the illustrator.
• A summary of the story (remember the summarising skills we have been learning).
• A description of the main character; what is he / she like?
• What your favourite part of the book is, and why.
• How you would rate the book out of five (e.g. how many stars would you give it?)

You may use notes to help you when you give your talk, if you wish.

We will begin listening to talks during the week beginning 2 November.

We’re really looking forward to hearing all about your favourite books!

Dear Parents / Carers

Your child has been given an A4 sheet of paper with the blocks of ‘tricky’ words they learned to read in P1 and P2. As these are words that appear often, in the English language, pupils are likely to use them in their writing and we would like them to develop their confidence when spelling these words.

Further to an assessment, the words your child needs to work on have been highlighted on the sheet. The blocks assessed, at this stage, have also been highlighted. This means that although your child might not have any words highlighted in blocks 5 and 6, for example, these blocks may not have been assessed at this stage.

We have asked your child to learn to spell their highlighted words. These can be worked on over a period of time. It may be that they choose one or two to work on per week, in addition to the spelling lists we are learning.

We have one or two assessments to complete, but all sheets should have been sent home by Wednesday. If your child has lost their sheet, please just let us know by writing a note in your child’s reading record (and letting them know so they will show it to one of us).

Thank you for your support.

Mrs Bailey and Mrs Munro

Our words this week have ‘ai’ or ‘ay’ making the long A sound. We noticed that in words with only one syllable, we normally find ‘ai’ at the beginning or middle of the word and that ‘ay’ is found at the end. Learning and remembering this will help us to decide whether we should use ‘ai’ or ‘ay’. As usual, we have two common words at the end of the list.

aim

pail

chair

train

straining

way

staying

pray

today

spraying

only

old

Challenge List

aiming

railway

chairperson

training

strained

always

stayed

prayed

Wednesday

anyway

only

old

• Team Jewel: single sounds a, t, p, n
• Team Gold: ow– cow, town, clown, flower, down, bow and ou– shout, loud, out, mouth, ground; Tricky words: into, here
• Team Treasure: Core list: aim, pail, chair, train, straining, way, staying, pray, today, spraying; Challenge list: aiming, railway, chairperson, training, strained, always, stayed, prayed, Wednesday, anyway; Tricky words: only, old

On Friday, we will try a dictation activity using a selection of these words so if you can, have a practise throughout the week.

Hello everyone

This is what we have been learning this week:

NUMERACY

We have continued to look at different addition strategies and use them to work out addition problems. This week in mental maths we were adding 9 by adding 10 and subtracting 1 and adding 11 by adding 10 then adding 1 to work out our answers.

We were adding 2 digits plus 1 digit and 2 digits plus 2 digits by adding units (or ones) first, then adding the tens. Some of us added 3 digits plus 2 digits to extend our learning.

TO DO AT HOME

Most of us completed a – ‘What Makes ?’ sheet and took it home. This worksheet is to help your child learn the number bonds within 10. It is very important that they are able to recall these facts quickly as this will help them to add bigger numbers quickly and accurately in the future.

You could play this game to help you.

https://pbskids.org/curiousgeorge/busyday/ten/

LITERACY

READING

We have continued to practise summarising a story. This week we have summarised ‘Sparkle Boy’ and ‘When Mum Turned into a Monster’.

‘They were really fun stories’

‘Sparkle Boy had lots of sparkles’

‘Boys can wear girl clothes, there are no rules’

‘These stories were interesting and unusual’

THINGS TO DO AT HOME

Remember to talk about beginning, middle and end when you are discussing stories with your child. Ask them to summarise the story without too much detail but making sure they identify the main points.

Please share and discuss your child’s reading book with them.

WRITING

We are trying to write super sentences and working very hard to think about where to put full stops in our writing. We wrote a personal piece of writing, trying hard to punctuate it correctly.

THINGS TO DO AT HOME

You could write some interesting (or silly) sentences to go with some of your spelling words making sure you have remembered capital letters and full stops.

TOPIC

We discussed what we would like to learn about Mynah birds and will be finding out answers to our questions in the next few weeks.

‘We hope to learn lots about mynah birds.’

‘Mynah birds are interesting’

PE

We have been lucky with the weather this week and have enjoyed keeping fit in the sunshine by exercising and playing games.

FRENCH

We tried to have short conversations in French this week, saying hello and asking each other how we were, then saying goodbye.

‘It was hard’

‘Fun but complicated.’

‘I got a bit muddled.’

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

Welcome to the Primary 1 Lion’s blog!

The Lion’s have had another great week in Primary 1! We have had lots of fun playing with our friends both inside the classroom and outside in the playground.

Literacy

This week we learned two more sounds: ‘d’ and ‘o’.

When we learn a new sound, we love watching Geraldine the Giraffe to help introduce the new learning. You could watch these again at home. (video below) We also learn the jolly phonics song for each sound. This week we even pretended to be noisy aeroplanes flying around the classroom. The full list of jolly phonics songs is linked below, find the sounds we know and have a practice at home!

Literacy Home Learning:

Numeracy

This week we continued the SEAL maths programme which teaches children the foundation skills in maths. We practised counting forwards and backwards to 10 and beyond together, counting claps, recognising dice patterns and random dot patterns and counting in sequences. The children are already showing that they are retaining the knowledge they are learning, which is showing greatly in our small group time.

The video below is also great for practising the skills we are currently learning in numeracy. Have a go at home and challenge someone in your family to have a go with you.

Other Areas

P1 has also been having lots of fun playing outside in the playground. In P.E we have been working on our fitness and spatial awareness when running around the playground. We also have been learning about different ways to move around the playground such as running, jumping, hopping, skipping etc. This week we had lots of fun races which made us work as a team and work together as a group.

This week we also started our new outdoor learning autumn topic. This week we talked about autumn and what it looks like. We looked outside for signs of autumn and had fun drawing them. We also got messy painting and painted autumn trees using our hands to create the tree branches and corks/paint brushes to make the leaves. These turned out so lovely – here are some of the trees.

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We also started something new this week. To help us with holding pens and pencils to get ready for writing, we started using playdough to help make our hands and fingers stronger. We have been having lots of fun following, the videos below. If you have any playdough at home why not practice at home!

We have had lots of fun developing our social skills by playing with our peers in the classroom. We have lots of fun drawing pictures and making crafts, playing in the home corner and reading in the book corner. We also have lots of fun building castles and towers with the construction blocks. There is always lots of fun things to do in the classroom to support our learning and play.

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Things to Try at Home

• It would be lovely if all P1s could practice recognising and writing their own name. This is something which will help with the daily routines in P1 and a vital skill to assist their learning. You could practice making your name out of materials found in your garden, creating it out of playdough, writing it in sand or colouring it in.
• Ask your child to give you X amount of various things. For example sticks, leaves, stones. Whatever you can find. This will help with our counting skills.
• Practice using your ‘bunny ears’. Ask your child to show you a number on their fingers using the bunny ears method. They should practice holding up the number of fingers straight away without needing to count each finger. They then look at their fingers to check if they are correct. This is great for numeracy development.
• Ask and adult to clap their hands so many times, can you count how many times they clapped? For an extra tricky challenge try clapping your hands at different speeds, for example 2 slow and 3 quick. Can your child count the number of claps?
• Practice making words out of the sounds we have learned so far – ‘a’ ‘t’ ‘p’ ‘i’, ‘e’, ‘s’ ‘r’ ‘d’, ‘o’ and ‘n’ – for an extra challenge can you write and sound out the words you have made?
• Could you find out any interesting facts about autumn? Look outside for signs of autumn, can you take a photo of them or draw them?

P1 Lion’s Favourite Things of the Week!

“I enjoyed playing in the castle with Georgie and Alistair.” – Islay C

“I liked playing in the book corner with Sofie, Isla B and Abigail.” – Chloe

“I enjoyed playing in the brick corner with Kieran.” – Logan

“I liked doing my autumn tree painting.” – Maisie

“I enjoyed painting my autumn tree.” – Georgie

“I liked playing in the brick corner with Archie and Alistair.” – Maximos

Happy Weekend!

• Thank you for understanding the technical difficulties of parents evening this term. I hope I managed to answer any questions you had and gave you enough information of how your child has been settling into school. As i said, if you have any further questions please get in touch with the office to arrange another phone call or meeting.
• P.E will be on Mondays and Thursdays – please come dressed and ready for P.E. (only on Thursday next week)
• Ms Leach will be teaching the class on Monday.

Thank you for your continued support with your child’s learning and time in school, it is greatly appreciated. I hope you have a lovely long weekend and I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday!

From Miss McGillivray