We can’t believe where the time is going! There is only one more week left of Term 1 in Primary 1 and we’ve had lots more fun and learning this week. It was great to meet so many family members too at the recent parents evening. Thanks for coming along.
In maths, we’ve been continuing our work on understanding the concept of “Are there enough?” and started to develop our own independent recording strategies to share our thinking. I’ve been blown away with how well these young children have done this. We’ve then been starting to share our strategies with the class so others can understand the approach we took and discuss it. The confidence that the children have had doing this as well as the back and forth discussion between children has been outstanding. There is a real learning mindset in the class!
As part of our comparison work, we’ve also been exploring sorting and grouping. The children have been doing this naturally as part of their play as they sort different items by colour to make ice-cream shops and role-play serving it up to their customers. We’ve then explored this further in our maths sessions and sorted objects by thinking about different attributes like size, shape and colour. We had an interesting discussion with some groups about whether if you only had one of a particular item could this still be a group. We’ve also been thinking about ways we can organise ourselves into groups based on the colour of our clothes. This again let to some wonderful discussions such as if a t-shirt is mostly white but with some other colours, should it go in the ‘white’ or ‘not white’ group. The suggestion was that we needed a new group in the middle ‘some white’. We then changed the original groups to ‘all white’ and ‘no white’.
This led on to sorting our shoes and thinking about the different ways they fasten. We then looked at what the most and least popular shoe fastening type was and why this might be. Suggestions were that ‘straps’ was the most popular and it might be because they were less expensive than other types and easier to fasten. What great ideas!
In literacy this week, we’ve been reviewing the sounds that we’ve learnt so far: l, s, a, t, p, i, and n. As part of these we’ve been taking turns to be the teacher and checking our sounds with our friends. We’ve also been learning how to blend. This is when we say the sounds we can see in a word e.g. sat is /s/ /a/ /t/ and then blend them together to be able to read a word – sat. The children have made a great start on this. We’ll shared a video here so you can see how this is done so you can support at home if you wish.
As part of our writing, we’ve been continuing to explore the describing bubble with a focus on texture and the writing prompt, “I am walking through the woods and I see…” We went for a walk through our wonderful outdoor area and got to explore things like the texture of the trees by doing bark rubbings. These types of activities will help enrich both our drawings as we add more details and our writing as we add more descriptive words.
Last week we had our first visit to the library and we returned again this week. These visits will happen once a week on a Tuesday morning. The children get to choose books and sit and enjoy reading them together or on their own. We then select some that we want to take back to enjoy in our own classroom across the week. The children have really enjoyed this time and it’s been lovely seeing them create cosy corners to enjoy reading back in the classroom. The children can’t take these books home but everyone is welcome to visit the library to take books out during its public opening hours.
In P.E. we’ve been continuing to explore a range of activities including developing our balance and strength as well as learning the basic shapes of gymnastics (e.g. straight and tucked) that will provide the foundations for us to explore a variety of different ways of moving in the longer term.
On Friday we also took part in the inter-house dodgeball competition which was led by our active schools coordinator and our P7 sports leaders and house/vice captains. It’s safe to say, we had a LOT of fun!
It’s been great hearing about achievements and learning outside school too. We were delighted to have Emily come in and share some practice she’d been doing at home for the letter formation we’d been working on. Owen has just started karate and now has his white belt and we had four children take part in the Wee Nessie run. Well done everyone!
Have a great weekend everyone and we look forward to seeing you back on Monday for some more fun and learning.