Our Learning Blog
A very big ‘thank you’ to both parents and staff who helped out on our Urquhart Castle trip yesterday.
Mrs Mutch and I appreciate all of your help and know that without you helping out it would not be possible to take the children on such rich experiences,. Many thanks as always for your help and support.
We learned lots of information and tales about castles and got to explore replicas of artefacts from the Middle Ages.
We are looking forward to a busy and exciting week!
On Tuesday it is our turn to head back to the Library. We will return our borrowed books and look for something new to take back to the class to share with everyone. Please come wrapped up with appropriate clothing for the weather 🙂
On Wednesday 26th Feb we are off on our very own ‘Castle Hunt…’. Urquhart Castle here we come. Again, please dress appropriately for the weather and come ready with your packed lunch and water bottle. We will collect school packed lunches for those who requested this before leaving. Can’t wait!!
Literacy
This week we are learning to identify and write words with the sound ‘wh’.
Can you make a list of ‘wh’ words at home?
Try this roll and read game at home.
Reading
We are reading for enjoyment and picking a book that we find interesting at Inverness Library this week.
Keep practising your sight words and phonics words in your yellow books. Quick recall of these words really helps when we are learning to read our reading books. Have fun with books! 🙂
Handwriting
We are continuing to practise the zig-zag letters. Have a go!
Numeracy
We are learning quick addition facts for 5 and 10.
Use ‘Hit the Button’ to practise finding the pairs to make 10, addition within 10 or missing number sums. Click onto the number bonds button to find the add to 10 games.
Use ‘Save the Whale’ game to fit pipes together to make 10 and rescue the whale.
IDL
We are learning to understand how we find out about the past. We will be exploring historical evidence and artefacts and asking the experts questions as we explore and investigate Urquhart Castle.
Let’s talk about it! We talked about ways to stay safe on the internet.
Literacy
Phonics
Over the next two weeks we will be consolidating the sounds we have learned and practising making and breaking words. We are starting to work towards independent writing where children are putting words together to make phrases and sentences.
Viking Word Building – Choose any flag from Phase 2 or the first flag from Phase 3
Dinosaur’s Eggs – Choose any on the sounds we have learned sh, ch, th, ng to read the phonics words
Reading
We continue to practise reading sight words and phonics words, looking for clues in the words to help us. Children are practising listening to others while they read and following with their finger. Encourage your children to read aloud clearly for an audience so we can all hear the words. 🙂
After reading ask your child to find:
Writing
We are learning that sentences must make sense. The words must be in the correct order. This week we will be using our story telling knowledge to help us sort the silly sentences.
Handwriting
We are moving on to practise V and W this week. These letters are in the zig-zag family. Keep practising your one-armed robot letters. Remember all letter writing starts at the top. Say it out loud – to make us all proud! 🙂
Number
We are learning to add set to find our how many altogether. We are working hard to count on from the bigger number.
Fruit Splat Addition – Choose the level that fits for you!
We are learning to match the digital clock to the analogue clock for o’clock. have a go at this game to practise telling the digital time.
Clock Splat – Choose level one and move on if you are ready.
On time – Choose level one for the hour clock and match the clock hands to the time given.
IDL
We are continuing to make our own castles with drawbridges and we cannot wait for you to see our castle drawings. We worked hard to use shapes to create the castle and add detail with lines.
Health and Wellbeing
We are working hard at being respectful to others. The children have had lots of excellent ideas for ways to show respect. They have been trying hard to use lovely manners to each other and the adults in the school. Well done everyone!
Can we please ask that any outstanding money (£3 for the bus) is handed in to school so we can pass it on the our lovely ladies in the office? Many thanks.
Phonics
This week we have been working on identifying and using the sound ‘ng’. We noticed that this sound was most often found at the end of words. Can you think of any new words at home?
Have a go at this game. Click on ‘ng’ and practise some word building.
Spelling
We have been learning to spell bronze or silver words.
Handwriting
We have been working hard on our robot letters!
Writing
This week we have been naming different types of writing we know. The children came up with a great list. There was story writing, letter writing, card writing, recipe writing, label writing, song writing (great idea Stanley :-)), sentence writing, word writing.
We wrote labels today for our castle wall and then explored book making and story mapping. A great day.
Numeracy
We are learning to draw pictures to match addition problems. Mrs Fowler read out an adding story and the children had to draw to match. You all worked so hard – well done.
To demonstrate our adding skills we also played dice addition, bingo dabber adding and a numicon game.
HWB
We had a go at teddy bear rolls and talked about the parts of our body that owe used to make shapes, hold balances and move over the mat. I think we’ll practise this one again next week as it was not as easy as it seems. 🙂
We are talking all the time about respect and what this means. We have chatted about the kinds of words we would say to one another if we are giving feedback or comments about the work we/others have done. We made a list of ‘pick me up’ phrases.
Over the next few weeks we will be looking out for children using lovely manners, especially please and thank you and tidying our classroom to make it beautiful.
French
We have been learning the colours in French.
Next week we are hoping to start making our own model castles with a moving drawbridge. We are looking for some junk for modelling with! If you have any shoe box sized boxes at home that you are finished with, that would be a great help and any kitchen roll tubes would also be appreciated.
What a great week!
Phonics
This week we have been using the ‘th’ sound to make and break words. We are trying hard to make sure we do not say t and h for the sound ‘th’ but stick your tongue out at the teacher and say ‘th’. The only time you get to stick your tongue out at the teacher!! 🙂
Can you make a word list at home with words that begin and end with ‘th’?
Spelling
We are all making great progress in spelling the bronze and silver words and it was a great week as some children moved on to their next spelling steps.
Here is a Bronze and Silver spelling list.
Try out the Spelling Tennis game or the Anagrams game.
Writing
Writing was a great success this week as the children are really starting to get the hang of using sentence starters to create their own sentences. Our sentences this week were about castle characters. The dragon is…, The knight is…, The Prince is…, The Princess…
We are learning to…
~say a sentence out loud to make sure it makes sense and write the words down and put a full stop at the end
~use our bronze and silver words to spell words correctly
~use finger spaces
~ have a go at sounding out new words
Handwriting
We are learning to write the one armed robot letters correctly.
Numeracy
We are learning to say the tens and ones in numbers up to 20 and beyond.
Fuel the Brain – choose your level
Can you tell someone at home about tens and ones?
We are learning to write the numerals correctly.
We have been trying to check our work using the numbers on the wall to see if they are the right way around. Super checking Primary 1.
PE – Health and Wellbeing
We are learning to use our bodies in a controlled way.
We had a go at a variety of different rolls this week. The pencil roll, the egg roll and the dish roll. We balanced along the bench and jumped off safely and used a bench to practise hopping from side to side.
IDL
We were learning how a pulley works. A pulley is used to lift something that is really heavy! To make a pulley lift the load, we used string/rope and a wheel. The drawbridge in our class castle needs a pulley to lift it just in case there are enemies! We are now thinking about modifying our drawbridge to have two ropes
A big thanks to Ossian for telling us about his Australian animal adventure. Great knowledge and enthusiasm Ossian!
We are really excited for World Book Day here at Crown. We will be celebrating the day with fancy dress, a competition, visitors, class buddying activities and other literacy related work within classes.
Fancy Dress
Story Box Competition
Sharing our Favourite Books
We can’t wait for a great fun-filled book themed day!
Primary 1 