P2A and P2B Blog
Friday 4th November:
Term 2 so far….
We’ve jumped in to lots of learning in Term 2. We’ve been learning about People Who Help Us, and how to keep ourselves safe.
The children planned for a Police Station in our Roleplay area, and have enjoyed keeping our classroom safe!
We have started a writing focus on posters, we created information posters about People Who Help Us, and had to include a title, neat pictures and words to describe them.
Numbers all around
We’ve been exploring Numbers of the day, thinking about what the number means to us and how we can represent it in lots of different ways.
Lots of children have enjoyed exploring numbers further through their play, writing sums, using the Smartboard, making their own Number blocks, Number cube snakes that are older than the dinosaurs, cube towers- adding 1 on each time that made 66 cubes.
Talk partners
We have started using Talk Partners this term, we learned our rules: facing our partner, looking at them and listening and taking turns to talk. We had to ask them questions and listen to and remember their answers to tell the rest of the class. We then completed an activity together using lots of communication and problem solving skills, due to the weather we completed this inside. We worked together to collect natural materials then created an animal habitat which had to have a roof, somewhere for their animal to sleep, drink and eat. We look forward to more talk partner activities.
Our Proud Moments
Friday 14th October:
End of Term P2A!
And just like that, term 1 is done! All of P2A have worked very hard these past 9 weeks and they should be very proud of themselves. Since the last blog, P2A have been continuing to explore different curricular areas including adding and subtraction in maths, new sounds in literacy, and have recently been learning about the human body. After all of this learning, I think P2A are ready for their holidays!
Here are some of the things P2A have been up to these past few weeks.
Senses Topic
P2A have finished up their senses topic this past week. After exploring the senses of sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste, P2 went on a senses walk through the grounds to find out what they could use their senses to discover. We were able to listen to bird singing, smell the damp of the wood’s floor, see the colourful autumn leaves on the ground, and feel the rough bark of the trees.
We were also able to collect colourful fallen autumn leaves from the woods to make our own leaf rubbing art, which allowed us to see the different textures of the leaves.
P.E
P2A have also come to finish their fitness topic in P.E. The last few weeks, pupils have been learning about things such as endurance and how we can improve our stamina, to balancing and how well we can keep a position, to agility and how well we can coordinate our feet and body. For the last lesson, we decided to use everything we had learned to engage in collaborative games, which really tested our stamina and endurance! Here, pupils are playing tag with a twist, where different taggers have different roles to play, and pupils really have to think about what they are doing!
Body Topic
In the last few weeks, P2A have started their new topic which explores the human body. This has started with pupils learning about germs, and how they can make us sick. Most importantly, we learned how easily germs can be spread to other people. To learn about this, P2A engaged in an activity using blue paint, whereby the paint was the ‘germs’. Pupils were told to high-five each other, and therefore the paint transferred from hand to hand. This activity showed us that we need to wash our hands to make sure we don’t give germs to other people!
This week we have also been learning about the bones in our body which make up our skeleton. We learned that as babies we have 270 bones, but as adults we only have 206! To learn more about the skeleton, we used straws and other loose parts to create skeletons and talked about the names of different bones.
Fine Motor Skills
In P2A, we have also been developing our fine motor skills. If we have good fine motor skills, we can use our hands to do really delicate things, like writing! Therefore, a station was set up in the classroom to allow pupils to develop their fine motor skills by doing some weaving, or by using beads and strings to make necklaces. They have enjoyed showing me their creations!
Time for the holidays…
This term has been packed with fun and interesting activities, which has allowed pupils to explore all of their curricular areas and develop important skills such as communication, problem solving, active listening, and team work.
After all we have achieved, I look forward to seeing what we manage to get through in term 2. I wish all of you a restful break!
Miss Mulvihill.
Friday 30th September:
Maths Week In P2A!
As a school, we have been celebrating maths week. Each year group has chosen a focus for their maths week; in P2, we chose to look at coding! This involved engaging pupils in different challenges to develop their understanding of what code is, and how it works.
Challenge 1 – Make a code!
On Monday, pupils were introduced to what coding is, how algorithms work, and what codes must include for them to work and be efficient. To begin, we had pupils creating their own block of code, drawing and writing instructions on post-it-notes in a specific order. They learned that codes always have to begin with a ‘start’ and end with a ‘stop’!
Challenge 2 – Obstacle Course
This challenge involved pupils learning about the importance of giving detailed codes to a computer or robot, because if we give vague codes, a computer won’t do exactly what we want! To practice the skill of giving detailed instructions, pupils were paired up and had to direct each other along an obstacle course. The ‘instructors’ had to tell the ‘robots’ exactly what to do; for example, “take three steps”, “jump in the hoop with both feet”, and “bunny hop over the bench 5 times”. Each pupils got a turn being an instructor, so developed an awareness for how detailed instructions should be!
Challenge 3 – Collaborative Monsters
This challenge also explored the importance of giving accurate instructions. This time, pupils had to listen to given instructions in order to draw a character, but they were not allowed to look at each others as they were being drawn. Instead, we revealed our drawn creatures to each other only after all instructions had been given! As the lesson went on, we learned that in order for our monsters to be drawn the same, the instructions given had to be specific: for example, we couldn’t just say “draw a head”, we had to say “draw a square head”. We then observed that the characters we drew were more alike once we had given more detailed instructions.
Here are some of the monsters we instructed each other to draw!
Challenge 4 – Scratch Junior
The final challenge involved pupils having a chance to code using the coding app, Scratch Junior. Through this challenge, our goal was to follow the instructions in order to make a car move across the screen. This involved choosing a background, choosing a character, and selecting the correct movement codes to make the car move in the right direction for the correct distance. I am happy to say that all of us managed to make the car move along the road!
Maths Hunt
The final activity of maths week was a maths hunt, which had pupils running all over the school grounds and answering various types of maths questions. This was run by the P7s, and the P2s enjoyed being able to work with the older pupils!
Overall…
…it was a successful maths week! The pupils engaged and completed all the challenges given to them and even walked away with a certificate!
I think the pupils will be sad it’s over!
What did P2A think about maths week?
P2A had a lot to say about maths week. Here are some of the things they have said:
“I liked coding because you had to make your own set of codes.” – Max
“It was very challenging, and it was very fun.” – Jude
“I liked making the monsters.” – Ellie
“I like the learning part. The learning was fun.” – Vismaya
“It was good because I liked the hoops in the obstacle course.” – Devanshi
“I liked the little post-it-notes.” – Abigail
“I loved the P.E because of the balance beams and the ladders.” – Sophie
“I liked doing scratch Jnr.” – Blake
“The maths hunt was tricky.” – Abigail
Friday 30th September:
Maths Week
For Maths week Scotland Primary 2 were exploring Coding, when asked what they thought coding was we didn’t really know, but we thought it was to do with computers, or secret codes.
This week we have learned that Coding is a set of instructions that follows a sequence, we talked about sequences we follow everyday, such as washing our hands and brushing our teeth. We found it funny when trying to tell Mrs Christie the sequence needed when washing her hands, which led us to learn that codes need to be specific instructions. We learned that computers follow codes which are a special language made up of 0’s and 1’s and they need us to tell them what to do.
We had fun over the week completing 4 Coding Challenges.
Challenge 1-Make a code!
We had to follow code like robots, by listening to and following codes being asked telling us to start, how to move and to stop. Then with a partner we had to create our own coding sequence of movements, we had to remember the start and stop action, we took it in turn being the programmer and the robot.
We continued this in the Gymhall where we took on Programmer and robot roles to complete our fitness course, giving instructions on how we wanted our partner to move and what exercises to do at each part.
Challenge 2- Giving and following directions
For challenge 2 we had to use more specific instructions and could only use forwards, backwards, left and right. We had to think of a specific sequence and it really stretched our brains with lots of left and right practice, we also had to be very precise with how many steps forwards or backwards. This was a tricky challenge as we had to guide our partner to find treasure on a grid we used our mini-me’s for this challenge then took on the challenge ourselves.
Challenge 3-Collaborative robots
Challenge 3 was all about the importance of giving accurate instructions. We started by drawing our own robot character, we could draw them however we liked, we then compared them and had a Magpie minute to look at everyone’s and steal any good ideas to add to our pictures. We then discussed, Are all the drawings in the class the same? If not, why not? We talked about which parts of the sequence could be made more precise and how? So we tried again this time all drawing the same shape of head, the same shape and number of eyes etc.
With a partner we then created our own sequence to draw a robot giving our partner a sequence to follow, each child drew the sequence while hiding their whiteboard and we compared the results at the end when following the same sequence. We had to listen very carefully and follow exactly what our programmers said to do.
Challenge 4- Applying our skills
For our final challenge we used Scratch jnr on the ipads which is a coding app. We got to apply all our skills from this week and code characters to run in a race. We were able to identify any bugs in our sequence to get our characters to move.
What we think
Our thoughts from this week:
Coding is about when we press something on a computer or something with a computer inside it sends a code with 1’s and 0’s to tell the computer to do something- Skylah
Programmers tell computers what to do- Kian
You need to use start and stop or the computer will keep on going- Meerna
Well done P2b you are all Coding Superstars!
