On World Book Day we learned the story of The Three Little Pigs. We created pictures using 2D shapes, coloured in characters and then wrote the story for ourselves. 

Everyday we work on blending sounds to make words. Our word wall in the class gives us lots of ideas of words to make using magnets, scrabble tiles or writing on mini whiteboards. 

All P2 pupils have reading books in their reading folders. Reading is completed regularly in class so it is really important that pupils bring their reading folders in daily. 
At the front of the reading book there is a before reading section. It is important to go through this section regularly to make sure children can read the words and understand the words, before they read them in the story. This also gives a great opportunity for discussion about words and their meanings, as well as for the children to talk about using the words in different contexts. 
At the back of the book there are activities. These include questions about the book (to make sure they have understood and remembered the story) as well as activities such as finding things in the pictures, or breaking up words. All of these activities are great for helping with comprehension and overall understanding of vocabulary, story structure and using pictures to add extra information to the story. 

P1 pupils have now received their reading folder which contains a Jolly Phonics sounds booklet. Please keep the booklet safe in the reading folder and use it at home to practise the sounds we have already learned. This will help with reading and writing. So far we have learned up to the "th" sound and will be working on ‘ng’. Next week. 
In class the children learn the action along with a song (these can be found on You Tube or on previous class blog literacy posts). Learning the action and sound together helps with recognition when it comes to reading sounds then blending the sounds together to read words. 
We use Jolly Phonics at school, as well as lots of other resources but there are lots of games which you can play at home to support learning. Games such as eye spy or sound treasure hunts are great fun to do when out and about or at home. 

We have been focussing on the "qu" sound this week and learning that a "q" is always followed by a "u" to make the "qu" sound. 
Here is the "qu" song we use to help us:
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXfszNc2tAI

This You Tube clip has the recent songs we have been learning to support our phonics (y, x, ch, sh, th/th) :
​
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnUF8TWy8jY

We use Jolly Phonics Finger Phonics books in school to help our learning. We have learned all the sounds from Group 1 - Group 4. We have started learning some sounds from group 5 and 6 (Primary 2 pupils had already covered these) but we will recap these as a class after the Christmas holidays.  Below are some great You Tube videos which talk you through the books:
Group 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpl6Thbvw1k
Group 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwvlrBD99LA
Group 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je4rTtCYfl0
Group 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUy7JaQt1Q8
Group 5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GDVxMB-8IM
Group 6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scFdAxqPt68

We have been working really hard to learn tricky words. These are words which we can not "sound out" using phonics, but instead need to read and recognise that they are a bit different. 
We have used these videos to help our learning:
​
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvMyssfAUx0
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R087lYrRpgY

We have also been busy making tricky words paper chains which will be sent home next week. Here is a link to the resource if you would like to make more at home.

When we are learning to read and to spell, we work on recognising the first, middle or end sound in a 3 letter word. The pupils have loved playing this game in class recently:
​
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/phonics/balloon-phonics-cvc-game