Year One News 

Dear Year One families,

Wow! This first term has just been flying along! Our wonderful students have settled in really well after what has been a disrupted and unusual few years. We are very proud of the principled, caring and resilient attitudes they continue to demonstrate.

This fortnight we have started to really dig into our first Unit of Inquiry based on the Transdisciplinary Theme of, 'Who We Are'. To inspire the students curiosity and provoke their wonderings, we watched the movie, ‘Inside Out’. Following this, they shared their thinking using, 'See-Think-Wonder', graphic organisers. The students then helped to unscramble and unpack the Central Idea for the Unit, 'Managing Emotions Impacts Our Relationships'. This unit connects strongly with much of the work we have been focussed on since the start of the school year, like developing our Essential Agreements, The Zones of Regulation, Growth Mindsets and the Learning Pit. By focussing on these concepts, we hope to continue fostering positive school and classroom environments in which the students feel happy, challenged and safe, to enable them to be take risks with their learning. 

Reading 

In Reading, the students have continued focusing on the, ‘Good Reader Strategies’, to decode unfamiliar words, as well as on the comprehension strategy of predicting. The students have enjoyed focussing on onset and rime, investigating rime patterns such as '-op, 

-ill, -ot and -ip'. Many students have demonstrated their growing skill as inquirers by finding and sharing  onset and rime words they have discovered during independent reading time. We have continued with our Guided Reading sessions, where groups work closely with the teacher to enable individual conferencing, feedback and goal setting to occur. To help the students to continue enjoying reading while building their fluency and comprehension skills, we encourage you to read together each night. Nothing helps build a child’s love for reading like sharing a good book with family! 

Writing

In Writing, the students have focussed both on developing seeds in their Writer’s Notebooks and on building their skills at writing quality sentences. To meet the different needs of our wonderful cohort, we have investigated a range of writing skills such as the correct use of capital letters, leaving finger spaces between words, ending sentences with punctuation and adding adjectives to make our writing more interesting. We have also investigated syllables, the organisation and features of a retell and the use of interesting leads. Based on this, we have been working together to co-create goals for each student to focus on when writing. In line with our Unit of Inquiry focus, we have been adding seeds in our Writer’s Notebook, such as pictures so they can be used as prompts for writing about our emotions. 

Mathematics

In Mathematics, the students have continued to focus on the Number and Algebra concept of counting. For example, we have been investigating numbers that come before and after when counting. The students have been using a range of concrete material and resources, to assist them in building on their place value understanding. They have used: hundreds charts, place value tables, ten frames, blocks, counters and icy pole sticks. One activity that the students particularly enjoyed was ‘bundling’ ice cream sticks into tens and using place value charts to assist counting collections more easily, up to and beyond 100! We have also been investigating days of the week.

Reminders 

• In the Primary years, school begins at 8:30am, with continuous entry from 8:20am. Please be on time as lessons begin right on 8.30am.
• In Term One and Term Four, it is required that all students wear the school hat during recess and lunch. We kindly remind students to remember their hats.
• Please ensure iPads are sent to school fully charged every day.
• Please ensure that students bring their take-home reading satchels and books to school every day.
• Please remember to help the students fill in their Take Home Reading Diaries. Many students should have reached 25 nights of reading by now and will be looking forward to filling in their first certificate!

Kind Regards, 

The Year One Team