1/2 A Mainstream 

What we have been up to: 

Year 1 and 2 students have started their integrated unit ‘Belonging and Our Community’. They are now becoming immersed in a drama taking place in an imaginary town called Thistle Mountain. As the townsfolk, the children must solve the problem of a giant who throws tantrums by working together and finding solutions as a community. 

Students have also been enjoying listening to each other's ‘All About Me’ bag presentations. It’s been a great speaking and listening activity; the presenters have spoken in depth about their items, which in turn has provoked lots of wonderful comments and questions from their audience. 

Maths:

We have been exploring counting patterns. We discussed the relationships and patterns noticed on the 100 chart and then we used colour and words to label the chart and show all the different patterns. We also finished our data unit with students continuing to collect and analyse data. Through the democratic gathering of data, we choose the two fish names, Sunshine and Bubbles with the next fish being called Drippy Droppy and the one after that Fish Face!

Literacy:

The 1/2 classes have started the Little Learners Love Literacy Stage 7.1 sounds in phonics. These sounds include ay as in day, ai as in rain, ee as in meet and ea as in meat. Students were introduced to homophones (words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings).

Over the last couple of weeks, we have learned about a COMPLETE sentence and how a complete sentence has to have a WHO and a WHAT to make it complete. This is the most important information and if we want to know more about this, we can add more details; WHERE, WHEN, WHY. When we are imagining our sentence in our head, the extra information gives us a better movie in our minds.

What’s to come in the next two weeks:

We will continue our immersion into our integrated learning through the process drama of Thistle Mountain. Within this drama, students will be exposed to new vocabulary, write letters, survey each other and discuss solutions to anger control and tantrums. 

We will start introducing the next stages of the writer’s process by planning and drafting recounts. 

The Little Learners Love Literacy stage 7.1 sounds that we are focussing on for weeks 6-7 are: - - y (unhappy), igh (high), ie (pie) and -y (sky). To reinforce their learning, students could be practising their spelling of these sounds at home.