Year 1 News

From Joey, Year 1 teacher

Once I Was Giant

Reading and Writing

This fortnight in Phonics, the Year One students completed their learning of the grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs) ‘oo’, ‘ew’, ‘ue’, and ‘u_e’, representing the /oo/ and /yoo/ sounds. While revisiting these sounds, students had many opportunities to apply their knowledge through games, partner reading, spelling, and writing activities.

To enhance reading comprehension and writing experiences, students and teachers closely read and analysed the text 'Once I Was a Giant'. Together, we made predictions about upcoming events, discussed our feelings about the positive and negative behaviours depicted in the story, identified character motivations, and made meaningful connections to the events and ideas presented.

As a written response to the text, students applied their knowledge of text types to express their understanding of deforestation, logging, and endangered animals. They shared their insights through poems, narratives, or persuasive pieces, demonstrating thoughtful engagement with the story’s themes.

Numeracy

Building on their understanding of place value, skip counting, and patterns, Year One students explored multiplicative thinking over the past two weeks. They organised materials into equal groups and applied various strategies, including drawing diagrams and using models such as arrays and bar models. Students also practised writing number sentences to represent repeated addition and early multiplication.

Through hands-on activities, word problems, and fluency practice, students consolidated and deepened their understanding of this important mathematical concept.

The Art Festival

It was wonderful to see so many families join us to celebrate our achievements in the performing and visual arts this year! The Year One students thoroughly enjoyed their time on stage and were proud to showcase their creativity, confidence, and artistic talents to our visitors.