What to expect this term

Year 1 news – what lies ahead!

This newsletter outlines the term’s learning for your child’s year group. We hope that this provides you with a picture of what is ahead.

This newsletter provides an overview for your child’s learning this term, which fits within our approach to:

Welcome to term one

Welcome back for the start of a new school year. We are really looking forward to getting to know your children, establish positive routines and have a great start to the school year.

Year 1 teachers

Last week we spent time setting up classroom procedures and familiarising ourselves with our new classroom.

In Year 1 our day will generally begin with the Literacy block in the mornings, then Numeracy, followed by Inquiry (History) taught in the afternoon. (The specialist timetable and special events can affect this order). Our Specialist timetable has been communicated on Compass.

Literacy

Grade ones will be participating in the Little Learners Love Literacy program (LLLL). The program is evidence-based and stresses the importance of explicit and sequential literacy teaching from the beginning, giving children the best possible chance of being fluent readers, writers and spellers.

Our writing genre of focus will be narrative. Throughout the unit, students will be practising weekly handwriting, grammar and punctuation lessons will support clear and accurate writing. Our grammar, punctuation and spelling focus will be determined through assessment and analysis of student writing samples at the beginning of the term.

We will be continuing with our weekly explicit phonics, parts of speech, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary lessons as a part of our Literacy block sessions.

At home you can:

Read together daily and talk about what your child is reading.
Encourage your child to read aloud with expression and fluency.
Explore new words in books or daily life and discuss their meanings.
Support writing at home; letters, notes, stories or lists.
Model a love of reading and writing by sharing your own!

Mathematics

In Mathematics, students will be revising and extending their understanding of place value to the numbers to at least 120. They will be representing numbers using materials such as MAB blocks and exploring number patterns.

Students will also be exploring collecting and recording data, as well as making, comparing and classifying familiar shapes.

At home you can:

Play number games.
Continue counting forwards and backwards from 20 and beyond.
Practise counting objects or items in your home.
Explore different shapes in their everyday environment.
Counting collections and groups of objects.
Collecting data at home by asking questions like ‘what colour eyes do my family members have?’

Further ideas to support students at home can be found here: Literacy & Numeracy Tips to Help Your Child.

Inquiry

In Inquiry, students will explore their personal histories. They will investigate the continuity and change in personal, family and community life. They will learn to describe significant aspects of personal and family life, and of an individual, a site or an event in their community.

Respectful Relationships (RRRR)

RRRR learning supports our school values of Community, Respect, Excellence and Creativity. Our first unit in Year 1 focuses on Emotional Literacy, where students learn to identify, understand and manage their emotions, as well as recognise the feelings of others. Students will develop emotional literacy, build positive and respectful relationships, recognise personal strengths, and practise skills for cooperation, problem-solving and help-seeking.

Specialist subjects

French

Students will be practicing routines in the French classroom. They will revise personal information by asking and answering questions about their name, age, and favourite colour. Students will also revise and extend their knowledge of numbers to 15.

Performing Arts

We will be establishing a routine embedded in our expectations found in FPS’s School Wide Positive Behaviour System (SWPBS) through Performing Arts as a lens. We will also be revising our knowledge on Solfege, and explore body percussion and movement.

Physical Education

Students will be revisiting the expectations and the procedures used in PE. They will play simple movement games in which they will be challenged to move around in different ways. To help improve balance and locomotor skills students may use equipment such as balance beams or balance boards.

Science

Students will be focusing on biological science. They will discover that plants and animals have observable features that can be used to group them in different ways.

Visual Arts

Indigenous landscape artist Albert Namatjira and his great grandson Vincent Namatjira, a contemporary portrait artist will be the spotlight for study this year.

Initially, students will be decorating their art folios and Visual Art journal. They will then be focussing on the art element colour, expressing it through paint. They will continue to develop their colour mixing skills, being challenged to making new colours and classifying them as hot or cold.

Kind regards,

Faye, Lauren, Anneliese & the Specialist teachers