Year One

 

Spotlight on Learning

Dear Families,

It's been a week full of colour, harmony and building understanding about the many cultures we share at St.Thomas. During our history lesson last week we looked at how the school population has changed over time in our local area and this week has been a testimony to our learning. Here are some photos and videos taken on Pentecost/Multicultural day. 

Religious Education focus:  This week we re-visited the story of Pentecost and the beginning of Jesus' church, built on by the apostles. The connection is evident to our multicultural composition of students who speak many languages as well as learn English. 

English focus:Sometimes we forget what hard work it is for children to learn a whole new language within their first years of school, an effort that needs to be acknowledged. Learning English as an Additional Language (EAL), is a consideration for most students at our school and teachers may have a conversation with you around placing your child on the EAL reporting system. This is in no way detrimental to their learning, as a matter of fact it takes in to consideration the foundational skills students need to read, write and speak English as a second language. 

This week we learnt about the 'ir', 'er' and 'ur' spelling patterns.

Mathematics focus: This week we learnt about measurement and completed a timed Mathematics assessment for reporting skills. Teachers have been busy assessing students 1:1 to understand what students can do independently (which are the criteria for marking students at their point of learning).

SEL: This week for SEL we learnt about  identifying 'Trusted Adults' in their lives, who they can approach when feeling unsafe within and outside of school. This would be an interesting activity for you to do at home for children to understand who they identify as trusted adults. 

History:  During Inquiry we started on our end of term reflection around what we have learnt about 'How does our past shape who we are?'. 

AUSLAN: This week have learnt the following signs: 

Next week we are learning about... 

Religious Education focus: We will commence our learning about 'St.Thomas' journey with Jesus'. We will look at scripture where St.Thomas is mentioned, how he became one of the forefathers of carrying on Jesus' word. 

English focus: We will continue to focus on 'The Heartbeat of the land' by Cathy Freeman. During Phonics, we will focus on adding the suffix 'er' to make words stronger in meaning. 

Mathematics focus: Students will learn about Measurement-ordering Length, Mass and Capacity.  

SEL: 

History: We will continue to work with on our Inquiry question based on the book 'My place'. 

AUSLAN Focus: Students will be revising signs from unit 4, in preparation for end of term assessment. 

Reminders

• Please make it a point to read the readers students bring home, even if they seem easy to decode. Our aim is to build fluency at the stage they are learning during phonics and build comprehension skills. Some questions you may ask based on any book are as follows. You can also dictate a few words from the word list at the end of the book. 

• Model using prompts like:

  "Point to where it shows...."

  “I wonder why…”

  "what makes you think...."

  “This reminds me of…”

  "Show me where it says"

  “I didn’t understand that part, so I’ll reread it.”

  Use a mix of Who, What, When, Where, Why, How questions based on the book.

Important Dates

• Thursday 3rd July - St Thomas the Apostle Feast Day
• Thursday 3rd July - Student, Parent and Teacher Interviews -3:30 - 8:30pm
• Friday 4th July - Last Day of Term 

Contact Us @ Jerusalem

jerusalem@cranbourneeast.catholic.edu.auOR

On behalf of the Jerusalem community, thank you for reading our newsletter! 

Nimanthi