Reading

This fortnight in literacy, students have continued to consolidate their understanding of the different sounds and grammar concepts we have been learning. They have been practising to know the difference between ‘_ch’ and ‘_tch’ in words as well as the prefix ‘un’ and how this affects the meaning of words it is used with.

Students have also worked on their tricky words and have been busy showing off their reading skills in preparation for their upcoming reading assessment that will be released next week. Well done and keep up the great reading Grade 1.

Maths

In Maths, students have been consolidating their understanding of time through a variety of engaging, hands-on, and collaborative learning experiences.

During Week 3, students have been learning how time is measured and organised into days, weeks, months, years, decades, and centuries. They have been practising naming and ordering the days of the week and the months of the year, developing confidence in sequencing and recognising patterns in how time progresses. Students also explored how many days are in each month and began connecting this learning to real-life contexts, such as birthdays, seasons, and special events. This learning has helped build a strong foundation for understanding how we use time in our everyday lives.

During Week 4, students focused on learning to tell the time using an analog clock. They identified and named the key features of a clock, including the hour hand, minute hand, and the numbers around the clock face, developing an understanding that there are 60 minutes in an hour. Students practised reading and representing o’clock times, learning that when the minute hand points to the 12, it shows an o’clock time. They also explored estimating time, discussing activities that take about one minute and those that take about one hour, helping them connect mathematical concepts to real-life experiences. This learning helped students develop a solid foundation in reading and understanding time.

Writing

In Weeks 3 and 4, our Grade 1 students have been busy developing their writing skills through two picture books Where the Forest Meets the Sea by Jeannie Baker and Looking After Country with Fire by Victor Steffensen.

During Week 3, students continued exploring Where the Forest Meets the Sea, making text-to-self connections by linking events from the story to their own lives. They also learnt how to use the conjunctions because, but, and so to join ideas and make their sentences more detailed and interesting. Students practised completing and creating sentences using these conjunctions and worked on identifying how each one changes the meaning of a sentence. The week concluded with a narrative cold write, where students independently planned and wrote their own imaginative stories using what they had learnt about sentence structure, punctuation, and conjunctions.

In Week 4, our focus shifted to Looking After Country with Fire. Students explored how this hybrid text combines narrative, informative, and persuasive elements to teach us about caring for the environment. They learnt about the four types of sentences, statements, questions, commands, and exclamations and how punctuation helps us to understand the writer’s purpose. Through shared reading and sorting activities, students identified and created their own examples of each sentence type, using ideas inspired by the story.

Across both weeks, students also continued practising their weekly spelling patterns, focusing on the er and a_e sounds. It has been great to see them confidently applying their growing knowledge of spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure in Writing lessons.

Additional Subjects

In Integrated, students have been learning about weather and appropriate clothing that is worn in different seasons. They have also been exploring their favourite seasons and participating in discussions about why they have chosen that particular season. In a few weeks time, students will be beginning their summative project task, where they will need to construct a diorama of a place, either natural, managed or constructed, and decide what season it will be in their diorama. Look out for a post soon regarding any shoeboxes you might have laying around your home!

In Respectful Relationships, students have been exploring the importance of being fair and how rules can help everyone to play games safely and happily. They have also been discussing that we need to be fair to everyone, no matter their gender, and include and support everyone, no matter if they are a boy, girl, or non-binary.

Art