Grade 1 & 2
Term 2

Our students are continuing to demonstrate their developing skills in literacy, numeracy, inquiry, and specialist subjects. Looking ahead, the next four weeks will focus on consolidating and expanding upon these newly acquired skills. Through targeted activities and collaborative learning experiences, students will continue to build upon their knowledge and abilities across all areas of the curriculum. We truly appreciate your ongoing support.

Literacy

In writing, our grade 1 and 2 students have been revisiting narratives, remembering how to plan a narrative, then write and edit their story. Students revised writing a story plan, using it to write their stories and then taking the time to carefully reread their work and edit for spelling and structure improvements.

In reading, Grade 2's have been focussing on the comprehension strategy of visualising. We use visualising to help us understand what we are reading. To visualise we need to follow these steps:

Students enjoyed visualising a newsletter article about some children who travelled to space and drew some amazing pictures to show what they pictured in their mind at each point in the story. They then used their pictures to retell the story to a friend.

Numeracy

Our Grade 1 students have continued their activities focused on sharing and division. They've been working in small groups on open-ended tasks, which encouraged collaboration and exploration of mathematical concepts.

Through these hands-on experiences, students discovered how to use repeated addition, make equal groups, and find different solutions for division problems. It has been wonderful to see their confidence grow as they made sense of division in meaningful ways!

Grade 2s have started our money unit and are enjoying earning play money and their once a week shopping sessions to buy class rewards. The are learning to model and solve simple money problems involving whole dollar amounts with addition, subtraction, multiplication or division, for example, ‘If each member of our class contributes $5, how much money will we have in total?’

Inquiry

Our grade 1 and 2 students have been highly engaged in their inquiry unit My Place. They have learned about the continents, singing the continents song and colouring and labelling their world maps. They have researched and written an information report about a famous landmark from around the world, and they are looking forward to monitoring and learning about the weather in the coming weeks. Here are some of the fabulous information reports that the grade 2's produced detailing famous landmarks.

Here are some famous landmarks, from the Eiffel Tower in France to the Great Wall of China. Using atlases, the Grade 1 students have also been practicing how to use the index to locate the countries these landmarks belong to—building both their geography skills and curiosity about the world. It's been a fun and engaging way to explore global cultures and places!

The Resilience Project

The Grade 1 students have been exploring the belly breathing technique to continue to build their mindfulness skills. The purpose of breathing mindfully is to simply notice, accept and be aware of your breath. This practice draws complete focus to the breath, to its natural rhythm of the inhale and exhale and how it moves through your body.

You may like to try BELLY BREATHING at home. Please use this script.

Lie flat on the floor with your legs out straight and arms on your belly – get comfortable.
Close your eyes, making sure you have soft eyes not closed tightly and try to make your face relaxed.
With your hands on your belly, feel your belly moving up and down and focus on this as we do some belly breathing.
Let’s count your belly moving up and down 10 times together.
1 (pause), 2 (pause), 3 (pause), 4 (pause), 5 (pause), 6 (pause), 7 (pause), 8 (pause), 9 (pause), 10 (pause).
Now we are going to count backwards from 10. 10 (pause), 9 (pause), 8 (pause), 7 (pause), 6 (pause), 5 (pause), 4 (pause), 3 (pause), 2 (pause), 1 (pause).
Take some time to open your eyes and sit up as slowly as you can.

National Simultaneous Storytime(NSS)

ACPS took part in the National Simultaneous Storytime again this year. The Grade One students and their Grade Five buddies enjoyed listening to the picture book The Truck Cat written and illustrated by an Australian author. It was shared simultaneously in libraries, schools, and many other places around the country. The Truck Cat is a heartwarming story that follows a truck-driving cat and his human as they search for a place to call home. After the story, the students participated in a fun activity where they created their own scenes inspired by the book.

The Grade 1 and 2 students were lucky enough to have been visited by Healthy Harold. Healthy Harold likes to learn new things and being active is high on Harold’s favourites list, along with his friends health and safety. Our children enjoyed learning about how to prepare physically and mentally for important events in their lives. The key messages included eating a balanced meal, drinking water to stay hydrated, getting enough sleep, positive self-talk to push away negative thoughts and many other ways to deal with nerves during a challenging situation. The children enjoyed the activities during Healthy Harold's visit.