Grade 1 and 2

Term 2 Reflection

Literacy and Numeracy

Term 2 really flew and now we embark on a big Term 3 and with that a refocus on how we can individually contribute to school culture. We will continue to strive to empower all our students to develop a ‘Growth Mindset’. We praise our students for putting in effort and persisting with their learning because when students believe they can get smarter, they understand that effort makes them stronger. 

In literacy this term, students explored the structure and features of a Recount. They created recounts about familiar events and memories they had. They developed an understanding of how to structure a recount and to use time words to help make their writing clear and easy for the reader to Our students also studied language forms and features of informative texts. Students read a range of factual texts and analysed the language features required to present information on a topic of interest. Students jointly and independently researched and composed information reports and presented information as a project. The children also developed their creative writing skills by exploring Narrative and Poetry Writing. They continued to explore and develop vocabulary to enhance their writing, and improve grammar, spelling and punctuation accuracy. Students participated in explicit handwriting lessons, where they developed their handwriting skills using the Victorian Modern Cursive writing style. To assist with their literacy learning, students looked at adjectives, high frequency words and tenses. They also continued to develop their editing skills in order to make their written pieces more interesting for the reader. 

In reading, students used Phonemic Awareness strategies to decode unfamiliar words in texts. The children explored strategies for decoding words, such as stretching out words; blending sounds in words; looking for common patterns, base words and reading with greater fluency. Students also continued to develop comprehension strategies including predicting, questioning, development of vocabulary and understanding the difference between fact and opinion. 

This term in Mathematics, students refined their knowledge and understanding of numbers. They practised regrouping, partitioning, ordering and rearranging these numbers to develop their knowledge of place value. We worked on addition and subtraction problems and built a bank of mental and written strategies that the students drew upon to solve these problems, including the split strategy, counting on and the vertical algorithm. Students have also continued to strengthen their knowledge of measurement using formal units and skip counting.

Fun, fun, fun

Term 2 is over but 'Oh what fun we had.' 

Here are some more of our fun adventures the Grade 1s and 2s have embraced this term: 

• We wandered down Yarra Street and proudly represented ACPS at the Warrandyte Festival where we performed, ate, played games and connected with our community. 
• We showed respect to our ANZACs and continued to learn about the significance of ANZAC Day. 
• We ran our little hearts out at Cross Country.
• We headed on our first big bus adventure for 2024 and went back in time to the 1900's at Mont De Lancey. 
• We thrived as we raised much needed funds for MND through our Big Freeze event and got to watch the teachers get dunked and we acknowledged the amazing work of our first responders. 
• We performed, watched in awe and encouraged each other in Shrek the Musical Jnr and what a spectacular performance this was. We were all so proud of their hard work, skills and show they put on!

This term was filled with new and exciting learning opportunities. We are proud to see the progress the students have already made, and we can't wait to see them continue to grow and shine next term. We wish everyone a restful and wonderful holiday and we can't wait for Term 3 to arrive, where we hit the ground running with the Olympics and towards the end of the term our P-2 Afternoon Tea/Sleepover.

Miss Buzzini and Ms Zanatta