Year 1/2 Term 2 Overview

Welcome back to Term 2. This term is looking to be a big one with some incursions/excursions already planned and our whole school production in the last week. Please continue to take good care of yourselves and let us know how else we can support you to help your child with their learning at home. 

Important Notes

• Our winter uniform needs to be worn in Term 2 and 3. 
• Please initial your child’s Reading Record each day when you hear them read aloud. Remember the text coming home as their ‘reader’ is an easy, independent text so the focus can be on comprehension, not decoding words. 
• When reading with your child, pause to ask them a question about what is happening so far? or what might happen next? rather than a general question at the end of the text. 
• Homework will be sent out on Tuesday, but not each week. Homework may include a selection of 3 tasks across various subject areas including English, Maths, Spelling, RE and Inquiry. 

Religious Education and Inquiry

Our Inquiry unit this term centres around Geography and our big question is: 

How is my community an important place that helps me and others live well? 

We will explore natural versus man-made places and look more deeply into iconic places around Australia using the text ‘Under the Southern Cross’. 

As part of our RE/Inquiry we will also make links to indigenous perspectives and how this relates closely to the land we call home. We will ask ourselves where we can see God in nature and learn to understand the important time of Pentecost. Students will discover the pivotal role of the Holy Spirit and the disciples in the early church and how these events led to spreading the good news of Jesus Christ.

Mathematics

Our topics this term in order will be:

• Place Value
• Measuring and Comparing Lengths
• Addition and Subtraction
• Comparing Time Duration and Sequence of Events
• Telling the Time on Analogue and Digital Clocks

Our Maths topics move quite quickly and we strongly encourage you to do simple number activities at home to support your child’s learning. Your child should be fluent in facts to ten, one more, one less, ten more, ten less, one hundred more or less and skip counting forwards and backwards by 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s. 

We are always happy to provide direction for home activities that support this so please come and see us if you need further clarification. 

English

This term in English we will have a strong focus on comprehension and students will learn to develop their own literal and inferential questions about the text. If students are able to generate and answer their own questions about a text, it demonstrates a much deeper understanding. Literal questions usually start with who/what/when/where and the answer can be found directly in the text. Inferential questions often start with why or how and require a deeper level of thinking and comprehension. Students will use mentor texts to experiment with more sophisticated grammar and language features and as a result hopefully transfer these styles to their own writing. We will also continue to practise our letter formation so that we can write clear and legible letters on the line. 

Social & Emotional Learning

We will continue to work on understanding and talking about our emotions and using strategies to better manage ourselves in social settings. We will continue to work through lessons in The Resilience Project which centre around the three strategies to being truly happy - gratitude, empathy and mindfulness. 

Specialists Timetable

Please see the timetable below for specialist lessons. 

IMPORTANT DATES 

• Monday 28 April - Water Wise Incursion presented by Yarra Valley Water
• Monday 28 April - 1/2A presenting at Assembly 2.50pm
• Monday 5 May, Tuesday 6 May & Wednesday 7 May - Digital Wellbeing Incursions
• Thursday 8 May - Mother’s Day Stall 
• Friday 9 May - Mother’s Day Breakfast in the Coghlan Centre 
• Monday 12 May - 1/2B presenting at Assembly 2.50pm
• Wednesday 14 May - Grandparents Day Mass 10am (time TBC)
• Monday 19 May & Tuesday 20 May - Life Education Incursion: Navigating the online world
• Monday 26 May - School Closure Day
• Monday 9 June - King’s Birthday Public Holiday: No School
• Tuesday 10 June - MCG Excursion
• Wednesday 2 July - Whole School Production 6pm (time TBC) at The Round
• Thursday 3 July - 1pm finish and free dress day for the last day of Term 2

We can be reached via email, or leave a message at the office, and we will endeavour to respond within two working days between 8am and 5pm. Please read our school newsletter which comes via email every fortnight on Monday. Facebook and Instagram are also a great way to see what is happening at St John's.

Clorinda Maio cmaio@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au

Naomi Ryan nryan@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au