Year 1-2

Welcome 

Our Specialist Timetable

Tuesday - Art 

Thursday - Japanese, STEM and Physical Education

Friday - Bluearth - My Future Academy alternates with Assembly

Project Compassion

As we embrace the season of Lent, a time of reflection, sacrifice and giving, we invite you to join us in this special initiative that aligns with the spirit of the season. This year, we are reaching out to you, our St John’s families, to get actively involved with Project Compassion!  Your children will be actively participating in Project Compassion at school to make a significant impact on the lives of those less fortunate, and this year, we would like to invite parents to jump on board too! We believe that together, as students, teachers and parents, we can help to encourage our kids and amplify their efforts.  As Easter approaches, we encourage you to get involved by taking part in Give it up forLent – whether you forgo your daily coffee, or indulge in a little less screen time, or give up your car during Lent and in doing so raise money for Caritas Australia. We are sending home a family Project Compassion Box and encourage your family to talk about different things you could do for ‘Give it up for Lent.’ 

Thank you for your involvement.

Take-home Reading

It's wonderful to see the students reading each night. We expect that students read for at least 10-15 minutes each day. Please don't forget to sign your child's reader diary. 

Water Bottles

Just a reminder it is important to pack water bottles so students can stay hydrated. Also please ensure that we are only bringing water to school. Juice boxes and primas are fine for home, but we want to avoid sticky messes on our furniture and equipment.

Curriculum

Literacy

We have commenced a new program in the Junior school, Heggerty, which is based around explicit phonics instruction. So far in Year 1/2 we have been looking at rhyming words (thumbs up if it rhymes, thumbs down if it doesn't) and making and blending syllables. Our session is first thing every morning, straight after attendance and prayer. The session only goes for around 10 minutes, and then we move into Literacy. 

We've enjoyed learning looking at information texts and learning facts about animals. We were shocked to find out that some turtles are able to breathe through their backsides (an auxillary breathing system). Male seahorses have the babies. The male playtpus is poisonous AND did you know that a sloth will only go to the toilet once a week and that it takes 30 days for a sloth to digest just one leaf? Make sure you ask your child about some of the fun facts they've discovered so far. In writing time we compiled an information booklet about ourselves that included some fun facts.

Mathematics

We began our new mathematics unit 'I am a mathematician' and we certainly have plenty of those in our classrooms. In this unit we worked on ways we can persist with mathematics when things don't go right the first time. We celebrated mistakes as 'awesome' mistakes in which we can learn from. We also explored how we can work collaboratively in teams and share ideas and experiment. This unit has set us up to be more confident in mathematics. 

We've also started to look at the concept of time (am and pm), years, seasons, months, weeks, days of the week.

Religion

We start the year looking at the Mercy heritage of St John's. We investigated how to 'Be Respectful' in the classroom. We made freeze frames to demonstrate our understanding of respect.

Inquiry - History

We are investigating how families have changed over time. Over the next two weeks we will be making a family tree, which includes parents, children and grandparents. We will be discussing how family members are related. We would love you have a chat with your child about the people in their family and bring along a photo to share with the class. We are happy for you to email us a photo for your child to share. 

Each child will also be bringing home interview questions to ask an older person about their childhood. Please help you child to complete this and return it to school.

Bluearth - My Future Academy

Our second session with Jimmy will be taking place this Friday, 23rd of February. Jimmy has moved away from Bluearth and has created his own business 'My Future Academy' which we are very happy to support. Jimmy is very passionate about his work and we are excited to be part of his venture. 

Upcoming Events

School Photos - 22nd of Februrary - Information has been emailed to you from Bek in the office. See below for information if you haven't received 

Class Mass - 1st of March at 12.30pm - Families are welcome!

Parent Email

If you haven't received any emailed communications since the beginning of the year, please let Bek in the office know, so she can check you're in the emailing groups.

rlines@sjeuroa.catholic.edu.au

Until next time,

Katherine, Karen, Fiona, Dee and Lisa 

kking@sjeuroa.catholic.edu.au 

frobinson@sjeuroa.catholic.edu.au