Grade 1

Reading

We are very proud of the fantastic start our students have made to reading this term! They have settled back into their reading routines beautifully and are showing great enthusiasm and confidence during our phonics and reading lessons.

This week, we have been developing our phonics knowledge by exploring the different sounds that the letters ‘c’ and ‘g’ can make. We have been learning that ‘c’ can make the /s/ sound when it is followed by e, i or y, and have been practising words such as city, centre, cycle and centipede.

We have also been learning that ‘g’ can make the /j/ sound when it is followed by e, i or y, and have been reading and spelling words such as gentle, ginger and gym. We have been identifying these spelling patterns, blending sounds together and applying our phonics knowledge when reading new and unfamiliar words.

We have also been revising the /air/ sound and the different ways it can be represented in words, including ‘air’ and ‘are’, such as chair and care.

We are so proud of the enthusiasm and effort students have shown already this term, and we look forward to seeing their reading skills continue to grow!

Writing

This term in Writing, students have continued exploring our mentor text, The Boy Who Tried to Shrink His Name by Sandhya Parappukkaran. Building on their learning from last term, students have been developing their sentence level writing skills by expanding simple sentences with where, when and how details. They have explored prepositions and adverbs, sequenced events using time connectives such as first, next, after that and finally, and created character maps to explore a character’s actions, words, thoughts and feelings. It has been wonderful to see students confidently applying their learning and challenging themselves to add more detail to make their sentences interesting and engaging for the reader. We are very proud of the fantastic start they have made to writing this term!

Maths

Welcome back to all our families! We hope everyone enjoyed a relaxing and enjoyable term break. This week in Mathematics, we began exploring data collection and how we can gather information to answer questions. Students practised writing suitable questions to gather data, repeating surveys to improve the accuracy of their data collection and collecting data through observation. We also explored how collected data can be used to answer questions before completing a summative assessment to demonstrate our learning.

Home Learning

Reading:

Read together for 10–15 minutes each day and encourage your child to sound out unfamiliar words.
Look for words containing c saying /s/, such as city, centre, cycle and centipede.
Look for words containing g saying /j/, such as gentle, ginger and gym.
Practise reading and spelling words with the /air/ sound, including words such as chair and care.
Ask your child to identify the spelling pattern they notice in different words.
Encourage your child to use new vocabulary in sentences.
Re-read familiar books to develop reading fluency, expression and confidence.

Writing:

Practise expanding simple sentences by adding where, when and how details.
Identify and use adverbs to describe how an action is happening.
Retell a familiar story or event in order using first, next, after that and finally.
Encourage your child to reread their sentences to check they make sense and include capital letters and full stops.
Complete the weekly homework sheet.

Maths:

Create a simple survey question for family members, such as “What is your favourite fruit?”, and record the responses.
Repeat the same survey with different family members and compare the results.
Choose something to observe at home, such as cars passing the house or birds in the backyard, and record what you notice.
Collect data to answer a question, such as “Which type of fruit do we have the most of at home?”
Talk about the data collected and ask questions such as “What does the data tell us?” or “Which answer was most common?”