Level 1: Connect
Nishtha Kapoor (1A), Lizzie Parmar (1B) and Robyn Hall (1C)
Hello Level 1 families,
Welcome to Term 4. We hope you all had a marvellous break. The students have returned with lots of enthusiasm and readiness on show!
It's so hard to believe that we are already in Term 4! The year has flown.
We have a fantastic 9 weeks ahead with lots of learning, assessments and adventures.
It's a very exciting term.
Enjoy reading this this week's newsletter.
Have a wonderful fortnight,
Nishtha, Lizzie and Robyn
Level 1 Teachers
Reminders
Please remember that broad rimmed school hats are now required for the remainder of the year.
Take-home books will continue to be changed on Tuesdays and Fridays
The first homework for the term was distributed last Friday. It will, as always, be attached to this newsletter.
Homework is of course optional, but it's so great to see most students completing homework activities to varying degrees. Keep up the good work!
If you haven't already done so, can you please give your Compass permission for our up and coming exciting IMAX and Melbourne Museum excursion on November 5th. Thank you.
We are working very hard on narrative writing at the moment. If you want to support your child at home with writing, you can help them write beginning (setting and character), middle (problem) and end (resolution) paragraphs which focus on description to help give the reader an image in their mind.
Literacy
Reading and Writing
Students are continuing to build their reading skills with some fabulous mentor texts. They will be learning to summarise using an SWBST chart - somebody (the main character).. wanted (what did they want?).. but (what was the problem).. so (how was it resolved?) .. then (what happened in the end). Using these prompts is a great way to create a succinct summary of a story. You might like to try it at home with picture story books.
In Writing, we are focusing on narratives - building sentence skills such as varied sentence starters, exciting vocabulary and adding more detail such as when, where and why. Students will be writing stories over the next few weeks, thinking carefully about beginning, problem, resolution and ending and how to engage their readers with interesting sentences.
Core Literacy
Students are involved in Core Literacy lessons every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.
During these lessons, students engage in many activities relating to spelling, phonics and morphology (how words are formed and how they relate to each other) such as dictation, editing, card deck and reading words.
Each week we have a sound/letter focus and a morphology focus.
During each of these sessions, students have a text that corresponds to their reading level that is read daily. These texts go home with the student every Friday for hopefully extra practise at home.
Here's what's happening in Core Literacy in the fortnight ahead:
Week 2 Heart Words - half, water, those
Week 3 Heart Words- these, people, great
Week 4 Heart Words- cough, laugh, enough
Phoneme focus - soft c as in celery or circus, hard c as in cucumber or cute, soft g as in gem or giraffe, hard g as in green or glue, ough as in through, though, cough, rough, plough, thought, thorough
Morphology - prefixes
Maths
Over the coming fortnight, we will continue developing our mathematical thinking through Shape and Position and Place Value. In Shape and Position, students will use ordinal numbers to describe the position of objects and people and practise following directions to change locations. They will explore both verbal and written instructions, including the use of simple symbols, to describe and follow pathways and directions.
In Place Value, students will build their understanding of numbers to 1000 by reading and writing numbers in both words and numerals. We will investigate how collections can be regrouped into hundreds, tens and ones to make counting more efficient. Students will also use base-10 blocks to compare and order three-digit numbers, developing their understanding of the value of each digit within a number.
Inquiry
Following on from the students' interest and enjoyment in our Australian history focus last term, our Term 4 Inquiry focus is all about Mesopotamia, the first civilisation from 5000 years ago.
Students will learn about the following:
Long, long ago, what did people learn how to do that changed how they lived?
Why were the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers important to the Mesopotamians?
In ancient Mesopotamia, what was the system of writing called, and why was it important?
How might writing down King Hammurabi’s laws have helped the people of ancient Mesopotamia?
What did the people of Mesopotamia believe their gods and goddesses could do?
At the conclusion of learning all about Mesopotamia, students will showcase their understandings and skills via a project of their own choosing. Maybe a poster, a model, a diorama? We will hold an open afternoon whereby families and friends can pop in to see our students' wonderful creations. More details to follow at a later date...
Term 4 Timetable
Homework -