Grade 1 and 2 News

Key Dates & Reminders: 

• Homework Expectations: We ask that families do their best to read 4 nights each week and fill in the yellow reading diary on those days. Students may read somewhere between 5 - 20 minutes. Home reading is not designed to be a difficult task and at times the readers may even seem easy which is absolutely fine. Students may bring the same books for a number of days and this is to support them to develop their fluency and expression. Library books can be used for parents to read to their child and discuss asking questions such as: Who was in the book? What happened in the story? Was there a problem that needed solving?
• Hats: As we are a Sun-smart school, students must be wearing a broad-brimmed school hat during Lunch and Recess for all of term 1 and into term 2. All students have access to sunscreen to put on at school if they choose to.
• Belongings: We ask that any belongings which are coming to school or things that can be taken off during the day such as jumpers, please be clearly labelled with your child's name.
• 'Me in a bag': Your child should have brought home a brown paper bag to add items/pictures etc. that will give their class an insight into things they like to do.
• SRC Voting: Next week students will be voting for their grades' Student Representative Council (SRC) member.If your child is wanting to represent their class they will complete a short speech in front of their classmates. Their peers will then vote for the student they feel will represent their class well.

What we have been up to...

We have been extremely proud of the way our grade 1 and 2 students have begun the 2024 school year!

In class students and teachers have been busy setting up the classroom and developing expectations for the year ahead. It is always great to have the students involved in this process to allow them to have ownership over the classroom rules and expectations. There has also been lots of fun happening with games to learn names and facts about each other.

If for any reason you need to contact your child's teacher throughout the year please reach out via email on Compass or give the office a call to make a time to chat. If it is a message which can be quickly passed on, you're welcome to call in before or after school.

Learning in Week 3 and 4

Reading, Writing and Spelling: Over the next fortnight we will continue to set up classroom expectations around reading and students will complete activities relating to our focus books Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge and Molly & Mae.

We begin the year with revising heart words such as my, the and he, which students have learned in the previous year. Our focus sounds will be short vowel sounds such as 'a' as in cat, 'e' as in egg, 'i' as in big, o as in 'log' and 'u' as in bug.

During Writing lessons we will be looking at how to write a recount about a personal experience and students will continue to focus on using boundary punctuation (full stop and capital letter) and will begin to learn about a range of connectives.

Mathematics: Students will continue to play games that develop their awareness of number and basic number facts. They will practise skip counting, identifying numbers which come before or after other numbers. We will also be developing the students knowledge of place value i.e. the number 14 has 1 ten and 4 ones.

Topic: Our topic focus this term is about students developing their sense of self, family and community. Beginning with themselves and their interests, students will then learn about different families and think about who makes up their family and memories they have enjoyed with their family.

Rights, Resilience and Respectful Relationships (RRRR): This term our topic is Emotional Literacy. Throughout the term students will learn about different emotions and discuss topics such as friendship and sharing.