Week 5 Home learning Snapshot Grade One

Welcome to Week 5 of Home Learning

We have now completed a month of home learning and as always your commitment and ongoing support is invaluable. Based on parent feedback the Grade 1 team recieved we have made the following improvements to our home learning plan;

Student Comments

We will aim to provide suggestions into the positive feedback we provide students with each day, so that students and parents know what the next steps could be. 

Google Meets

During our daily Google Meets sessions we will continue to run through the plan for the day ahead and incorporate some explicit teaching into the explanations (where possible) to ensure students know what is expected for the day and answer any questions students may have related to this.  

EPIC

Students have been assigned leveled readers in their EPIC inbox, to assist parents with texts students can read aloud to them each day. 

Reading aloud

To support your child’s home reading, we have assigned 5 leveled books on EPIC for your child to read at their own pace. These are in addition to the daily reading tasks on Seesaw and act just like the 'take home' books students would normally bring home each day. It is important that students read aloud to parents everyday to increase their fluency and reading stamina and so you can ask them questions to check for understanding.

Please check your child’s inbox on EPIC for their assigned books and if they are 'read to me' versions' we ask that you please just turn the volume off so students can read them aloud. 

English

Our reading strategies for this week are 'Reading punctuation at the end of a sentence' and '5 finger retell'. 

This week, we will be reading punctuation at the end of a sentence such as question marks, full stops and exclamation marks.

We teach children that our voice goes up with a question mark, we pause at a full stop and we use expression with an exclamation mark.

Paying close attention to all punctuation will assist with fluency and overall comprehension of the text.  

This week we will introduce the 5 Finger Retell. Children will be asked to read a story and retell the KEY parts, not the tiny details. They will use their 5 fingers to retell characters, setting, beginning, middle and end.

Helping Your Child With Reading at Home

1. Read aloud a segment of text to your child. Model how you control your voice to go up and down. Highlight punctuation in the text and discuss what your voice did when you came to the punctuation. It may even help to read it once without intonation or attention to punctuation, see what differences your child is able to notice.

2. Using a pencil, underline a phrase in a sentence and model how the words are said together without a pause. Have your child repeat this phrase for you a few different times until fluency is attained.

3. Give your child a highlighter and ask him/her to highlight all punctuation in a portion of text. Then, go through the text with your child, talking about what their voice should do at each highlighted spot. Finish by having your child read the excerpt aloud one or two times.

 Thank you for your continued support at home!

Writing 

“It’s not about immediate perfection. It’s about learning something over time: confronting a challenge and making progress.”

 ― Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success

This week in writing students will

*Complete a full recount about an event on the weekend. Over the past 4 weeks students have learnt what to include in the different parts of a recount, including an orientation (who, what, where, when and why) and the sequencing of events (first, next etc).  This week students will add a title and conclusion to complete their recounts. 

*Write an explanation of the milk to ice-cream process

*Sequence the story of 'The Gingerbread Man' into beginning, middle and end.

*Learn to write on dotted lines using Clever Cat. This week we are learning Clever Cat's body and tail letters (g, p and y)

*Respond in their writing to their choice of two whimsical picture story books.

Dotted thirds Whenever there is a writing task we ask that students write on dotted thirds rather than notebooks or blank paper. The home learning book which each student was supplied with is perfect for this. Writing consistently on dotted thirds gives students practise in writing their letters in the correct spaces and helps them to be more consistent in the size and formation of their writing. If you don't have a book please let your teacher know or print off some dotted third paper here. 

Please take note of the teaching videos that accompany the assigned writing activities each day. These will teach your child what they need to know to be successful at the writing activity.

All writing tasks have an extension or modification at the end of the assigned task to help students individual learning needs.

Word Study

This week, students will continue to practice their codes from last week and be introduced to 4 new two letter codes (ai, ay, oi, oy) throughout the week. We now have a working pack of 30 codes that we revise each day. Throughout the week , more simple codes will be removed from the working pack and new ones will be introduced.

Students will also continue to explore how to use reading and spelling tools to help them decode and write words through a series of mini-lesson videos. These tools demonstrate the thinking out loud process required to read and write. Once we train our brains to think through these steps, our brain will do the thinking automatically. Students will practice the same reading tools lesson this Monday and Wednesday and the same spelling tools lesson on Tuesday and Thursday. The words in each lesson are based on the codes that are in our working pack.

Wellbeing 

Each day, students practice mindfulness to create calmer classrooms and a sense of wellbeing. We encourage Grade One and their families to practice mindfulness at home during this time. This week, we encourage children and their family members to add to their jar and share the gratitude at the end of each week. 

We have also included more mindfulness colouring for you to print here. Remind your child to only colour small sections mindfully. Gentle and mindful breathing while they colour can be beneficial too.

Mathematics

This week in Mathematics students will be focusing on describing the position of objects and giving directions.  Our learning intentions include:

*Describing the position of objects on a map using vocabulary such as next to, between, left and right

*Giving directions from one location to another on a map using language such as up, down, left and right

*Locating objects on a map using grid references.

Students will practise describing the position of objects and following directions by playing two interactive games.  They will log in to Mathletics (www.mathletics.com) on Friday and complete the location tasks assigned by their teacher.

Inquiry

We were so impressed with students responses to their inquiry tasks last week. Seeing them work through the process of how potatoes go from farm to fork and show their understandings in a flow chart, was such an authentic experience for them all and their digital technology skills continue to rapidly improve. This week students will continue developing their understanding of what 'natural and processed' means and what better way to do this than by a student led inquiry. Students will select a process they are interested in by brainstorming and then researching and finally creating their own flow chart to demonstrate their new understanding. We cannot wait to see what processes students inquire into. 

Home Learning Information 

Please find FAQ and answers here. We will continue to update this document as questions from parents come in. We ask that you read these before you email teacher 

*We have allocated roughly 30 minutes for Reading, Writing, Maths, Inquiry. However THIS WILL vary for each student each school day.

*We recommend 20 minutes independent reading for Grade 1 daily (see Gail Boushey's videos for support).

* Each day your child will be given a daily task schedule on SeeSaw that will be uploaded for parents the night prior. Please note that the highlighted sections are the ones students need to respond to and teachers will provide feedback on this activity. 

Home Learning Resources

*One Home Learningexercise book

*Grey led pencil

*Ruler

*Eraser

*Textas & colour pencils

*Access to a device 

*EPIC account (your classroom teacher has invited you via e-mail)

*Mathletics (children have their sign in details in the BPS planner)

*Seesaw account (your classroom teacher has invited you via e-mail)

*Story Box account: Username: Storybox Storybox Password: brighton

*BrainPopJnr : Username: Bpsprimary Password: Bpsprimary

New Optional Tasks Choice Board Week 5 & 6

Options for those who would like a little extra creativity in their days

Grade 1 Team

Tessa Woodgate 1A - Learning Leader

Michelle Flood 1B

Nicole King 1C

Jewel Jackson 1D (Monday, Tuesday)

Kellie Runciman 1D (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday)