Year One News

Dear Year One families,

Wow! What a busy first term so far this year. All the Year One students have done such an amazing job this term. We are very proud of the principled and caring attitudes all students are continuing to demonstrate every single day.

This week we have continued to work on our Unit of Inquiry, 'Who We Are'. In this unit we have been exploring the Central Idea that, ‘Managing emotions can impacts our relations’. We have been looking at this through the key concept of form (What is it like?), where students have been reflective by exploring how different emotions and feelings are expressed in different ways, including facial expressions and body language. This has encouraged students to recognise different emotions and the strategies they can use to manage these emotions.

Reading 

In Reading and Word Study, during the term the Year Ones have been learning different word families each week. Through learning these word families, students have been making new words and increasing their bank of words. The students are encouraged to look for these word families, when they are reading, to help them decode unfamiliar words. An example of this is, in the word 'trip' there is an '-ip' rime. So, if the student knows and can read the word trip then they should be able to use this spelling knowledge to read the word, tip or flip, etc. 

Currently the Year Ones have explored and are unpacking the short and long vowel sounds in their classrooms. 

The Year One students have enjoyed focusing on visualising to help them become better writers, and they now understand, through their mentor text readings, that good writers help the reader to visualise what they have written.

All Students have been displaying some exceptionally principled behaviour with their nightly reading and spelling homework.

Writing

In Writing, the Year Ones have continued to develop weekly seeds  in their Writer’s Notebooks, in order to build on their writing skills. They have been focusing on creating interesting leads with an emphasis on using capital letters at the start of every sentence and ending every sentence with a full stop. 

  This term students have been writing recounts about a variety of events that have happened to them at school and on their weekend. Students have been using the 5Ws (who, what, when, where, why) and 1H (how) when writing their recounts. The 'how' links back to our unit of inquiry as it allows the students to think about how they were feeling at the time of the event. 

Mathematics

In Mathematics, the students have continued to focus on the Number and Algebra concept of counting and place value.  The students have been using a range of concrete material and resources, to assist them in building on their place value understanding. They have used: place value tables, unifix blocks to make towers of 10 and icy pole sticks in order to make bundles of 10. One activity that the students particularly enjoyed was ‘bundling’ ice cream sticks into tens and using place value charts to assist counting collections up to 100. Students have been exploring the months of the year by recognising and ordering them. Students investigated what months each class and students had their birthdays by creating a graph to display.

Reminders 

• In the Primary years, school begins at 8:30am, with continuous entry from 8:20am. Please be on time as lessons begin right on 8.30am.
• In Term One and Term Four, it is required that all students wear the school hat during recess and lunch. We kindly remind students to remember their hats.
• Please ensure iPads are sent to school fully charged every day.
• Please ensure that students bring their take-home reading satchels, homework spelling book and take home reading books to school every day.
• Please remember to help the students fill in their Take Home Reading Diaries. 

Regards, 

The Year One Team