Year 1 Term 3 Overview
Dear Year 1 Families,
Welcome back to school for Term 3! We have been very proud of the Year 1 progress in the first half of the year and looking forward to the rest of the year.
Curriculum:
Literacy
In reading, students will continue to develop their ability to decode unknown words. They will do this with strategies such as recognising high frequency words, stretching sounds, and blending sounds together. Students will practice their ability to read contractions, possessives, compound words and simple connectives such as first, next, then. When reading, students will notice full stops and commas, and use them to change their voice and expression to match the text. Students will understand an author’s purpose by using a range of texts and exploring how they are organised, and their text features. They will develop their ability to comprehend texts by practising skills such as inferring how a character is feeling by noticing clues in the pictures and words, and summarising the important information in a text.
In writing, students will focus on creating procedural and persuasive texts. Mentor texts will be used to support their development of ideas, word choice, sentence fluency and organisation. Throughout the term, students will explore different ideas for writing, craft well built sentences and identify how sentences are sequenced. They will be adventurous in using vocabulary such as adverbs, actions verbs and adjectives to convey how something is done, their opinions and feelings. Students will understand the importance of correctly applying full stops and capital letters, as well as experiment with different types of punctuation. Each week, students will engage in SMART Spelling, phonics and handwriting practise to help improve their understanding of spelling patterns and letter formation.
Numeracy
This term will be underpinned by an integrated focus on place value, exposing students to multiple strategies of counting efficiently. Students will strengthen their knowledge of additive strategies such as partitioning, make to ten and doubles to help them solve addition and subtraction problems. Year 1s will continue to explore measurement using informal units to order objects according to length, mass and capacity. They will develop their knowledge of halves by engaging in real life scenarios that model sharing. At the end of the term, students will create and ask their own questions in order to collect information. They will draw and create picture graphs to represent their information.
Inquiry
Throughout the first 3 weeks of Term 3, students will be exploring the theme of ‘Our Land Our Stories’. Year 1 students will investigate the driving question: ‘How can we connect with Indigenous animals and totems to build our own sense of self and protect our environment?’ Students will explore native Australian animals and be exposed to different examples of Aboriginal totems and their significance. Students will explore their own personal strengths and traits and align them to an animal with similar traits, which will become their own totem. Students will create an artwork of their totem and write about how they will protect it.
For the rest of the term, students will be exploring the statement ‘People create communities and are connected by land, water and culture’. We will be investigating the local area and environment and take action on how we can protect the land.
Ways to Help Your Child At Home:
Home Reading - Please ensure that your child is reading every night at home for at least 20 minutes, following up with a conversation about the book (this is very important to help them verbalise their understanding). Please see your child’s homegroup teacher if you are having trouble accessing Reading Eggs or Wushka.
Learning Goals - Your child’s individualised learning goals are listed on Compass. There is a reading goal, a maths goal, a writing goal and an Inquiry or SEL (social and emotional learning) goal for your child. Please read these and support your child by going through the suggested strategies to help at home. These goals are changed every 5 weeks, and you will also be informed of your child’s achievement of these goals. If you have any questions regarding your child’s goals, please see your child’s teacher.
We look forward to continuing our journey with you and your child in 2022. Please come and see your child’s teacher if you have any questions or concerns. After school is best for a quick chat, otherwise send your child’s teacher an email to set up an appointment time for a longer chat.
Year 1 Team