Year 1/2–Celebrating Learning

1/2 Mainstream 

On Tuesday the 7th of June, the Year 1/2 mainstream classes travelled to the Melbourne Museum on a bus (very exciting!) to experience the “Bugs Alive” exhibition. The exhibition aligned beautifully with our “schoolyard safari” integrated unit that we have been exploring over the past term. For the majority of our students, this was their first ever school excursion- everyone was very prepared and ready to go.

Each group of year 1/2s listened and participated in the “Bugs Bugs Bugs” program, led by a staff member of the museum in one of the Learning Labs. In this program, we were introduced too many different types of bugs and some of the specimens we would see in the exhibition. The year 1/2 teachers were very impressed and proud of the knowledge that the students could share with the museum staff about what they had been learning about bugs at school. 

Throughout the day, the year 1/2s were also able to look through exhibition spaces such as the Forest Gallery, The Dinosaur Walk exhibition, the 600 Million Years Exhibition and the Dynamic Earth Exhibition. We had a fantastic day! 

1 Steiner 

Class One is currently writing stories as part of our final main lesson for Term 2, Writing Seeds. This Main Lesson explores the world of insects and leaf litter through non-fiction texts. Through the Writers Workshop process, students have been seeding, planning, drafting, choosing their text types, sharing their writing, and celebrating their success together as emerging writers. 

2 Steiner

Class Two completed our Ida the Spider: Times Tables and Number Patterns main lesson a few weeks ago (see pictures of main lesson books here). We have since then  been writing stories as part of our final main lesson for term 2, “The World Around Us – Nature Stories.” This main lesson builds upon our Lucy’s Dreaming main lesson that was at the end of term one. Working with the Writers Workshop process, we have been developing an independent story about ourselves or a friend in our class (with their permission) waking up one day and discovering that we are in the body of a creature in our local environment. 

The children have taken delight in developing their story telling skills, imagining the world through another way of experiencing it, and illustrating their stories. 

Beyond main lessons, our class has been developing our recorder playing skills through regular practice. We have been practicing times tables, collecting data from each other and making graphs from our tally’s, and we have been enjoying our first class novel for this year: The Indian In the Cupboard.