Year 1 News
The Final Term of Year 1
We started Term 4 by easing the children back into online learning with a morning of Show & Tell, followed by a Talent Show. We had an array of talents showcased during our online meets including Lego making, Origami making, piano playing, magic tricks, trampolining, illustrating, painting, fishing, billy cart making, monkey bar skills, gymnastics, soccer skills, pet tricks, singing and even an expert in cats.
Inquiry
Day 1 saw us introducing our new Unit of Inquiry ‘Sharing the Planet’ followed with the movie ‘Madagascar’. We then listened to the ‘Habitat Song’ before breaking down our Central Idea ‘Living things live in different places’. The students independently came up with their own wonderings for our ‘Wonder Wall’. Some examples from our Year One students were:
“I wonder how polar bears survive in the North Pole.” Zac 1C
“I wonder how cheetahs run so fast.” Lila 1C
“I wonder why cheetahs run so fast.” Zoe 1A
“I wonder where owls sleep.” Amelia 1D
“Why is Antarctica so cold?” Harriet 1D
“I wonder where the jungles are on Earth.” James 1D
Mathematics
On the first day of Term 4, the Year One students collected a maths pack with a selection of Michael Minas’ games to play with their families. Thank you to the students that have been sharing their favourite games with us and explaining the rules of the games during our online time.
Over the past fortnight we have continued to link our Wednesday cooking sessions with our maths focus ‘sharing’ or division. In Week One the Year One students followed the procedure to make ‘Choc-chip Cookies’.
The students listened to the mentor text ‘The Doorbell Rang’ and used their baked cookies as concrete objects, to help solve the worded sharing problems. We were most impressed with the children’s mathematical abilities and cooking skills too.
This week the children followed the procedure to create ‘Chocolate Coconut Balls’ where we predicted how many balls we would make and then counted the balls in shared groups. We thank the many parents and grandparents that have made these sessions possible.
Literacy
This term the students have explored SMART Spelling digraphs /oa/ as in boat and /th/ as in feather. The students have partaken in a range of SMART Spelling activities including experimenting by writing in white crayon and then texta to create magic words, fancy writing and colour coding the consonants and vowels within their weekly spelling words.
Our writing sessions so far this term focussed on recount writing. The Year One children learnt about the process involved in writing a postcard and have also continued writing their weekly weekend recount, focusing on the 5w’s, adjectives and sizzling starts.
The Year One students and teachers were enthralled to hear that the school had accepted a free trial of Reading Eggs for all students Prep/One/Two this term. At this stage most of the Year One students have sat the Placement Test and are now able to complete activities tailored to each child’s needs. Our grammar focus over the past fortnight has included revising synonyms and introducing both antonyms and adverbs.
The Year One students now have their handwriting books at home and will be using these during our handwriting lessons scheduled on our remote learning days, until we are back onsite full time.
Wellbeing
Incorporating a wellbeing lesson into the student’s daily learning has continued this term and continues to be a critical part of the student’s daily learning, particularly as the students mentally process returning to onsite learning next week.
Each week the Year One students partake in lessons from Cosmic Yoga, The Resilience Project and The Cyber Safety Project to keep our students as mentally healthy as possible.
We cannot wait to see the children onsite next Thursday!