Year 1 News
From Joey, Year 1 Teacher
Year One Assembly Highlights
Last Friday, the Year One cohort held its second assembly of Term Two. We gathered with families to celebrate the wonderful achievements our students have made. Everyone was proud of our JSRC representatives, Eve and Aradhya, who led and organised the assembly with growing confidence and leadership.
Students from 1E delivered a respectful Acknowledgement of Country, reflecting the thoughtful work we’ve done during morning circles and our ongoing respect for, and connection to, First Nations peoples.
A big well done to all 1B students for sharing their learning and presenting their progress and achievements in Geography to our school community!
We also congratulated our RISE award recipients, who consistently demonstrated our school values and inspired their peers to do the same.
Phonics Plus
Over the past fortnight, students have been reading and spelling both one-syllable and multisyllabic words featuring the grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs) ‘i_e’, ‘y’, ‘ie’, and ‘igh’ for the long ‘i’ sound.
They also explored compound words and suffixes, learning to read, spell, and understand their meanings. Students continued to strengthen their accuracy, fluency, and comprehension through reading passages and writing dictated sentences.
Numeracy Skip Counting
Students revisited and consolidated their skip-counting skills by counting in 10s, 5s, and 2s. They engaged with large collections of materials, including items from the Maths Trolley, dot patterns, and wrapping paper designs. They also practised counting backwards in 10s and 5s by removing materials from the collections.
The Learning Pit and Problem Solving
To extend their understanding and apply the concept of multiplicative thinking, students bravely entered the Learning Pit and tackled a series of complex problems inspired by the book One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab. They were also challenged with story-based problems involving tricycles and the attributes of shapes.
Students demonstrated independence and persistence by planning and using a range of problem-solving strategies, including:
- Drawing a diagram
- Making a table
- Solving a simpler, related problem
- Building a model
- Writing a number sentence
After a period of independent work, students collaborated to explain their thinking to peers, strengthening their ability to justify and evaluate their solutions.
Location and Direction
Students also explored mathematical language to describe position and indicate direction through hands-on activities. They sat back-to-back with a partner and practised using precise language to build matching block patterns.
In another activity, students experimented with Bee-Bots to deepen their understanding of directional language and to appreciate the importance of using accurate instructions to guide movement.