Grade 1 News

Important Reminders

All important dates and events are on our Compass Calendar, please check the calendar regularly to stay up to date!

Library

Grade 1 Library is now on Thursdays. Please ensure your child has their library bag so they can borrow weekly.

Learning in Action

Wellbeing

Learning in Action: 

This fortnight, students discussed negative emotions they can feel when they lose or are excluded from a game, and the strengths they need to help them cope with these emotions. Whilst playing in the curious corner, we discussed feelings and what is considered ‘fair’. Students explored the difference between calming and cheering coping strategies and identifying times when they need to use these strategies whilst collaborating or playing games with others.

Zone check in

This week in Grade 1, we also introduced a ‘zone check in’ into our classrooms. Grade 1 teachers discussed with their class how it is important for us to recognise and acknowledge our feelings and the strategies we can use to overcome these feelings. This zone check in is an opportunity for students to anonymously acknowledge how they are feeling and teachers to build relationships by checking in with students. 

Preview for Learning:

Next fortnight, students will identify situations that can cause fear and apply coping strategies to help in dealing with their fears. We will also name the things that can make them feel angry and practice applying strategies to help them control the way they express anger. 

Literacy

Learning in Action: 

This fortnight, students have been decoding and encoding long vowel sounds such as /ai/, /ee/, /igh/ /oa/ and /ue/. Students broke words up into the sounds that they could hear and used a 'pop it' to support them in writing the sounds. Students are also learning about common and proper nouns and using them correctly in a sentence. 

To begin this term we are studying poetry. We are connecting poetry to our Inquiry unit of History by writing about the civilisation we are studying including Early Indigenous Australians, Ancient Egypt and Ancient China. Students will be reading and watching information while also visualising and making connections to their own lives. 

Preview for Learning: 

In the coming weeks, students will start looking at new sounds including /oi/, /oo/, /er/, and /ur/. Students will be learning to decode and encode these sounds at word level as well as reading them in sentences. 

Students will also continue looking at poetry and different styles of poems. Students will create an anthology that will include their own published poems as well as class poems. 

Maths

Learning in Action: 

This fortnight, our mathematicians have kickstarted their learning with Multiplication. This has involved understanding how to organise a collection into equal groups, by ensuring each group has the same number. We have been practising this concept by using counters to organise our thinking and discussing the word “equal” as being “fair”. For example, Mrs Ryan has 8 lollies and Mrs Pepper has 7, is this fair? Students then progressed into solving worded equations using counters. For example, Mr Wight has 2 bags of donuts. Each bag has 12 donuts in it. How many does Mr Wight have altogether? 

We discussed efficient ways of counting and concluded that skip counting was a fast way to count a collection of objects. We have practised skip counting by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s, and even challenged ourselves to skip count by 3’s to find a total. 

Finally, we started our Time/Duration unit of learning! We discussed the features of analogue clocks, the importance of knowing the time and how to tell the time using the language of o’clock and half past the hour. We have asked students to make special notes of the times of day they do activities at home, for example on Saturday at 10 o’clock I have swimming lessons, to share with the grade. 

Preview for learning 

In the upcoming fortnight, students will continue making equal groups with a focus on organisation (rows and columns), skip counting and use the ‘x’ symbol to signify groups of, when embedding their new learning. 

Students will also make comparisons of real life events and sort these events into minutes or hours as part of the Time/Duration unit. 

Inquiry

Learning in Action: 

We have been very excited this fortnight to begin our Term 3 Inquiry topic of ‘History’. Each week, we will be looking at a different civilization in time; from Early Indigenous Australians, to Ancient Egypt, Medieval Times, 1800s school life and more! This fortnight we have learnt all about Early Indigenous Australians (the world’s longest-continuing culture) and Ancient Egyptians. We have looked at these civilizations through the lens of 3 key questions:

• What did families look like? 
• How did people communicate? 
• How did people learn? 

It has been wonderful to hear students making connections to their own lives, as well as their prior learning about these topics. 

Preview for Learning:

Over the next fortnight students will be learning about Ancient China and Medieval times. As we investigate these ancient civilizations we will consider family life, communication and learning as a theme to our learning.

Student of the Week

Congratulations to our Grade 1 award winners.

From the Grade 1 teachers,

Caillin Ibbotson, Isabella Albanese, Kayla Pepper & Rachel Ryan