Connect: Year 1

Dear families,

Welcome to Grade One, 

We have all had a wonderful start to the year with our new grades. We are so proud of how quickly they have settled in. 

Learning is already underway. Here's what's coming up in the next fortnight.

Literacy

We have jumped right in and started our Little Learners phonics program. The students will be learning when to spell words with the ay/ai phoneme. They will be taught that 'ai' is in the middle and 'ay' is typically at the end of words. We have also been practising new heart words and writing short stories using our sounds. 

In Writing we are starting a very exciting topic learning the continents, countries and oceans of the world. World knowledge is so important for our students to develop their vocabulary and love of learning. We will also focus in more detail on some of the countries starting with Australia. We have already begun learning about possums by reading Possum Magic and learning some facts. In Week 7 we will be going on an excursion to The Moonlit Sanctuary to visit lots of Australian animals and hopefully feed the wallabies.

You can help at home by showing your child any maps you have, maybe you have a globe or a compass. Here are some songs we will be playing to help them learn compass directions and the oceans:

North South East West Song 

Five oceans song

Numeracy

In Numeracy we have been practising our daily review using our whiteboards and we were very impressed how much they remembered after the big holiday. We will be looking at counting forwards and backwards and using concrete materials to make two-digit numbers. We will look at the language around 13 is ten and 3 more. 37 is 2 tens and 7 more.

Homework

A few parents have been asking about homework. We will have more information on this later in the term as we are settling into class routines. It will be based around reading Little Learner books and completing Mathletics tasks. We will provide more details soon.

Wellbeing

We have have been looking at the School Wide Expected Behaviours we have at Skye Primary to help keep us safe and happy. We talked about how we can be kind to each other by reading a book called 'How Full is your Bucket'.  We will continue on this theme over the next few weeks, looking at the different aspects of school life. We have also already started using our Ready to Learn scales so that teachers can check in with students each session to ensure they ready to learn.  If they are not the teacher can guide them with some strategies to help them get there.

We are looking forward to meeting you next week during Meet the Teacher and Twilight sports. Our classrooms will be open from 2:30 so you can have a look at the room and say hello.

Any questions please don't hesitate to pop in, ring or email and we will be happy to help.

Kind regards,

Julieanne Brooks 1A

Monique Evans 1B

Cyarni Klimek 1C

Fiona Torrington 1D

Michelle Hammill 1E