Grade 1 

Minibeasts 

What a great time we had with our minibeast incursion at the end of last term. We had an opportunity to see a whole range of minibeasts both living and no longer living. Just like young scientists, students used microscopes to examine minibeasts up close. Most students also enjoyed having close encounters in the butterfly enclosure and we also saw stick insects and even a yabby! We also learnt about the life cycle of butterflies with a fun craft activity. It was such a fun and interesting way to finish the term.

Discovery – Watch it Grow!

This term we have started a new topic focusing on exploring plants. The different parts of plants, how they are grown and what they need to survive. In week 2, on a beautiful sunny morning students planted their very own seed. Over the term we will try to look after the seeds providing food, water and sunlight and observe their life cycle as they grow. The students were extremely excited to plant their seed and had many guesses about what will be happening to the seed and how it will start to change. We have planned an excursion later in the term to the Melbourne Botanical Gardens. The details are up on Compass.

Talk for Writing

This term we have been leaning a new narrative for writing, “Sidney Spider”. We tuned the students in by filling the classroom with spider webs, spiders, a broom, and dustpan. The students had some great guesses as to why our room looked this way. Some guesses were because it was nearly Halloween and that a spider had been really busy building webs for them to appear so quickly! We also had some guesses that we are learning a new narrative about spiders – clever kids!!

We introduced “Sidney Spider” and have been practising retelling the story using our story map with pictures (see below). They are doing a fabulous job learning the new story. Ask your child if they can remember the story using the story map and retell it to you!