Year 1/2's
We’ve had a very busy and exciting couple of weeks in the classroom, with lots of wonderful learning taking place across all areas. It was fantastic to see so many students participating in Walk to School Day last Friday. Students enjoyed walking with friends, getting active before school and showing great community spirit. Thank you to all of the families who supported the event. We will share highlights and photos from our Goldfields Railway excursion in the Week 9 newsletter.
Reading
Students recently completed our unit on the Constitution and Federation. Throughout the unit, students explored why Australia federated, the role of rules and laws, and how the Constitution helps guide our country today. We are very excited to begin seeing students’ home projects from June 1st and cannot wait to celebrate all of their hard work and creativity.
During the week, we also participated in National Simultaneous Storytime by reading and studying Luna Roo. Students practised retelling key events from the story, discussing characters and identifying important vocabulary. Some of the new words we explored included jeering and skipper. Students enjoyed engaging in rich discussions and making connections to the text.
Phonics
Students have continued building their decoding and spelling knowledge through targeted phonics instruction in their learning groups.
Naomi’s group explored the ey and y endings, along with the ear and eer sound patterns. Students practised reading and spelling words using these graphemes and applying them in sentences.
Ben’s group focused on the ay, ai and a-e sound patterns. Students worked on identifying when each spelling pattern is used and practised applying these patterns in both reading and writing tasks.
Jaclyn’s group revised the consonant digraphs sh, ch and ng before beginning work on vowels and consonants. Students are now blending sounds together to read and write CCVC words with increasing confidence.
Writing
Students have continued developing their information writing skills and have worked collaboratively to create a class book using all of the animal facts collected throughout the unit. Students demonstrated great enthusiasm when sharing interesting facts with their classmates and creating their information pieces.
We have also begun exploring procedural writing through recipes. Students have been learning about the features and sections that make up a recipe, as well as using strong action verbs and detailed step-by-step instructions. It has been wonderful to see students thinking carefully about how to make their writing easy for others to follow.
Maths
Students recently completed our addition and subtraction unit and have worked hard learning and applying a range of new strategies. These included partitioning tens and ones, using blank number lines and bridging through 10 to solve problems more efficiently. Students have been encouraged to explain their mathematical thinking and share different strategies with the class.
We are now beginning our new unit on mass and capacity. Students will be exploring how we measure and compare the weight and volume of objects using informal and formal units.
Wellbeing
Through our Kimochis program, students explored the feelings brave, left out and silly. Students discussed what these feelings might look and sound like and practised strategies to respond positively in different situations.
In Respectful Relationships, students focused on problem-solving strategies and explored ways to work through challenges respectfully with others. We have been encouraging students to communicate clearly, listen to others, think of possible options and work collaboratively when solving problems.
Auslan
Students continued learning and practising Auslan question words including who, what, when, where and how. Students enjoyed asking and answering questions such as: “Who is your favourite teacher?”, “What is your favourite colour?” and “How do you get to school?”. We have also explored words for various clothing items and food. It has been fantastic to see students growing in confidence when signing to one another.
Dinosaur Incursion
Students had an exciting time participating in our Dinosaur Incursion and learning about dinosaurs that once roamed Victoria and other parts of Australia. During the program, students became palaeontologists, investigating features of different dinosaurs, including their size, diet and physical characteristics. Students particularly enjoyed the hands-on activities and creating their own dinosaur models using modelling clay.
SAKG
1/2J have been thoroughly enjoying cooking experiences, using different techniques such as kneading, whisking, observing adult helpers using a range of cutting techniques and experimenting with different measuring tools. The corn soup was a huge hit!!
