Ulysses 

Welcome to The Ulysses Community Newsletter. What a great start to the 

Term for the Ulysses community: looking back, we are so proud of our community for putting together such a fantastic start to grade one. We have seen substantial progress in all areas of your child's curriculum. Your child has successfully adapted to a consistent school routine and understands the structure by which the school will operate. 

Reading: We started our term with 20 days of reading, during which we learned how to become a good reader by learning different strategies, like finding just the right book and a good spot to engage in reading and building our reading stamina. We also practised differentiating between fictional and nonfictional texts. We are currently working on the strategies to become good readers. Students are achieving massive success in building their reading stamina by using various methods, such as sounding out and looking at picture cues, to read fictional and nonfictional books. 

Writing: We are presently working on Recounts. Students participate in various experiences and have the opportunity to create a recount of the place they visited, the activities they did, and the people they met. We are also working on the writing process, and the students are learning to follow the steps of drafting, Revising, Editing, and Publishing.

Maths: We are now focusing on Place value. Students are being exposed to making numbers using different manipulatives, such as tens frames, unifix blocks, icy pole sticks, etc. We are also learning about the concept of time. We started by learning the days of the week and ordering them by cutting and pasting them accurately. Students have shown great success in understanding weekdays and weekends.

SEL: In SEL, we are learning about one of our school values: caring for ourselves. Students learn about different emotions, how to name their feelings, and regulate themselves. We also touched on how to become SunSmart. It was so good to see our students being able to participate and share some valuable ideas to become SunSmart. In the coming weeks, we will learn about  Triple R- Resilience, Respectful relationships and Rights.

Inquiry: In inquiry, we learned about the past and the present. Our students had the opportunity to participate in various immersion centres, where they explored Art, Music, Advertisements, and games from the past and present. They could identify differences and were too excited to share with their peers.

We teachers are thoroughly impressed with our students' progress. We hope this trend will continue this year as our students develop more substantial, more rooted understandings and knowledge. 

Reminders:

• Doors open at 8:40 am, and dismissal is at 3:20 pm.
• Tissue donations for the classroom would be greatly appreciated. 
• Ensure your child’s belongings are clearly labelled. This includes clothing, drink bottles, hats, jumpers and lunchboxes (lids too).
• Please ensure your child reads for 10-15 minutes every night.
• We strongly encourage students to bring some brain food (fruit and vegetables) they may eat in class. This must be included as an additional snack in their lunchbox. Please ensure your child has enough food to eat during the day (recess, brain food and lunch)
• Hats are to be worn in terms 1 and 4. 

Kind Regards, 

Ulysses Team.