Grade 1 News

Important Dates & Reminders

All important dates and events are available on our Compass Calendar. Please check the calendar regularly to stay up to date.

Upcoming dates

1st September - Melbourne Zoo Excursion 

3rd September - Father's Day Stall

18th September - Footy Dress Up Day and last day of Term 3 (2:30pm dismissal)

Key Information

• Students are to bring their take-home bags to school daily to swap books for home.
• Icy Poles will be sold outside the senior school Monday & Tuesday lunchtimes

Timetables for Term 3

Please find the updated timetables for Term 3 attached. As students will be participating in swimming during the first five weeks of the term, their specialist classes will take place on different days. Please refer to the appropriate timetable for your child's specialist schedule throughout this period.

LPS Science Day 🔬🚀

Last Monday, students arrived at school ready for an exciting LPS Science Day! The day focused on STEM and provided students with opportunities to explore, investigate and get creative with all things science. From discovering how water can walk to creating their very own Milky Way, students were engaged in a range of exciting hands-on activities throughout the day.

In the afternoon, students opened their classrooms to families, giving them the opportunity to see their amazing STEM projects. Students proudly showcased their balloon carts, demonstrating their creativity and problem-solving skills. It is fair to say that both the students and teachers had an amazing day filled with curiosity, creativity and lots of science!

Book Week 2026 📚✨

This week, our Grade 1 students celebrated Book Week 2026 by dressing up as their favourite book characters and bringing their love of reading to life! Students looked fantastic in their creative costumes and enjoyed taking part in a fun Staff Hunt around the school, working together to find different staff members and complete the challenge. Students then proudly paraded their costumes, giving everyone the opportunity to admire the wonderful characters they had chosen. It was a fantastic day filled with creativity, excitement and a celebration of our love of books and reading!

Learning Reflection

                                           ➗Maths

Over the past fortnight, students have been developing their understanding of sharing and grouping. We have explored how to share collections equally into groups and how to find half by splitting a collection into two equal groups. Students have also learned about arrays, arranging objects into rows and columns and describing the groups in different ways. Students have applied these skills to solve practical sharing problems, including working out how many groups can be made and how many objects belong in each group. We have also begun exploring groups of 2, 5 and 10, using skip counting to find the total in a collection.

Preview: Next week, students will continue developing their grouping skills by making groups of 2, 5 and 10 and using skip counting to find totals. They will then use these strategies to solve practical problems involving grouping and equal amounts.

📖 Literacy 

Word Work: 

Over the past fortnight, students have been developing their decoding and spelling skills by exploring different ways to represent sounds in words. We have focused on the ‘air’ sound, learning that it can be spelt in different ways including air, are, ere and ear, as well as the ‘ear’ sound spelt with ear, ere and eer. Students have been practising how to sound, chunk and blend words when reading, as well as using their spelling tools to say, sound, write and rule-check words. We have also continued to review previously learnt codes such as er, ir, ur and wor, applying these skills when reading and spelling increasingly complex words. 

Preview: Next fortnight students will continue learning all the ways to make the ‘air’ and ‘ear’ sounds whilst applying it to words along with starting to look into the different sounds ‘oo, ew and ui’ make.  

Handwriting

Students have been thoroughly enjoying their handwriting sessions this term. By focusing on writing whole words rather than individual letters, students have shown significant improvement in their letter formation, sizing and placement on the lines. They have continued to practise writing words that match their Sparkle level, while also challenging themselves by copying interesting and unfamiliar ‘weird words’ from the board.

Preview: Students will continue practising their handwriting daily.

Literature: 

This fortnight, students have started a new Literature Unit on the book Migaloo the White Whale. Throughout this unit, students will be exploring character feelings, images and words. Our first few lessons have focused on developing students’ comprehension of the text and retelling the main parts of the story. In Sentence Level Writing, students have begun combining and expanding sentences using the conjunctions ‘because’ and ‘and’ to show connections between ideas. Students will also be learning to describe when, where and how actions happen using adverbs and adverbials. 

Preview:  

Students will continue exploring different elements of the text and retelling the story in their own words. Students will also continue exploring ways to combine sentences together in order to connect multiple ideas. 

Knowledge Rich 🌍

This fortnight, students completed their unit on Animals and Habitats. They learnt about endangered and extinct species and explored the different reasons why animals can become endangered or extinct. Students discovered how people can intentionally or unintentionally affect and change habitats, which can have a harmful impact on the animals that live there. We explored the bald eagle as an example, learning how it was once endangered and how scientists discovered the cause and worked to protect the species from extinction. Students then completed a review of the unit and an assessment to demonstrate their learning.

                                         Wellbeing😊

This fortnight in Wellbeing, students learnt about respecting and valuing difference. We explored how everyone is unique and may have differences in height, hair or skin colour, gender, physical abilities and age. Students learnt that these differences do not make anyone better or worse than anyone else. Our differences are a normal and wonderful part of who we are, and we call this diversity.

Students also explored what showing respect looks and sounds like, including listening to others, using kind words, including others and accepting differences. We discussed how everyone should be free to choose activities, colours and interests regardless of their gender. To celebrate diversity, students created drawings showing differences in their families, friendships and lives.

Preview:

Next fortnight, students will participate in their second circles session for the term and also continue learning about our value of respect and how we can show this during games and activities. 

                                          📚 Homework

Optional Homework for Grade 1 

For homework in Grade 1, the expectation is that students will read their take-home book to an adult each day. Every student will choose a new book from their classroom on a daily basis (optional). Students will need to return their previous book before receiving a new book. Here is a link to a folder to access Sparkle at home activities if you wish: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/126BRm52aR9NyaCdEgnCljLC3X0MWqupj 

If you are not sure which level your child is on, please ask your child’s teacher.

For those students who are off Sparkle, please encourage them to read any book of their choice at home. 

Thank you for reading our newsletter. Please remember, if you have any questions, feel free to contact your child’s teacher. 

Grade 1 Teachers, 

Catia Anson, Bella Albanese and Jess Kitteringham.