Dear Grade Two parents and carers,

Welcome to our first fortnightly snapshot. We have been thrilled with how enthusiastic the students are and how well they have settled in. Here is an outline of what is happening in our classrooms over the next two weeks.

The students have started to bring home books to read. They have not been given a leveled book chosen by their teacher, but have been asked to select a book that is a good-fit for them. Please see the reading section for more information about this. We would like the students to get back into the routine of reading at home each evening. However, as the school transitions into using decodable take-home books (as per whole school communications) some students will be moved onto reading decodable texts.

Reading

The students have been busy and enthusiastically organising our new classroom libraries. It has been great to see their passion for reading and ownership over this space in the classroom. They used teamwork skills to categorise the books. Over the next two weeks, the students will be working on building their reading stamina. This means that the students will learn ways to engage with a text and activity read for extended periods of time. They will learn how to choose good-fit books that they can keep in their personal book boxes. The students use the following as a guide for choosing their good-fit books:

We will also be setting up their readers notebooks and the students will learn how to use these to record their reading stamina, set goals, keep a reading log and practise skills and strategies taught in mini-lessons.

Word Study

The students have been revising the codes that they learnt last year. Assessments will be completed over the next few weeks. We will begin getting ready to learn new phonics rules. Students will also revise how to use reading and spelling tools to decode and spell words.

Writing

Students are learning the purpose of their Writer’s Notebook and the various ways it can be used. They are creating a variety of entries in their Notebook and choose some to expand upon. We will also be focussing on handwriting and capital letters.

Numeracy

Next week we will begin to focus on place value. It is essential that student develop an understanding of this concept as it is the foundation of many mathematical understandings.

Our learning intentions are:

To recognise, model, represent and order numbers to at least 1000
To group and rearrange collections up to 1000 in hundreds, tens and ones

Unit of Inquiry

We commence the year with the Who We Are unit as it helps with student’s personal growth. They learn to recognise and regulate their emotions and learn the impact of their behaviour on others. Learning experiences include studying how characters in books evolve through difficulties encountered.

Well Being

We have been focusing on setting up our classroom essential agreements as well as establishing classroom routines. This will continue to be a focus in classrooms over the coming weeks. Beginning Monday 15th February, we will be conducting Pastoral Care Interviews, which can be booked via Compass until Friday 11th February.

Homework

Please refer to the homework slips that students paste in their planners each Monday. We will include Reading, Mathematics and family discussion points.

from the Grade Two teachers:

2A Angie Fifer

2B Maddy Long

2C Breallen Cole

2D Angela Alderuccio

Issue 8

Term 1, Week 3 & 4

Issue 1 · 04 Feb 2021

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