Classroom News

Grade 1 & 2

Welcome back to Term 2! With a short first week, we are hitting the ground running in Week 2 with our first full week back at school. We even decided to throw an excursion in there - just to keep things interesting! 

This week our 1/2 students will be venturing off to Healesville Sanctuary to kick start our Integrated unit learning - “How Do Things Grow and Survive?”. 

Our Integrated unit this term is underpinned by the Biological Sciences Victorian curriculum. We will be learning about features of animals and plants, habitats, changes in the environment and animal life stages. All of our learning will be focusing on Australian animals, plants and habitats. Over the term, students in each Grade 1 and 2 classroom will become experts in a particular Australian habitat. Be sure to ask your child all about theirs!Thank you to all the parent helpers who have volunteered their time so far in our classrooms - we love having you be part of our community. 

Term 2 is shaping up to be a busy but exciting term. Please keep up to date with emails, newsletter and Compass for important information across the term!

Important Dates for Term 2

4th May - Grade 2 Healesville Sanctuary Excursion

5th May - Grade 2 Healesville Sanctuary Excursion

8th May - 12th May - 1P swimming week

11th May - Mothers Day Stall (during school day)

15th May - 19th May - 1F, 12B, 2B & 2S swimming week

25th May - Open Classrooms (9:00 - 10:30 am)

25th May - Open Night from 5pm 

26th May - Student Free Day (NO SCHOOL)

29th May - Student Free Day (NO SCHOOL)

12th June - King’s Birthday Public Holiday

13th June - Reports published to parents

15th June - Parent Teacher Interviews

22nd June - Parent Teacher Interviews

23rd June - Last Day of Term 2, 2:30pm finish                                         

Reading & Writing

In Reading, we will continue using quality mentor texts, including an author focus on Jeannie Baker, to continue building our phonics, fluency and comprehension skills. In particular this term, we will be focusing on the comprehension skills of visualising, predicting and inferring. 

Students will continue developing their consistency in their sticky note thinking and begin to expand their thinking in both verbal and written form. We appreciate the time you take at home to read with your child! We encourage your children to keep their reader books for a couple of nights (or read them twice in a night) in order to practise their fluency and comprehension, as well as their decoding and phonics skills. Comprehension is important! If you would like some guiding questions to use with your child at home during their reading, please feel free to ask us for some examples. Student’s goals will continue to be updated in Showbie for you to continue working on at home. 

In Writing, we have a big focus on narrative writing. Students are beginning to include planning during Writer’s Workshop if they are writing a narrative. We have settled into a fantastic routine after Term 1 and it has been wonderful to watch confidence growing daily. Grade 1s are continuing to focus on Level 1 and 2 thinking. We are beginning to introduce Grade 2s to Level 3 thinking - bringing in concepts of world issues (age-appropriate) and identifying themes in fiction texts. Don’t forget to keep helping your child upload their inspiration pictures to Showbie to continue engaging them in their writing. 

Mathematics

This term in Maths we will be covering the following topics:-Data & graphs-Addition-Subtraction-MeasurementWe aim to embed at least one open ended, problem solving task each week for the students. This will help students build their mathematical proficiencies and begin connecting many different mathematical concepts. After building a strong place value foundation in Term 1 we are able to move into explicitly teaching different addition and subtraction strategies. There are so many examples of place value, addition and subtraction in the world around us - for example shopping for groceries, watching football or cooking / baking. Highlighting these to your children helps build their understanding that maths really is everywhere, and working on their maths skills has a real-world positive application!

Thank you all for your support of our programs, 

Year 1/2 Team