Year 1/2 

Celebrating Learning

What we have been up to: 

Year 1 and 2 students have started their integrated unit ‘Belonging and Our Community’. They are now becoming immersed in a drama taking place in an imaginary town called Thistle Mountain. As the townsfolk, the children must solve the problem of a giant who throws tantrums by working together and finding solutions as a community. 

Maths:

We finished our exploration of counting by representing skip counting in lots of different ways and then the maths focus turned to place value. Students connected number names, numerals and quantities. They made, drew and ordered numbers to at least 120. We also finished our icy pole data unit with everyone enjoying an icy pole treat on a 30+ degree day! 

Literacy:

The 1/2 classes have started the Little Learners Love Literacy Stage 7.1 sounds in phonics. These sounds include: ay as in day, ai as in rain, ee as in meet and ea as in meat. Students were introduced to homophones (words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings).

Over the last couple of weeks we have learned about a COMPLETE sentence and how a complete sentence has to have a WHO and a WHAT to make it complete. This is the most important information and if we want to know more about this, we can add more details;  WHERE, WHEN, WHY. When we are imagining our sentence in our head, the extra information gives us a better movie in our minds.

What’s to come in the next two weeks:

We will continue our immersion into our integrated learning through the process drama of Thistle Mountain. Within this drama, students will be exposed to new vocabulary, write letters, survey each other and discuss solutions to anger control and tantrums. 

We will start introducing the next stages of the writer’s process by planning and drafting recounts. 

The Little Learners Love Literacy stage 7.1 sounds that we are focussing on for weeks 6-7 are: - - y (unhappy), igh (high), ie (pie) and -y (sky). To reinforce their learning, students could be practising their spelling of these sounds at home. 

In Maths, the focus is turning to place value and students connecting number names, numerals and quantities. Students will be making, drawing and ordering numbers to at least 120.  They will explore place value by playing games where the value of a number is determined by its position in that number. This may be a game you could ask you little people about and play at home.

We are also continuing our data collection learning, by taking it into the drama of Thistle Mountain. Townsfolk will survey each other on what they should do with the giant. We will make observations and comparisons and create graphs to represent our findings.