Grade 1

Reading

We’ve had another busy and engaging fortnight in Literacy! Over the past two weeks, students have been working with new vowel sounds, spelling rules, and tricky words through both whole-class lessons and independent activities.

In Week 5, our focus was on recognising and reading words with the /au/ digraph (as in autumn), reviewing the /aw/ sound (as in claw), and applying the FloSS doubling rule in spelling. Students practised reading /au/ words using games such as Zap the Alien, explored when to double letters at the end of words (e.g. hill, puff, kiss), and applied their knowledge through activities like Roll and Read /au/ and FloSS Detective. We also revised tricky words from Sets 1-9 through fun games and sentence writing.

In Week 6, we continued to consolidate our spelling knowledge by applying both the FloSS rule and the ‘ck’ rule, and introduced the /_y/ sound (as in puppy). Students read the decodable text Tall Tale Tilly to identify words with the /_y/ pattern, and practised spelling and using new tricky words from Sets 1-9 in hands-on activities such as rainbow writing, playdough words, and magnetic letter tiles.

It’s been fantastic to see students recognising when to apply these rules and beginning to use the patterns more confidently in their writing. We are especially proud of how students are applying tricky words in complete sentences and spotting our focus sounds in their reading!

Writing

In the last 2 weeks, students have been exploring the story Migaloo the White Whale and learning more about the real whale that lives off the coast of Australia. We have been continuing to practise combining sentences using the conjunction and, this time by joining two subjects with one action. For example: The whales sang. The calf sang. can be joined together to say The whales and calf sang. Next week we will be focusing on understanding characters in stories, as well as upleveling our sentences by adding details about how, what, when, where, and why.

Maths

Over the last two weeks, students have been learning about sharing and grouping. They explored how to share collections equally into a given number of groups and practised sharing into two groups to find half. Students described the groups they created and explained how the items were shared. They also began exploring arrays by sharing collections into a given number of groups arranged in rows and columns. These activities helped students develop their understanding of fairness, equal groups, and the foundations of multiplication and division. Students engaged in a range of hands-on activities using blocks to share, group, and build arrays, making their learning practical, visual, and fun.

Additional Subjects

Over the past two weeks, students have engaged in a range of exciting learning experiences across various subjects.

In Geography, students have been learning to draw maps of the school, using symbols and keys to represent key locations and giving directions using positional language. They also created drawings of their favourite natural, managed, or built places, described their features, and explained how to care for them.

In Let’s Talk, students were introduced to the Let’s Talk program (Let Everyone Talk Safely), where they learned about safe, respectful communication. They explored what it means to feel seen, heard, and valued in relationships and discussed how to build healthy connections using the TALK acronym: Tell, Acknowledge, Listen, Keep in Touch. In the second week, students explored the qualities of positive friendships, how to recognise when a friend is struggling, and ways to solve conflicts calmly and respectfully. Through discussions and role-plays, students practised sharing their feelings, listening to others, and knowing when to talk to a trusted adult.

In the Library this fortnight, students listened to The Heartbeat of the Land by Cathy Freeman and Ceremony by Adam Goodes. They celebrated the achievements of Indigenous Australians, learned about their cultures and traditions, and reflected on ways to show respect and appreciation through stories and discussion.

This fortnight, students celebrated Book Week by sharing their love of reading through fun and creative activities. They brought in their favourite books during Show and Tell, proudly sharing their favourite characters and stories. Students also created their own book covers, drew their favourite scenes or characters, and wrote about why their chosen books were special to them. It was a joyful week of imagination, creativity, and celebrating the magic of books together.