Prep to Grade 2:
Prep:
Numeracy and Literacy
In Numeracy, students are continuing their focus on groups of, sharing, and telling the time through hands-on classroom activities. At the same time, our Literacy sessions are buzzing as the children enjoy their Little Learners journey with new sounds and practice writing information sentences about different animals. It is wonderful to see them connecting these skills directly to their recent learning from the zoo excursion.
Hands-On Auslan Learning with Gem!
Our students recently enjoyed a very special visit from Gem, co-host of the popular YouTube show Geo and Gem. The children dived headfirst into learning Auslan (Australian Sign Language), enthusiastically practising the unique hand shapes required to fingerspell their own names.
Families can easily continue this learning journey at home by watching Geo and Gem together on YouTube. It is a fantastic, free resource for students to review their hand shapes, practice signing with family members, and build directly on the exciting skills they learned during Gem's classroom visit.
Adventures at the Melbourne Zoo
Our students recently went on an exciting excursion to the Melbourne Zoo, where they got up close with an incredible variety of wildlife. The children loved exploring the different habitats, spotting native Australian animals, and learning important facts about wildlife conservation from the zoo keepers. It was a fantastic day of hands-on learning that sparked plenty of curiosity and enthusiasm back in the classroom.
100 Days Smarter!
Our students recently reached a huge milestone: celebrating 100 days of school! To mark this special occasion, the children had a wonderful day creating their own colourful 100 days crowns to wear proudly around the classroom. The celebration wrapped up with a delicious treat as everyone helped make and enjoy some classic fairy bread together.
Little Day Out
Grade 1/2A:
Maths
What a busy term already! We started off working on our Maths Talent Quest which was all about animals and our excursion to the Zoo. We explored many different numeracy topics, doing plenty of addition and subtraction when solving money questions about the cost of tickets and souvenirs, measuring, graphing, grouping and sharing.
At the moment we are working on our main term 3 topic - Multiplicative Thinking. We are using grouping and sharing strategies to solve problems, with a particular focus on multiples of 2, 5, and 10.
Literacy
For writing this term, we are working on Information Reports, focussing on writing true and detailed sentences in organised paragraphs. This ties in nicely with our Inquisitive minds topic as we have been writing info reports on Australian animals.
Through Little learners, Grade 1s have been learning 'ow, ou, oi, oy, oo, u, and oul'. They have also just learnt their first split digraph 'a-e' where bossy 'e' changes the sound that 'a' makes.
Grade 2s have been learning alternative graphemes for /or/, /ar/, and /er/, as well as comparative and superlative suffixes 'er' and 'est'. They've learned new silent letter combinations - 'gh, rh, wh, ch, sc, st, tw, mn, sw, dn, wh, h, and is'. They have also revisited g making the soft /j/ sound and learned the trigraph dge.
Upcoming Events/Dates:
Term 3
Thursday the 20th of August:
Science Week Open Afternoon.
Wednesday the 26th of August:
Book Week Parade and Activity Day
Wednesday the 2nd of September:
Father's Day Stall.
Friday the 4th of September:
Father's Day/Special Friend Breakfast.
Thursday the 17th of September:
Last Day of Term 3.
Friday the 18th of September:
Student Free Day (Staff Planning Day).
Warm regards,
Simone Gianarelli and Jess West