Grade 1 News
Welcome to our first Grade 1 newsletter of the year! We are so excited to begin a wonderful year of learning, growing, and having fun together. Please check the timetable below for your child's specialist times including library and curious corner.
📅 Important Dates & Reminders
All important dates and events are available on our Compass Calendar. Please check the calendar regularly to stay up to date.
Tuesday 17th Wednesday 18th or Thursday 19th February: Meet the Teacher
Monday 23rd February: School Photos
Friday 27th February: House Cross Country
Monday 9th March: Labour Day Public Holiday
Friday 27th March: House Athletics
Thursday 2nd April: Last day of Term 1. Dismissal at 2.30pm (Happy Hat Parade)
*Icy Poles will be sold by the Grade 6's on Monday and Tuesdays! $1 each*
Key Information
- Students are to bring their take-home bags to school daily beginning week 3 to swap books for home.
- Students will need their hats this term to play outside.
- Senior School Leaders will be selling icy poles at lunchtime on a Monday and Tuesday.
Learning Reflection
➗Maths
A warm welcome back to Maths for 2026! This fortnight, we have spent quality time setting the expectations and establishing routines in maths, maths masters and daily reviews. This has included students understanding their responsibility in their learning and where they can find the tools to help them achieve their maths goals. This fortnight, students have been learning about data and how to collect, interpret and record a collection of items. Students have learnt the importance of tally marks and how this can support us to organise data effectively.
Preview for learning:
Next fortnight students will be starting a new unit on place value and counting, where they will be exploring numbers up to 120.
📖 Literacy
Word Work:
We continued our Word Work program that involves students practising their decoding skills and spelling on their whiteboards. This fortnight, we focused on the digraphs ‘oi’ and ‘oy’. We learnt the rule that ‘oi’ never goes at the end of a word and ‘oy’ always goes at the end of a word. Students were excited to settle back into their classroom expectations and routines!
Literature:
This fortnight, we also introduced our Literature Unit, ‘A Year On Our Farm’. The book follows a family as they live through a year on their family’s Australian farm. Each season brings different activities, changes in the landscape, and challenges.
In this unit, students learnt and applied the skills of:
- Understanding and responding to an episodic narrative
- Understanding and using tier 2 vocabulary from the text
- Identifying fragments and sentences
- Converting fragments into sentences
- Writing and editing simple sentences
Students have enjoyed having discussions about the text and completing tasks related to the book.
Students also engaged in ‘fluency partner reading’ where they collaboratively read their decodable texts to practise their reading fluency with a partner. They also began their individual reading goal practice.
Students have started practising writing the letters t, k and l in their handwriting book with a focus on letter placement.
Preview for learning:
Next fortnight, we will continue our Literature Unit, ‘A Year On Our Farm’ and explore new concepts, applying new skills and knowledge. We will also spend some time reviewing long vowel spelling patterns taught last year in Word Work.
😊 Friendology
During this fortnight in Friendology, students will be focusing on building healthy friendships by first looking inward and learning how to treat themselves like a best friend. The sessions will explore self-compassion, encouraging students to be kind and supportive towards themselves, as well as identifying and understanding their feelings. Students will learn to recognise and embrace both positive and negative emotions as an important part of developing emotional awareness and strong relationships.
Homework
Note from the principal:
At Lysterfield Primary School our students work incredibly hard during the day. At 3.30pm when they leave, they need time to unwind and have fun. We believe that in order to live a happy and healthy life, it is important to participate in extracurricular activities outside school. We want students to join sports clubs, Scouts, do music lessons and art classes as these are important for a child’s overall growth and social connections. We also understand that homework puts a lot of stress on families.
In addition to our beliefs, there is no evidence that homework in a primary school setting has a marked impact on students' learning or success. What is proven is that reading daily has a significant impact on a child’s ability to decode and comprehend. As such mandated homework at Lysterfield Primary School is limited to reading daily, including the practising of phonics (letter/sound relationships). Level newsletters will outline the expectations around reading and how teachers will support students with having appropriate texts to read. For some students that may not be making the expected progress for their year level, it may be beneficial for the teacher and parents to work together to reinforce the learning from the classroom with follow-up work.
We also understand that some students and families would like to practise other skills at home. To support this, at the beginning of each school year, parents will be provided with a set of additional resources that can be used for students to practise other curriculum areas. This work is not mandated and it is up to parents to implement and monitor, staff will not correct this work.
Optional Homework for Grade 1
The expectation is that students read their take-home book to an adult each day. Students will choose a new book from their classroom daily and will need to return their previous book before receiving a new one.
Below is a link to a folder containing Sparkle at home activities, should you wish to use them: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/126BRm52aR9NyaCdEgnCljLC3X0MWqupj
If you are unsure which Sparkle level your child is currently working on, please feel free to ask your child’s teacher.
For students who are off Sparkle, please encourage them to read a book of their choice at home each day.
If you would like to practise Maths Masters at home, the link below provides access to all belts: Maths Masters.
Linked below are some optional homework activities you may also choose to complete at home: homework activites.
Thank you for reading our newsletter, please remember if you have any questions feel free to contact your child's teacher.
Grade 1 Teachers,
Catia Anson, Bella Albanese and Jess Kitteringham.