Year 1/2 

Celebrating Learning

What we have been up to: 

As the term wraps up, Grade 1/2 classes are finishing off our integrated focus on ‘Belonging and Our Community’. Children have been developing vocabulary and understandings of what it means to belong to different communities as well as our rights and responsibilities as citizens of their communities. Our integrated learning never really stops, and we will continue to be the best citizens of our different communities we can!

Maths:

Children have been working on developing an understanding of place value through exploration and game play. Place value is an integral building block for further mathematical skills and concepts. We have been learning to recognise the value of each numeral in a number depending on its spot in the digit. For example, we now know that in 34 we have 3 tens and 4 ones, in 210 we have 2 hundreds, 1 ten and 0 ones, and beyond. Students have also been introduced to different types of graphs and data displays.

Literacy:

As part of our phonics program, classes have continued to learn Little Learners Love Literacy Stage 7.1 sounds. These sounds include: –y as in silly, igh as in night, ie as in pie, ea as in meat, -y as in fly, and oa as in float. 

Grade 1/2 classes have begun introducing the writer’s process. Grade 2 children will be familiar with this process, but this is something new for the Grade 1s. At Thornbury Primary School we practise the Writer’s Workshop model. We have begun this process by learning to unpack seeds by using our new sentence construction skills and developing our ideas into a plan and a draft. This will soon lead into revising, editing, and publishing. 

What’s to come in the next two weeks:

The school holidays will finally be here! While we are not at school together, here are some ways families can maintain our growth and support learning:

• Continue our home reading program. Record any books that you read from the library or your own collection. If your child is choosing a text that is ‘too easy’, work on other skills like fluency and comprehension strategies. 
• Take notice of place value concepts in the world around you, like at the supermarket or in the kitchen.
• Use any opportunity to practise counting and number sense! 
• Have discussions about what it means to be a responsible citizen.