Achilles Community Report

It’s been pleasing to see the enthusiasm of the Achilles students at the start of Term 2. After the school break, they all went back excited to see their friends, confident and eager to learn more.  

The Achilles children continue to show their growing interest for reading. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays have been busy with the students changing their readers and eagerly sharing how many nights they have read so far. The homework books reveal the extra learning that is happening at home. We are thankful to the parents and guardians for helping the children read and revise after school.

We are nearly in the middle of Term 2, and the Achilles students’ love for learning continues to grow and show each day. We cannot wait to see what they will have achieved by the end of the term!

Incursions and Excursion

Just a few weeks into the term and already the Achilles children have attended two incursions run by RACV (Safety Squad) and Yarra Valley Water (Water Watcher). It was fantastic to see the children contribute their knowledge and discover more about how to be safe around their home and on the road. They also had lots of fun learning about how people use water and some practical ways to save it. 

The students went on a community walk to a park in Craigieburn. They explored, took note of what they saw and their wonderings, as well as suggested ways to help the community.

Reading

In reading, we have read narratives and information reports with facts. We have used these texts to learn the elements of a narrative and parts of an information report.  This term we have focused on different reading skills, such as retelling, inferencing, making connections between the book and ourselves and another text we have read, predicting before and during reading, and having fun exploring the nouns, adjectives and verbs in our text. Students are also practising their reading stamina and every day are trying to read for a longer period of time.

Writing

In Writing, we have been learning the structure of a narrative and how to write creative narratives to share with our peers. We know all narratives needs a beginning to introduce the characters and setting, a middle where the problem occurs and an ending where there is a solution. We have had so much fun creating our own creatures for our narratives - as you can see from some of the photos below. Along with this, we have watched a short film called 'Oktapodi' and we needed to think of a creative way to solve the problem. Thank you for all of the hard work from the students in Writing and us teachers cannot wait to see your work in our next topic - Information Reports.

Maths

In Maths, students have been exploring location. Students took part in different activities to show their understanding of positional language and to show their ability to give and follow directions from one space to another. We have have loved working collaboratively with each other to reach the final destination!

Students have also explored addition and subtraction, looking at the link between them and being able to create our own addition an subtraction equations. We have learned a lot of strategies to solve both, including using manipulatives, number lines and drawings; to name a few.

Inquiry

The Achilles students identified and described the natural, managed, and constructed features of places in our local community. They investigated changes in weather, such as not enough rain leading to drought or too much rain causing floods. The students also discovered how litter can harm both the environment and the living things within it. The students brainstormed ways to care for our local community.

Additionally,  they represented the location of our community walk to Conservation Drive on labeled maps, using appropriate language to describe directions and locations. They participated in immersion centers to investigate different types of maps, the natural, managed, and constructed features of places, caring for our environment, and the weather.

It has been few months full of exploration and learning for our grade 1 students!

SEL 

In SEL this term, the Grade 1 community has been learning different strategies for working out who goes first when playing games. They discussed what negative emotions are, shared how it would feel to be excluded and learned about how to cope with negative emotions. The grade 1's developed a sound knowledge of 'Kindness' as they adopted ways to care for others by using kind words, such as "thank you", and being polite. They discovered how everyone is different in their own ways and special by realising that we all have different likes, dislikes and strengths. The Achilles students also started to look at the difference between 'calming' and 'cheering' coping strategies. They did this through discussing ways to make someone happy when they are in the blue zone or calm down when they are in the red zone. They established their understandings about how to care for others by working as a team and helping each other reach goals. One of the highlights for the the grade 1 students was interacting in a fun whole class game which taught them how to face their fears by talking about what they are afraid of and developing strategies to overcome it.

Reminders:

-Fruit snack should be brought in small containers for the students to easily access and bring to the floor, unless it is a piece of fruit that can be held in their hands, for example an apple or banana.

-Take home readers- The grade 1's are doing great improving their reading skills.