From the Year 1 Classroom

Welcome to our final newsletter of the term! It’s hard to believe that Term 3 has come to an end. We’ve had a fantastic term of learning and hope the children enjoy a well-earned break.

Literacy

This week we have been enjoying reading Migaloo- The White Whale, where we have been discussing and role playing our new vocabulary words desperately, struggled and calm. It’s been pleasing to see how interested the children are in learning facts about whales, including what they look like, what they eat and why they migrate. We’ll also be writing a persuasive text on why we need to protect whales.

In Initial Lit we have been learning that the letter ‘c’ can make two sounds - c like in cat and ‘s’ like in ice, when followed by the letters e, i or y.

Some words we have been reading and practising are:

rice, price, slice, excellent,

city, circus, circle

cycle, bicycle

Our new Tricky Words are always, animal and open.

Maths

In Maths this week we have enjoyed reviewing lots of number concepts covered throughout the term. Students have been naming, making, renaming and expanding numbers within and beyond one hundred. Eg 345= 3 hundreds + 4 tens + 5 ones and also 300+ 40+ 5.

Students have challenged themselves to partition numbers in as many different ways as possible. For example 35= 30 +5, or 20+10+5 or 31+4 or 20+5+5 +5.

It’s been pleasing hearing the students number talk when ordering numbers. For example 345 is larger than 325 because they both have 3 hundreds, but 345 has 4 tens, compared to 2 tens. This has enabled them to develop greater confidence in locating these numbers on number lines.

Inquiry and Religion

This week we have looked at how the First Nations Peoples of Australia care for living things and how we can learn from this to care for living things in our own life. The children focussed on the importance of respecting and caring for the environment. This has culminated nicely with our Religion Unit- Caring for Creation, where the students have made posters to pin up around the school, encouraging their peers to care for their environment. Due to the rain today, we have rescheduled our Clean Up the Community walk until Thursday. We have been so proud of the care and commitment that the children have shown towards caring for God’s creation.

School Holidays Homework

If you're wanting to keep your child busy during the holidays or maybe you need a break, here are some optional activities!

- Addition and subtraction number sentences – roll a dice twice and create a number sentence to add or subtract.

- First to 100- In partners, take turns rolling a dice and adding on. Start at zero and continue rolling a dice until you get to 100. You can’t go over 100, so you must wait to get exactly 100!

- Roll 2 dice, add the numbers together eg. 3+5=8 and then double it! Double 8 is 16!

- Play Go Fish to practise doubling numbers (The students know how to play this!)

- Skip counting by 2’s, 5’s or 10’s from any starting number.

- Reading – you may use the QR code on your child’s new Term 3 Reading Diary to have access to all their Multi Lit readers online.

- Practise reading and spelling the Tricky Words from Term 1 and Term 2.

Important Dates

· Thursday 18/9 - Clean Up our Community Walk

· Friday 19/9 Footy Colours Day and Year 1s attending Mass at 9.30. All welcome to attend.

· Year 1s have the choice to walk down and support our local football and netball Grand Finalists in their Grand Final parade at 12.00pm in Belmore Street.

We hope you all have an enjoyable and safe break and look forward to seeing everyone in Term 4.

Kristy, Sarah and Mikaela