Year 1

Year 1 Newsletter: Term 3 2024

We would like to congratulate Ms Rebecca Russo, now Rebecca Rischitelli on her recent wedding and honeymoon. We are excited to welcome her back to school this term! 

Literacy

In Phonics, students have been learning the phoneme /i/ represented by the graphemes igh (lightning bright), –y (spy in the sky – one syllable words ending in the grapheme y) and ie (mmm… pies). They have been learning to read and spell words such as high, fright, fly, try, lie and fries. We have been learning the special features of ie, that it is used at the end of one-syllable words, for example, pie, tie, that it is also used in the past and present tense or plurals of one-syllable words ending in –y, for example spy – spied, spies or sky, skies; fly, flies. 

In Writing, we have been learning to use pronouns, such as he, she, they, it, you or we, in a sentence. Students have applied this by changing sentences with a noun or a proper noun to an appropriate pronoun. For example, ‘The children played basketball’ could be changed to ‘They played basketball’. Each day, students continue to practise their handwriting skills, ensuring the correct starting positions for each letter, forming them correctly, with the right size and sitting on the line. 

Knowledge

Our first Knowledge Unit for this Term will focus on the Olympics. Students have already learnt about the history of the Olympic games including its origins, compared the Summer and Winter Olympic games and the importance of the Olympic games. In the coming weeks we will learn about the Opening Ceremony, the Olympic values and understand the symbols and rituals associated with the Olympics and learn about ‘Olympism’. 

Mathematics

In Mathematics, we have begun learning about sharing, and sharing ‘fairly’ to create equal groups. Students have learnt this by sharing a collection of counters into groups and writing the matching number sentence. For example, 12 shared between 2 is 6. We have also begun counting a collection of coins, students have been able to apply their skip counting knowledge to count collections of 10c coins, 5c coins or $2 coins to find the total amount. 

Social & Emotional Learning

In SEL, we have been learning about Gratitude. We learnt about having an ‘attitude of gratitude’. To do this, we looked at different scenarios and discussed what a negative attitude would look and sound like, then what an ‘attitude of gratitude’ would look like and sound like. This allowed students to explore the idea that even if things don’t go well, there are still positive things we can be grateful for.