Year 1/2

Welcome

Dear Families,

Welcome to Term Three! We hope that you had a restful and enjoyable break. We look forward to educating your children and celebrating their many achievements and progress throughout the term. 

Our Learning this Term

English

Reading

Our focus this term is on Narrative writing. Students are enhancing their comprehension skills by listening to a piece of text and illustrating the scenes they visualise. Students are also learning to identify common and proper nouns, as well as pronouns, and then use adjectives to describe these nouns. Students are learning about what synonyms and antonyms are and to identify suffixes in a word. 

Students will have the opportunity to borrow books from the school library on a weekly basis.

Once again, all students will select a take home reading book each day to share with their families. Reading with your children at home has many benefits, including fostering a love of reading, development of listening skills, reading comprehension, vocabulary development and establishing essential foundational literacy skills.

Writing

In Writing, our genre focus for the term will be Narratives. We will look at essential elements that make a great narrative including interesting characters, a descriptive setting, a captivating problem and an interesting solution. Students will plan an element each day and then on Fridays, use their planning to write their Narrative.

Parent Helpers 

We welcome all Parent Helpers into the classroom. Please speak to your child’s teacher about being a helper if you would like to assist. Students love seeing their family members help in our classrooms. Please come on in!

We ask that parents sign in at the office prior to commencing their session. 

Please be aware that all Classroom Helpers are required to have a current Working with Children Check.

Religion

Students will investigate key scripture stories of Jesus demonstrating forgiveness and compassion. We will read and explore scripture stories such as the Prodigal Son and Zacchaeus. Students will consider ways that they can then show forgiveness and compassion towards others in their lives. They will also reflect on how their actions impact people in our community.

In August we will also celebrate the feast day for Mary MacKillop and the Assumption of Mary, the mother of Jesus. 

This term all students and teachers will attend a parish Mass at 9.15am.  We warmly welcome families to join our 1/2 classes in the Church.

Dates and times are as follows:

*Please note these dates may be subject to change.

Maths

We have started Term Three with further developing the students’ knowledge of Subtraction. In our unit, we will focus on solving equations efficiently using strategies such as count back, count down to and count up from.

The students have been introduced to each strategy and had the opportunity to use tens frames and number lines to solve simple equations. The students have also practised selecting the most efficient strategy when given a subtraction equation, enabling them to build their mathematical proficiency. 

Other topics that will be covered this term include the following:

Weeks 1-2:         Subtraction 

Weeks 3-4:         Chance

Weeks 5-6:         Fractions

Weeks 7-8:         Time: Clocks

Weeks 9-10:       Multiplication and Division

We have started Term Three with further developing the students’ knowledge of Subtraction. In our unit, we will focus on solving equations efficiently using strategies such as count back, count down to and count up from.

Inquiry

Our Inquiry Unit is based around the learning area of Geography. The students will be exploring the essential question -  ‘How do people and cultures connect across the world?’. This will be linked to the texts we read and write about during our Literacy lessons. 

Throughout the unit, students will participate in activities that focus on their local communities, family connections to Australia and family connections to other cultures around the world.

Students will begin looking at their local school community in Clayton South, including its services, their features and their purpose. We will then investigate our country, Australia. When looking at Australia, the students will be identifying their connection to our Country and their family's connection to the place we call home. Lastly, students will go beyond and explore their own family heritage. This may include multiple countries around their world in which they will explore and share their family traditions, food, clothing, language and celebrations.

Please feel free to discuss your family’s cultural heritage and stories with your child/ren. This may also include sharing old photos, mementos or toys from your family’s background with your child. Your child may be asking a range of questions at home to use in our discussions at school. 

At the end of the unit, we cannot wait to acknowledge and honour the importance of celebrating different cultures in Australia. This will be done by allowing each student to share their very own cultures with their peers and families at our Inquiry Learning Celebrations.

Positive Behaviour for Learning

Each week we have a different focus that highlights one of our PBL values of Respect, Responsibility, and Resilience. 

This term, we will focus on:

• Helping Each Other
• Taking Ownership of Our Feelings and Actions
• Having a Go
• Speaking to an Adult to Help Solve a Problem

Keeping our Hands, Feet and Objects to Ourselves

Classroom Organisation

It is important for the students in Year 1/2 to continue to develop independence. Students are encouraged to develop this at school through such things as being responsible for:

• Unpacking bags at school

• Organising their own take-home readers

• Organising their personal belongings

• Handing in any notes

• Bringing back library books and bags on their assigned day

• Being punctual to class and ready for learning

After 8:50 am, students must sign in at the office to be registered as late for the day.

If your child is absent from school it is a requirement that we receive notification of this in writing either via the Audiri App, an email to the classroom teacher or a note handed to the teacher.

All 1/2 students will participate in the Specialist Program on a Tuesday- Italian, Art, Performing Arts and PE. Please remember that every Tuesday the students are expected to wear their runners and P.E. uniform to school for Physical Education. 

On all other days of the week, it is important that students wear their school shoes and full school winter uniform.

Library Sessions have commenced this term. Please remember to return all Library books and bring along a Library bag, before or by the day of your child’s lesson. Class lesson days and times are noted below:

1/2A -Tuesdays

1/2W, 1/2L, 1/2V & 1/2Q - Wednesdays

Sustainability and Digital Technology Lessons

This term we are excited for the 1/2s to participate in Sustainability lessons (with Mrs Nella Lo Presti) on Thursdays and Digital Technology lessons (with Mrs Emma Cooper) on Fridays.

Key Dates

 August:

• Sat 3rd - School Working Bee 
• Thurs 8th - Mary Mackillop Feast Day Mass 12 p.m
• Fri 16th - School Closure Day
• Mon 19th - Fri 23rd - Book Week
• Mon 26th - Junior School Swimming Lessons commence (more information to come)
• Thurs 29th - Father’s Day Stall

September:

• Sun 1st - Father’s Day
• Mon 2nd - Junior School Swimming Lessons continue (more information to come)
• Mon 16th - Parent/Teacher/Student Interviews - 2.30 p.m
• Thurs 19th - Term 3 Learning Celebrations - 2.45 p.m
• Fri 20th - Term 3 Concludes - 1.30 p.m

As dates can be subject to change, please check the weekly school newsletter

How to Contact Us

Lauren Quintal                           lquintal@saclaytonsth.catholic.edu.au

Gabi Vass                                    gvass@saclaytonsth.catholic.edu.au

Lucy Levett                                 llevett@saclaytonsth.catholic.edu.au

Karen Williams                          kwilliams@saclaytonsth.catholic.edu.au

Jenny Stewart                            jstewart@saclaytonsth.catholic.edu.au

We politely request that there is an understanding that emails may only be responded to during working hours.

SPECIALIST PROGRAMS

L.O.T.E. Italian

Dear Parents, welcome to Term 3.

This term, the students in Years One and Two will be introduced to the story, L’Orto del Nonno” (Grandpa’s Vegetable Garden). Vocabulary and phrases will be based on the garden, specifically the vegetable garden. They will make connections to their own vegetable garden or to someone they know. The students will participate in group work and be presented with everyday Italian language, including identifying the different fruits and vegetables, naming preferences and describing the appearance of different fruits and vegetables in Italian. During the lessons the students will be participating in singing songs, playing games, reciting chants and completing varied classroom activities to reinforce their knowledge and understanding.

Cordiali saluti,

Signora White

Physical Education

Hello families and welcome to Term 3 in Physical Education! 

The 1/2s will start their swimming program on August 26th and finish on September 5th. The lessons will be on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (excluding Fridays) and are 30 minutes in duration. More information will come shortly! 

During our lessons this term we are focusing on cooperation and sportsmanship in team sports. We will be playing cooperative games to develop positive sportsmanship for ourselves and others before we move on to organized sports. In the following weeks, we will learn the rules of AFL and Basketball, and focus on developing our skills within those sports. This includes kicking, catching, dribbling, passing, and shooting.

Looking forward to a fun term! 

Miss Kayla Puetz

Art 

Welcome Grade 1/2 to the Art room for Term 3. We finished last term with beautiful artwork, experimenting with diffusing paper and ink markers to create a tie-dyed effect with a floral collage to complete our pictures. We have a busy term ahead creating artworks coinciding with our units of study in inquiry and the upcoming Olympic games in Paris, investigating and drawing the athletes' various sports and physical movements. They will continue to practise their cutting and shading skills and experiment with different media such as oil pastels, paint, and clay. They will be encouraged to experiment using colour/space and perspective.

 We always aim to have lots of fun being creative.

Mrs Bartlett 

 Performing Arts

First and foremost, thank you to anyone who contributed to fundraising last year.  A very special thank you to members of the P & F, who generously donated the 2023 fundraising money to the Performing Arts department.  I’m very excited to share that the Performing Arts room now has an electronic drum kit, and 12 new full piano size keyboards.  We are super excited and grateful to have these new instruments to expand our performing arts learning.

The 1/2 Students are in for a fun term in Performing Arts! Students will be studying three different folk dances, the Break Mixer (US), Doudlebska Polka (Czechia) and the Sasa (Tuvalu), as part of a dance unit on cultural dance.  They’ll identify different features in the dance and how they represent either specific movements or have a cultural significance. Students will also be acting out scenes from the Olympics, using the theatre of sport to demonstrate their understanding of role and situation in drama.

Lastly, in music, the 1/2 students have progressed to melodic instruments. They will learn to play ostinatos (repeating patterns) or short songs using pitched instruments such as boomwhackers, glockenspiels and hopefully piano!  Students will also have an opportunity to begin learning treble clef notation on the floor staff with lots of games to introduce learning how to read music.  I can’t wait to see and hear what students produce!

Happy singing, dancing and acting!

Thanks,

Mrs Emma Cooper