Grade 1

Positive Start:

This fortnight, our Grade 1 students have been engaging in our Positive Start Program, designed to help them settle back into the classroom, practise routines and embrace our school’s PROUD values for a smooth and successful year. Through this program, students are exploring Performance, Respect, Open-Mindedness, United and Daring, by learning to strive for their personal best, show kindness, consider new ideas, work collaboratively and take learning risks with confidence.

Our focus has included key school routines such as entering and exiting classrooms calmly, lining up quietly, transitioning respectfully around the school, attending assemblies with focus, and moving safely within the classroom. Students have also begun developing emotional literacy, using tools like the Ready to Learn Scale, morning welcome circles, and classroom discussions to identify how they are feeling, prepare for learning and engage respectfully with peers. Activities like Think-Pair-Share, school-wide behaviour flowcharts, and organisation strategies are supporting students to be ready to learn, participate positively and confidently practise the skills and behaviours that will guide them throughout the year.

Reading:

In Week 2, students commenced their first week of Reading in Grade 1, revising and building on the Reading skills they learnt in Prep. They reviewed a range of letter sound correspondences and practised blending sounds to read simple words. Students focused on recognising vowel letters, understanding syllables, and breaking words into individual sounds before putting them back together. Tricky words such as said, are, and her were also introduced. A key revision focus for the week was revising bossy ‘e’, learning how it can change vowel sounds in words such as cake, time, and save. Through class explicit modelling, choral/ echo reading strategies, and hands on whiteboard activities, students practised reading, spelling, and writing simple words and sentences. Students showed growing confidence as they revisited familiar skills.

Writing

Students have had a great start to Term 1, demonstrating focus and engagement as they develop their foundational writing and phonics skills. This week, students revised how sound knowledge supports both reading and writing, practised correct lowercase letter formation using sky, grass and dirt lines, and focused on accurate letter placement to ensure writing is clear and legible. Students applied their phonics knowledge by identifying and recording sounds in decodable words, then transferred this learning to writing a complete sentence using a capital letter, finger spaces and a full stop. Learning was reinforced through a range of independent and small-group activities, including letter and sentence tracing, phonics games, picture prompts and decodable word and sentence writing.

Maths

In Mathematics, our Grade 1 students are developing their skills in data collection and representation. They are learning to use tally marks to record responses to questions and to identify categories for gathering data, such as eye colour or favourite fruit. Students are practising how to interpret tally data, recognising the most and least popular responses and answering questions about quantities. They are also learning to create picture graphs from tally marks, transforming collected data into visual representations to communicate their findings clearly. These activities help students build both their number sense and their ability to organise and analyse information.

Home Learning Suggestions:

Reading -

• Read simple words and short sentences together.
• Practise vowel sounds, tricky words (like said, are, her), and bossy ‘e’ words (like cake, time, save).
• Try reading aloud together to help your child feel confident.

Writing -

• Practise writing letters neatly on lines.
• Encourage your child to sound out words and write short sentences with a capital letter, space, and full stop.
• Use tracing sheets, pictures, or games to make writing fun.

Mathematics -

• Collect simple information at home, like favourite colours, foods, or pets.
• Help your child record the answers using tally marks.
• Look at the data together: which answer is the most popular, which is the least?
• Make a picture graph to show the information.