Year 1/2 Learning Community

What's all this talk about 'fluency'?

You may have heard your child talk about practising 'fluency' in their classroom this year. 

Basically, reading fluency is how smoothly and accurately a child reads text. It means they can read at a good speed, use expression, and understand what they are reading. Strong fluency helps children focus less on sounding out words and more on making meaning from the story or information.

Towards the end of Term 3, lots of students go through a big change in their reading fluency. Phonics learning has started taking root in their long-term memory, and they are more easily able to decode longer words using the sounds they have been taught.

This can be a very exciting growth point for students, as they realise that these little mysterious squiggles on the page are not just there to go with the pictures - they actually carry meaning and a message for us to understand!

Please enjoy some examples of students practising their reading fluency with a buddy to track along with them (sorry to Liam and Dustin - Mrs Dallas accidentally took photos of you instead of pressing 'record'! 🤦🏻‍♀️)

Mathematics - Measurement

This week students finished off their investigation into 2D shapes and 3D objects and have started learning about the concept of measurement. In Year 1 and 2, we introduce the concept of direct and indirect comparison, and measuring length, width and height using informal units. Students will begin learning about formal units of measurement (mm, cm, m, km) in Year 3.

Please see the photos below of students measuring length of classroom objects using indirect comparison, measured with informal units such as blocks, paper clips, beads and teddy counters!