Year 1

Year 1 February Newsletter 2025

Welcome to Year 1!

To start the year, we focused on ensuring all our students were set up for success! Our classes have been reviewing our school values and discussing what they look like both inside and outside the classroom. With all our Year 1 routines now confidently in place, these are some of the things we have been learning…

Literacy

We have been working on our phonics skills by reviewing the Little Learners Love Literacy Program Chitter Chatter Chants: "up the hill" (ll), "huff and puff" (ff), and "what a mess" (ss). Students have been reading and writing words that end in double consonants and have learned to use double consonants after a short vowel. In Writing, students have been developing their ability to identify nouns and verbs within sentences. They recognise that nouns are words that name a person, place, animal, or thing, while verbs are action or doing words. For example, in the sentence "The cat runs," "cat" is a noun, and "runs" is a verb.

In our Knowledge unit, students have been exploring Dreaming Stories, including Bunjil the Creator and Tiddalick the Frog. Through these stories, students are learning about the cultural significance of Dreaming Stories and how to identify key elements such as characters, setting, and the moral of the story.

Numeracy

In Numeracy, students have been identifying how many tens and ones are in a two-digit number. They have learned to find the value of two-digit numbers when represented on tens frames and bundling sticks, then recorded how many tens and ones on a place value chart. Additionally, they have been learning to record data using tally marks, which helps them organise and interpret information effectively. Students have practised collecting data on topics such as their favourite sport or favourite fruit and representing the results using tally marks.

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

We have begun The Resilience Project, which focuses on building gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness to help students develop emotional resilience. Our students have begun exploring emotional literacy and engaged in a lesson to encourage them to think about how they feel about the transition to Year 1. They have learned that change is normal, and so too are their feelings.

We are so proud of the smooth transition everyone has made into Year 1, and we are excited for the year of learning ahead!