Year 1/2 Term 4 Overview

Year 1/2 Curriculum Overview

Welcome back to Term 4! Hopefully you all had a wonderful and restful break and were able to spend some time with your friends and families! It was wonderful celebrating Miss M's wedding at the end of term and over the holidays. She truly appreciated all the surprises and well wishes for her special day. While Miss Maio is away enjoying her honeymoon, Mrs Hill will be teaching 1/2A along with the support of Carmel and Kathryn. If you have any questions or concerns during this time, please reach out to either Amanda, Tom or Verona.  

This is our final term for the year with lots of different learning and extracurricular activities that are going to be heaps of fun. Big events this term include; the fabulous Art Show, our upcoming Swimming Program, whole school Liturgy Advent Liturgy, the Christmas Concert and the St John’s Fete. We are all so excited to share this final chapter in our school year together filled with lots of learning and fun!

Important Notes

Summer Uniform: Students are required to wear their full summer uniform in Term 4, including hats for all outdoor play. 

Toys at school: Please keep all toys and personal items at home to prevent distractions and protect them from getting lost or damaged. Please note that students are responsible for any personal items they bring to school. 

Reading Record: Please sign your child’s Reading Record daily after your reading session. Since their take-home book is meant for fluent, independent reading, focus on chatting about the story rather than sounding out words. Try asking open-ended questions as they read, like “What’s happened so far?” or “What do you think will happen next?” 

Parent Helpers: Thank you to everyone who volunteered and helped in our classrooms last term, we really appreciated your support. If you are available and would like to assist this term, please add your name to the roster. Please note that when helping, you will be supporting both classes Parent Sign In Sheet and Timetable 

Homework: Homework will be sent home periodically on Tuesdays and will feature 3 short tasks across various subjects that align with our classroom learning. To get the most out of it, please encourage your child to spread the activities over a few sittings rather than doing them all at once. Tasks are designed for students to complete mostly independently, though a little help reading instructions is always welcome.

Religious Education

In Religious Education, we will be learning about the Catholic Social Teaching principles, including The Common Good, Solidarity, Human Dignity, Distributive Justice and Stewardship, and how we can live and act in the Catholic faith in our daily lives. We will also learn more about Jesus and his life as He grows in wisdom and faith, before we move into Advent to complete the year.

Design Technology

This term for Inquiry, students are undergoing a unit of Design Technology in which they will be identifying issues and coming up with unique solutions to solve problems. To guide our unit this term, we will be using the question: How can we use recycled materials to care for Creation and contribute to the Common Good? Students will explore how we can reuse and recycle materials to create better products and equipment, how our communities aim to take care of our environment, and ultimately, how we can look after our Creation through upcycling materials. In accompaniment to this, students will be using the Design Process to ask, brainstorm, plan, create and test a product they have designed for the betterment of the world around them. 

Mathematics

Our topics this term in order will be:

• Shape - Students will learn about regular and irregular polygons, 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes and the features of these shapes. They will recognise, identify and describe a variety of shapes and confidently sort out shapes based on their attributes.
• Fractions - Students will learn to identify and determine halves, quarters and eighths of a collection and of a given shape. They will also learn to halve and quarter of equal values using time, capacity and length.
• Addition and Subtraction - Students will learn adding and subtracting one digit and two digit numbers using a number line and base-10 blocks. Students will explore skills in grouping and regrouping and partitioning.

• Operations - Students will solve addition and subtraction problems using bar models and arrays. Students will learn to solve worded problems for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and determining when to use the mathematical operations correctly.
• Mass and Capacity - Students will learn suitable units of measurement and identifying objects using terms such as “equal mass”, “less mass” and “greater mass”. Students will explore their skills in predicting, measuring, comparing and ordering quantities.

English - Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening 

This term in English, we will be exploring non-fiction texts and more specifically, information reports and procedures. We will be using the text ‘Dingo’ as a mentor text and have the opportunities to plan their own information reports using the structure and features being taught in our classes. Students will learn about the important parts to an information report, including the introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion, as well as the use of facts and evidence to support their writing. Following that, we will explore the features and structures of procedures, and allow students to create their own text following these guidelines. To finish our Term 4, we will explore poetry as a writing form, and help students express their writing creatively and uniquely. We will also continue to build on our comprehension skills by focusing on a variety of class texts and using literal and inferential questioning and understanding to help our students. Help build your child's reading comprehension by asking both literal (fact-based) and inferential (reading between the lines) questions as you read their book together. We are continuing with the PHORMES spelling program, following its structured daily routines. Each week, students review past concepts, explore "weird words" with irregular spelling patterns, and dive into explicit instruction on a new spelling rule or pattern. Students will refine their handwriting by practicing proper letter formation and aiming for consistent sizing and neatness on dotted thirds. 

Social & Emotional Learning

We are continuing our work with The Resilience Project to build students' emotional literacy and support their personal and social well-being. Throughout the term, students will explore the three keys to genuine happiness: Gratitude, Empathy, and Mindfulness. We encourage you to practice these strategies at home, and you may see related activities come home as part of their homework. 

Specialists

Please see the timetable below for specialist lessons. 

IMPORTANT DATES: 

• Tuesday 6 October - 1/2A Mass 
• Monday 12 October - 1/2B Assembly
• Tuesday 13 October - 1/2B Mass
• Thursday 22 October - Art Show 4-7pm
• Monday 2 November and Tuesday 3 November - School Closure Days
• Wednesday 4 November to Friday 13 November - Swimming Program
• Friday 20 November - School Closure Day
• Saturday 21 November - St John’s Fete
• Monday 23 November - 1/2A Assembly 
• Tuesday 1 December - Whole School Advent Liturgy
• Tuesday 8 December - Whole School Christmas Market
• Thursday 10 December - Christmas Concert
• Monday  14 Decemeber - Whole School Thanksgiving Mass
• Tuesday 15 December - Students’ Last Day

We can be reached via email, or leave a message at the office, and we will endeavour to respond within two working days between 8am and 5pm.       

1/2A - Clorinda Maio cmaio@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au1/2A - Amanda Hill ahill@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au1/2B - Thomas (Tom) Preston tpreston@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au