Initia Lit – Reading

Over the past fortnight, students have been continuing to practise our new digraph sounds, /sh/ as in shell, /ll/ as in bell, /ff/ as in puff, /ss/ as in hiss, and ‘ee’ saying /ē/ as in tree. These new sounds have been incorporated into both reading and writing exercises.

Our storybook sessions featured Magic Beach" by Alison Lester. Students engaged with the text by identifying words such as 'dazzled,' 'glee,' and 'plunged,' discussing their meanings and acting them out. They also demonstrated their understanding by retelling events from the story and making text-to-self connections.

In addition, we have been learning new strategies to tell the difference between some tricky letters, ‘b’ and ‘d’ and ‘i’ and ‘j.’ We are getting so confident and cannot wait to show you these tricks.

We have also continued to practise our new tricky words – words that have tricky parts that cannot be sounded out. We've regularly practised and looked at "all", "tall", "ball", "call", and "Iittle".

Finally, we have been tracing, copying and building sentences, and using sentence stems to come up with our own sentences. We have focused on including capital letters at the start of a sentence, finger spaces between words and a full stop at the end.

Maths -

In Maths this fortnight, students have explored the concept of measurement. They have looked at length, and compared items by lining them up and using language like short and long. We have also learnt about mass, which is the weight of objects. Students compared the mass of objects by hefting, and described them by using language such as heavy and light. Finally, they have also looked at capacity, which means how much an object can hold. They compared the capacity of different objects by pouring from one container to another and seeing if it overflowed or was not filled.

Integrated -

Over the last fortnight, we have started a new Geography unit about Special Places and how we care for them. Students discussed special places they may go, like the beach or park, and the features specific to these places. They then read the book ‘Imagine’ by Alison Lester. Throughout the story, students discussed the places they saw and the features of them. They then made connections to their own lives and drew their special places and shared them with their classmates.

In Respectful Relationships, students followed on from their learning about stress by discussing coping strategies that they can use to move back into the green zone. Students brainstormed strategies such as breathing exercises, talking with a friend or teacher, having a drink or resting in the zen zone.

Students also learnt about teamwork by playing a game called ‘Don’t drop the ball.’ They had to communicate with each other and work as a team to pass the ball to the person behind them, and then move to the back of the line. They needed to keep moving the ball along their line and move their team from the front to the back of the room as people kept joining the end of the line. The aim was to get the quickest time to get the ball from the front to the back of the room.

Book Day

Every Minute Counts