Classroom Gallery 

Newsletter Article for Year 1/2

Religion

We have started a new unit in Religion called Baptism. This unit presents Mark’s account of ‘Jesus and the Children’ (Mark 10:13-16). Through this story children can experience Jesus as the one who welcomes, loves and includes them. In this story children are valued. The unit introduces Baptism as the sacrament of initiation into the Church community. The emphasis here is on sharing in the new life of Christ. The unit presents the key symbols and actions used in the Rite of Baptism. 

English

We have been looking at making the first sentence of a story ‘captivating’ for the reader.  We have been looking at using words and phrases that capture your attention and make you interested to read further.  This week’s story was called, ‘The Towering Tree.’ 

During writing we spend a lot of time proof-reading and ‘up-levelling’ our work.  That’s what good writers do!  Over the last few weeks we have also been highlighting our WOW (impressive) words in yellow and our punctuation marks in green.  This makes us realise that sometimes we need to add more descriptive words (adjectives)  to our writing, as well as improving what we wrote in our first draft. Authors spend a lot of time improving their writing.                         Story:  Mila Tate

Maths

We have been learning about Subtraction for the past 3 weeks. 

Look at this as a new way to perform subtraction:  Subtraction can be the ‘inverse’ form of addition.  We can look at the difference between numbers. 

For example, using the inverse strategy to solve 65 – 37 would proceed as follows:

Blank numberline…… If you were at 37, how many to get up to 65?

• Start at 37
• Add 3 to make 40
• Then add 20 to make 60
• Finally add 5 to make 65
• And so the answer is 3 + 20 + 5 = 28
• Therefore 65-37= 28

Have you heard of this type of language before for subtraction? 

Bulletproof definitions we have looked at: 

Subtraction: 

1. Taking one amount away from another to find what amount is left.  

2. To find the difference (comparison) 

eg. Remy has seven pencils and Robin has three pencils. How many more pencils has Remy than Robin?

3. omplementary addition (missing addend, counting on). 

eg. Rowan has three pencils, but needs seven. How many more must he get?

Minus: to take away

Difference: the distance between two numbers on a number line (nesa)

Number sentence: a statement about numbers, usually in symbols rather than words. A number has a left hand side (LHS) and a right hand side (RHS) separated by an equals sign.

Equals sign: is the same as. The left hand side (LHS) and the right hand side (RHS) are equal.

HSIE

We have been studying a unit of work over the last semester (two terms) called, 

Past, Present and Future.  In this unit students have been investigating terms that indicate and describe time. Students define and use words relating to sequencing time e.g. then and now, long ago, yesterday and tomorrow. Students have also sequenced days, months and seasons and have looked at an Aboriginal seasonal calendar. Questions that we answered were: 

How do we describe the sequence of time?  What changes do we notice over time? 

The vocabulary we have looked at includes:

Creative Arts

We have been learning about self portraits.  We have looked at famous artists who painted self portraits.  We studied portraits made by famous artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, and the Australian artists-Margaret Olley and Vincent Namatjira.  We learnt that Vincent has won many art awards, and after being nominated for the Archibald Prize several times, he became the first Aboriginal person to win it in 2020. The Archibald exhibition is currently on in Sydney.  If you would like to have a look at the exhibition online, please follow this link: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/archibald/2024/