Year One Team News

Hello Year One families,

Welcome back to Term 1 of Year One 2024! The Year One teachers this year are Anna Swan and Zoe Kitchen (Grade 1K), Claire Davies (Grade 1D) and Edan Baccega (Grade 1B). We have been so pleased by the enthusiasm and eagerness to learn that our Grade 1 students have shown over the first few days of settling back into the school routine. We have begun setting up our classroom expectations and our students are displaying wonderful responsibility in their new Year One environment. 

Curriculum Focus: Weeks 3 - 4

Reading: We are continuing the Little Learners Love Literacy program that students commenced last year in Prep. During this term we will be revising stage 7.1 of the program which focuses on vowel graphemes. Our focus for week 3 will be the graphemes/phoneme ‘ai’ and ‘ay’, and our focus for week 4 will be the graphemes/phoneme ‘ee’ and ‘ea’.

Writing: Writing ideas will be inspired by our work in Inquiry and through the picture books we read. We will be working on remembering our capital letters and full stops and having a go at our spelling by using the great strategies that we learned in Prep.

Numeracy: We will be exploring the concept of place value. Students will work through hands-on activities, challenges and games to reinforce the idea that numbers contain digits and these digits have different values.  

Inquiry: We are discussing what good learners do, and setting up the routines in our classroom so that everyone feels safe and supported.  

Willy Kids/Respectful Relationships: Through the pillar of Respect, we are learning about kindness and how Willy Kids can demonstrate kindness and care every day. During our Respectful Relationships sessions our topic this term is Emotional Literacy. We have been learning and will continue to focus on recognising and identifying our own emotions and describing situations that may evoke these emotions.

Important Dates Coming Up: 

• Meet the Teacher Wednesday 14th of February (students dismissed at 12.30pm)
• School Photos: Tuesday 20th of February 

Blue Book Bags

Blue Book Bags will need to be brought to school each morning and will be sent home in the afternoon each day. In your child’s Book Bag you will find a Home Reading Record and a homework book. In these Book Bags you will also find our Little Learners reading books, as well as any books that students borrow from the library (up to two at a time). The students will take home two new Little Learners books each week. This range of books provides a great opportunity for students to practise reading aloud to others and also with family members. Their Little Learners books will be familiar to them and easier to read. Rereading familiar books is an important strategy to help with learning to read and comprehend texts. We encourage you to also continue reading aloud to your children from library books and books from home. Listening to reading and talking about books is crucial for vocabulary and linguistic comprehension. We encourage students to read at home every weekday to support learning in the classroom. 

We also ask that parents regularly check their child’s Blue Book Bag as teachers will put notes that need to go home into them instead of their regular bag. If you are returning any notes to the school you can also place them in their Blue Book Bag. If you have placed a note in there, please remind your child to take it out and give it to their classroom teacher in the morning.

Homework

In Year 1, students are expected to undertake 15 minutes of daily reading with a parent/carer/sibling. This can include opportunities for the student to read to an adult, read with an adult or be read to by an adult. 

Homework books will start going home next week. The work we send home as practice is based around concepts we are learning at school. There will be 7 speed words which are based on the weekly sound focus and 3 heart (common) words that students can practise reading and spelling. A family maths game, challenge or activity will help to increase number sense and will also be based around the concept we are learning at school. 

The purpose of reading at home and simple homework activities is to create a link between learning at school and at home and to reinforce weekly concepts. Homework in Year One is not designed to create stress. Please do what is right for your child and for your family. 

Photo Permission/Local Walk/ICT Forms

A form for photo permissions, local walks and the ICT code of conduct form went home at the end of last week. Could you please ensure that these are returned to school as soon as possible if they have not already been returned.

Specialists

This Term, all Grade 1 students will attend Specialist classes. These include Visual Art, Music, French and Physical Education. Each class will also attend the library each week. Please see below for the specific days for each class.

Sun Safety

It has been excellent to see that our Grade 1’s are bringing their hats to school and are wearing them during play times. In Terms 1 and 4 students are required to wear their hats during all outside play. Please ensure that your child’s hat is clearly labelled with their name so that it can be easily returned to them if it is misplaced.

Lunches

As a school we are making an effort to reduce the amount of waste that we produce. In doing so, we hope to maintain our clean and safe indoor and outdoor environments. To support this goal, we encourage our students to bring a ‘nude food’ lunchbox. This means that there is no rubbish or wrappers.Examples of items to include in a nude food lunchbox are:

• Snacks in reusable containers
• Drinks in reusable bottles
• Reusable utensils when needed
• A reusable lunchbox or backpack

If this isn’t possible we kindly ask that all food scraps and rubbish are taken home to dispose of. 

Brain Food

To support all this amazing learning that your children are doing, we like to take time to have a brain food break at 10am every morning. We ask that each child brings some fruit or vegetables in a small container to eat at this time. It is helpful if this container is separate to the lunch box so that the children can pop it on their desk when they enter the classrooms at 8:50. This limits the disruption of going to the school bag and getting out the entire lunchbox. Thank you for your support with this.

Anaphylaxis and Food Allergies

Williamstown Primary School adopts broad strategies to protect our students with anaphylaxis and any food allergies. Some of the preventions strategies that are implemented by the School to assist anaphylaxis management include:

• Strictly NO sharing food
• Supervised eating time
• Providing professional development for all staff including the identification and response to anaphylaxis and the proper use of an EpiPen®/Anapen®
• Identifying susceptible children and knowing their allergens 
• Sitting down to eat lunch from an individual lunch box
• Avoiding (as much as possible) key trigger foods such as: nuts, dairy such as yoghurt, milk and cheese, whole eggs, chocolate and milk drinks should be avoided where possible.
• Informing the community about anaphylaxis via the newsletter and letters sent home 

Again we emphasise our strict protocols around training and documentation, the NO SHARING FOOD policy and the Grade 1 teachers are aware of all allergies, and specifics about each child’s case. 

Warm regards,

The Grade One Team –  Zoe Kitch & Anna Swan (1K), Edan Bacegga (1B) & Claire Davies (1D)