Achilles Community Report

What an exciting term it has been so far! The highlight of our term was definitely our unforgettable excursion to the Melbourne Zoo. The students had a blast exploring the animal exhibits and learning all about the amazing creatures that call the zoo home.

Back at school, we celebrated the Olympics and we've been hard at work on our Book Week project. Our classroom door has been transformed into an epic tribute to *The Magic School Bus*, and the students' creativity has truly shone through. 

In addition to all this, our students have been doing a fantastic job of demonstrating our school's care values, earning care tickets along the way. 

We are fantastic learners in Achilles and are ready to take on whatever comes next!

Reading

In Reading, we have been having fun with rhyming poetry and exploring classic nursery rhymes. One of our favourites is "Mary Had a Little Lamb." We read the poem together, noticed the words that rhyme, and talked about the story of Mary and her little lamb. It’s been exciting to see how rhyming words make the poem sound musical and fun!

We also experimented with making a beat to go along with our poetry, clapping our hands or tapping our desks in rhythm with the rhyming words. This helped us practice reading fluently, making our voices smooth and expressive like the flow of the poem. To keep building these skills, it's important for students to read at home each night. Even just a few minutes of reading together can make a big difference in your child's confidence and enjoyment of reading!

Writing

In Writing this term, student have explore persuasive texts and poetry. Students have looked at explain reasons why someone should do something, in order to change their opinions. Additionally, students have explored creative elements in poetry, including the use of alliteration to enhance the rhythm and mood of their writing. They have also engaged in writing acrostic poems, where the first letters of each line spell out a word or message related to the theme of their poem.

Maths

This term, the children learnt making groups of 2s, 5s and 10s and practised skip counting. They also explored the connection between repeated addition and multiplication. Another topic the children have been having fun tackling is money. Aside from identifying Australian coins and banknotes and their value, they have enjoyed applying their knowledge of maths operations to work out real-life problems involving money. We also discussed different currencies, saving, spending, goods and services.

Inquiry

Hip Hip ZOOray!  This term students had the amazing opportunity to visit The Melbourne Zoo. As part of our inquiry topic Living Things - Animals, students had the chance to explore and learn about animals' habitats and body features. Students saw water and land animals. They loved seeing the meerkats and enjoyed a close-up experience with tortoises. Currently, students are studying about endangered speeches.

SEL

This term the students have been learning about their own emotional development by exploring a range of strategies to cope with a challenge by finding out ways that we can calm down our classrooms during loud times, and create strategies to deal with stress. They were able to explain what it looks like when they are ready to learn, and list strategies to help them if they are not. In order to think positive in social situations, the grade one's learnt all about becoming 'bucket fillers', where they gave compliments about themselves to each other and came up with different ways to help others feel relaxed. As part of bullying prevention week, the students were able to recognise the impact our actions have on others by participating in a fun and engaging paper heart crumpling activity to recognise how our choice of words can affect others peoples feelings. The grade one's also created a connections paper chain to understand the importance of connection.