Grade 1 News

Message from the Principal

Dear Pegasus Family,

I want to thank you for your support and messages of thanks in what has been a difficult week for us all. Our staff and students did an amazing job on Wednesday with keeping students  safe and then yesterday with supporting them. I want to thank you for your flexibility and calmness in collecting students on Wednesday as we tried to avoid the emergency services that were in Bellfield Drive.  At all times our actions were taken to ensure the physical and emotional safety of the community. I recognise that the delay in communication caused anxiety for families, as you can imagine there were many things for us to manage that afternoon with our number 1 priority being to ensure we had supports in place for students and staff.

Once again I thank you for support and best wishes.

Regards,

Adam Wight

Principal

Important Reminders

All important dates and events are on our Compass Calendar, please check the calendar regularly to stay up to date!

Library

Grade 1 Library is now on Thursdays. Please ensure your child has their library bag so they can borrow weekly. There will be no Library on the 15th of August.

Science Week 

Parents are invited into our classrooms on Tuesday the 13th of August to celebrate Science Week. 

Incursion

Grade 1 students will be attending an incursion on the 11th of September. Please check Compass for details and to allow permission.

Readers are swapped on Mondays- Please make sure your child brings their old reader and 'Take Home' bag every Monday. Students are required to bring their take-home bags to school daily.

A few upcoming dates-

Wednesday 21st August: Book Week dress up

Thursday 22nd August: Fathers Day Stall

Friday 13th September: School Disco

Monday 16th September: Celebration Morning

Each Tuesday in weeks 6-10: Swimming Program

Friday 20th September - Last Day of Term (2.30 dismissal)

Learning in Action

Wellbeing

Learning in Action: 

This fortnight, students identified situations that may cause fear. Some of these included trying new things, the dark, people being mean, getting hurt or getting lost. Students then collaborated with others and brainstormed some coping strategies that they use to help them when they are feeling afraid. Some student suggestions included, hugging or playing with a favourite toy, taking some deep breaths, asking for help from family or friends and telling yourself it’s okay. We also focused on things that make students feel angry. Students suggested some strategies that they use to help them control their angry feelings. These included, walking away, five finger breathing, sitting on hands. 

We learnt 3 new strategies to try when we are feeling angry. These included:

1. Balloon breathing - Take in a deep breath, blow out slowly, like you are blowing up a balloon.
2. Pressing hands together - Press your palms together hard and hold them in front of your chest, release slowly.
3. Counting - Closing your eyes and counting down slowly from 10.

Preview for Learning:

Next week, students will be learning to identify that everyone has different fears, responses and coping strategies when they are feeling scared or angry.

Literacy

Learning in Action: 

This fortnight, students have been looking at /oi/ and /oy/ digraphs. Students have encoded and decoded words that include this phoneme. Students focused on using the rule, use /oi/ in the beginning or middle of words and /oy/ at the end of words. Students enjoyed using this rule to support them as well as finding exceptions to the rule such as the word 'royal'

Students continued looking at poetry and wrote their own rhyming couplets focusing on our inquiry topic of history, with a focus on Medieval times as the inspiration. Students went through the writing process to think and brainstorm rhyming words before writing their poems. This piece will be included in their poetry anthology book.

Preview for Learning: 

In the next fortnight, students will continue looking at /oi/ and /oy/ as well as new digraphs, both in Writing and Reading.

Students will also complete a writing sensory experience. Sensory writing is extremely effective in helping describe places and settings, using our five senses. Not only is it important that the reader has a clear idea of what somewhere looks like, but you can also describe the sounds and smells of a place. Appealing to the writer’s senses will be effective in creating a clear image in their mind.

As part of this sensory experience, students will be eating a cinnamon donut. Please let your classroom teacher know if you DO NOT want your child eating one. 

Maths

Learning in Action: 

In Maths this fortnight, Grade 1 students have been learning to organise their groups into arrays using counters. An array has even rows and columns, and is used to display multiplication. For example, below is the array 6 x 4. 

Once students were feeling confident with using counters to create an array, they were encouraged to draw their array on whiteboards. Other ways we showcased our learning of arrays in multiplication this week included playing the ‘Array Game’, where students rolled 2 dice to create their own array on grid paper. Students also completed a post test on multiplication. 

In our Time/Duration unit, students mapped out a day at the Aquarium. Students needed to pick 5 animals they wanted to visit at the Aquarium and draw the time of day on an Analogue clock. 

Preview for learning 

We will commence our learning in the area of Division. New learning goals will be distributed based on the results of our pre-test. 

Inquiry

Learning in Action: 

This fortnight we have learnt all about Ancient China and Medieval Times. We have looked at these civilizations through the lens of 3 key questions:

• What did families look like? 
• How did people communicate? 
• How did people learn? 

It has been wonderful to hear students making connections to their own lives, as well as identifying any similarities and differences they have observed between the different civilizations we are learning about. 

Preview for Learning:

Next week, students will learn all about the 1800s. We look forward to learning all about daily life in the 1800s and adding it to our class timelines. We are also very excited about an incursion later this term which will help students make strong connections to this time in history.

Student of the Week

Congratulations to our Grade 1 award winners.

From the Grade 1 teachers,

Caillin Ibbotson, Isabella Albanese, Kayla Pepper & Rachel Ryan