Classroom News
Grade 1 & 2

Term 1, Week 2

Here’s an official welcome back to Year 1 & 2! As mentioned during our Information Night on Monday, we have noticed the students have come back incredibly settled and ready to learn. Thank you to all of the parents and carers who attended this session - it was a great turnout and lovely to have an informal meeting with all of you.

We are starting our Term 1 Inquiry lessons with our “Setting The Scene” unit for 2 weeks and then moving into our Inquiry focus based on the question “How Do I Express My World Through Art?” for the remainder of the term.

Feel free to ask your child questions such as: “what are the school values?”, “how do you show these values?” or “how do we show these values differently at school and at home?”.

Please stay tuned for further information on our upcoming excursion and end of term expo. We will have an afternoon to show off all the excellent learning we will be doing over Term 1!

Reminders

Please complete the Parent Teacher Exchange Google form that was sent to you via email last week, this is due by Friday 9th February
Zip Ups to be brought back in your child’s bag please, if they haven’t been already!
Continue daily reading (reading log to come home soon - stay tuned)
No hat no play! Children need to be wearing their hats outside at recess and lunch
Library bags and art smocks to be brought back
Please label all of your child’s belongings, particularly hats and jumpers

Important Dates for Term 1

Week beginning 12th February - Parent Teacher Exchange

1st March - School photos

5th March - Whole School Cross Country

7th March - Parent Helper training session

11th March - Labour Day Public Holiday (NO SCHOOL)

21st March - Holi Festival Welcome Picnic

27th March - Chinese Day

28th March - Last Day of Term 1, 2:30pm finish

29th March - Good Friday (NO SCHOOL)

Reading, Writing & Spelling

In Reading, we will be using quality mentor texts (related to our Integrated units) to continue building our phonics, fluency and comprehension skills. We will have a big focus this term on vocabulary and literal comprehension. Students will be using evidence from text to support their understanding and build their inference skills. We are also continuing on building student’s abilities to work in the Reader’s Workshop model.

We appreciate the time you take at home to read with your child! We encourage your children to keep their reader books for a couple of nights (or read them twice in a night) in order to practise their fluency and comprehension, as well as their decoding and phonics skills.

Ensure you are asking your children open ended questions at the end such as:

“(Looking at the front cover) What do you predict will happen in this story?”

“How do you think the character is feeling?”

“What connections can you make to this story?”

(After reading) “Can you summarise the text in a few sentences?”

(After reading) “What would you change in this text if you wrote it?”

In Writing, we are focusing on embedding the Writing Process with our students - moving from brainstorming, to planning/drafting, to editing/revising and publishing. We will be using inspirations from our lives and the mentor text to continue building these skills. Feel free to help your child upload their inspiration pictures to Showbie for use during Writing lessons!

As of next week we will begin our differentiated spelling groups where students participate in 3 x 20 minute lessons each week. Their lessons are taught at point of need and based on assessment we have already completed with the students this year.

Mathematics

This term in Maths we will be covering the following topics:

Counting / skip counting
Place value
Addition & subtraction

We will be moving through explicitly teaching mathematical skills and proficiencies, participating in real life problem-solving activities and developing our fluency through maths games.

This term’s learning will provide a really solid foundation for the rest of the year.

Can’t wait for a fun-filled term!