Year One News

Term Four in Year One

Welcome back!

We are almost at the end of the year and still have so many exciting things to learn for our grade ones. We hope everyone had a relaxing break and are ready for the term ahead. We will continue to provide an abundant and inclusive learning environment for our Grade One students, where they will continue to flourish and grow. 

Literacy

Students will continue to engage with the Little Learners Love Literacy Program and revise learnt phoneme and grapheme connections through regular reading of decodable books. They will be introduced to split digraphs and explore the long vowel sounds each week. They will learn how to use the split digraphs to spell words, as well as how to add suffixes such as ‘ing’ and ‘ed’. Students will experience a number of factual books about insects and discuss new vocabulary. During writing sessions, students will revise the difference between a fragment and a complete sentence. Students will practice writing expanded sentences and work towards writing an information report about a chosen minibeast. They will learn to write questions and expand their vocabulary; experimenting with synonyms and antonyms of these words. Students will continue to solidify their understanding and use of capital letters, punctuation and spaces correctly within sentences. Don’t forget, students can access books and literacy tasks online at home using the Little Learners app and Nessy.

Numeracy

This term students will be revising their Place Value knowledge, they will continue to make, model, expand and rename two, three and four digit numbers. We will revisit counting strategies, such as skip counting by 2s, 5s and 10s, as well as counting forwards and backwards from different numbers. Students will explore time duration and look at analogue and digital clocks, identifying their features. In measurement, students will learn to recognise and understand the language of capacity through interactive tasks and using the language of full, half full, more and less than. Our maths lessons continue to reference real life experiences to help students understand how this can be applied in their own lives.  

Units of Work: Biology

We are excited to be exploring a unit of work about ‘Minibeasts.’ This unit will cover knowledge, such as the categories of different minibeasts focusing on insects and arachnids. We will learn about the features of different minibeasts, their life cycles, habitats and diets. Students will learn to summarise facts and use this knowledge to write information reports about a minibeast of their own choosing. They will also have an opportunity to create a model of a minibeast, which they will share with their classmates. To extend students' learning, the Year One classes will attend an excursion in week four to the Melbourne Museum. They will learn about Minibeasts through the ‘It's a Bug's World’ program and identify their importance in our environment.

Social Skills (Berry Street, Respectful Relationships and Consent Education)

Students will continue to begin their day with a Welcome Circle to set a positive tone, with a strong focus on School Values. As part of the Berry Street Model, students will engage in various Brain Breaks to help energise or de-escalate their emotions. As part of our Respectful Relationships lessons, students will learn about Gender and Identity. The unit will help students to identify and understand the impact that labels have on people in our society. Students will recognise the skills needed to build respectful gender relationships and gender-friendly behaviours that they can apply in the classroom and playground, such as being fair to everyone regardless of their gender. In our Consent lessons, students will look at the difference between a secret and a surprise and actions they can take to support themselves and others in uncomfortable or unsafe situations. Through the Inform and Empower Program, students will learn about the importance of being digitally safe, such as not sharing personal information and knowing where to seek help if a problem occurs.

We look forward to working with all students and families this term.

Kind regards,

Joanna, Linda, Laura, Michelle, Jess