Curriculum News
English
Reading and Viewing
The Jolly Phonics program to learn letter-sound relationships will finish in term 2 and literacy activities will go from one to two. Our reading strategies will have a focus on Thinking Within the Text from the Fountas and Pinnell wheel (this was in the last school newsletter). They will include searching for and using information, monitoring and self correcting, solving words and maintaining fluency.
This term Cathryn our Education Support Officer will work with small groups of students to focus on letter/sound knowledge, writing names and handwriting. Cathryn also helps us in all other aspects of student learning.
Writing
SMART Foundation which is a spelling based program continues throughout each term as part of the Foundation writing program.
We will also be writing to explain with a particular focus on living things and life cycles. We will finish the term writing to inform. Students will write their own weather report as part of the Change- The World Around Me Inquiry unit.
Speaking and Listening
We include speaking and listening activities in literacy rotations each week. Examples of these are oral language picture chats, listening to stories and following instructions. Language Experience will begin this week. Please refer to the roster of topics that we will cover for the term at the end of this newsletter.
Maths
Each day we spend 10 minutes practising addition and subtraction mental strategies. In Foundation these include:-
- Counting all using 1 - 1 correspondence
- Subitising in the range 1-10
- Partitions of 5
Numeracy foci for T2
Number and Algebra
Place Value & Counting
Addition
Statistics and Probability -
Chance - will/will not
Measurement and Geometry -
2D Shapes & Angles/ Transformation/
Tessellation
Length (taller/shorter/ longer)
Inquiry/RE
Our BIG Concept is ‘Change’.
Our Religion unit is ‘God, Religion and Life’.
In this unit through their knowledge and understanding students will share their personal understanding of God.
They will interpret the ways the natural world and humanity reveal God’s love and will reflect on ways people relate to each other and the environment.
Our inquiry unit is ‘ The World Around Me’. We will begin our unit will an excursion to Melbourne Zoo where students will be Wild Explorers.
We will also have some insects in the classroom that we will look after and discuss.
Some of the key questions we will focus on throughout the unit are:
What are living/non living things?
What do we call the offspring of living things?
How are offspring similar/different to their parents?
What are the seasons and how do they affect everyday life?