Year 1 Term Overview

Dear Year 1 Families,

What a fantastic return to school! Year 1 students have exhibited their clear understanding of the expectations and values at DCC in the first week back and have jumped straight back into their learning to the delight of the Year 1 teachers :)

Below, you will find a brief outline of the core curriculum areas and what your children will be learning about this term. We encourage you to have ongoing conversations with your children about the content below in order to strengthen their learning in the learning space. 

Literacy 

This term in Reading, Year 1 students will have an emphasis on identifying the genre and purpose of their texts. Students will be learning to improve their ability to talk about texts with a focus on comprehension strategies such as: Analysing, Inferring, Making Connections and Critiquing. In particular, analysing how the author has structured the text and things they’ve done to make the text funny, interesting or surprising. Students will continue to use their prior knowledge and practice using the book to find clues to support their inferences of character feelings, motives and personalities. They will also be deepening their text to self connections by including more detail such as similarities or differences of their experiences based on the characters and events in the books. Following on from last term, students will be applying decoding strategies to solve unknown words in more challenging texts that require multiple strategies to solve them, in particular: Looking for smaller chunks within words, using the context clues and noticing word endings (suffixes). Through this learning this term, students will gain confidence in their ability to talk about different parts of texts and share their opinions using evidence from the text. 

Writing 

This term in Writing, students will be learning how to write narratives with a focus on creating characters, settings, problems and solutions. We will investigate how authors use voice to make their writing different and stand out, and practise these techniques in our own writing. 

Later in the term, we will continue to explore the Writer’s Traits through persuasive transactional pieces such as letters and responding to each other’s writing.With a focus on organisation, we will be exploring different ways to organise persuasive and transactional writing in order to communicate ideas to an audience in a structured way. In order to support students with their grammatical knowledge, we will have an ongoing focus on the correct usage of capital letters (start of a sentence and proper nouns) and full stops (at the end of a sentence). Additionally, students will be constantly reflecting on their writing through a process of rereading, editing and revising to ensure their writing makes sense and reads smoothly. 

Through SMART spelling and writing workshops, students will also continue to explore regular spelling patterns, high frequency words and vowel sounds within words. 

Numeracy 

This term in Numeracy, Year 1 students will begin the term exploring addition and subtraction. They will be asked to solve simple addition and subtraction problems and explain their thinking using a range of strategies. These include counting on, counting back, partitioning (breaking up numbers) and rearranging numbers. In addition to this, students will be learning to model sharing through practical situations, for example “I have 8 lolly bags to share with 4 friends.” Later in the term students will strengthen their knowledge of recognising and sorting 2D shapes and 3D objects using features such as sides, corners, faces, vertices and edges. Year 1 students will build on their knowledge of fractions by exploring a fraction of a collection, for example, one half of a collection of 4 is 2. Throughout the term, students will continue to be exposed to different mathematical situations where they will be required to problem solve using the skills of modelling, diagrams and equations. The term will conclude with students learning about representing and interpreting data. They will create simple questions and gather responses and represent their findings through drawings, graphs and tables. Students will be asked to describe their findings and displays. 

Inquiry

This term in Inquiry, students will engage in a 2-week inquiry cycle ‘Our Land Our Stories’ exploring Indigenous Australian culture. Year 1 students will be investigating totems with a focus on the question: How can we connect with Indigenous animals and totems to build our own sense of self and protect our environment? Students will learn about the native animals in Australia and the Woi Wurrung language to identify the names and places of the animals. They will also connect to the traits of the animals in order to help them choose their own personal totem to protect and care for. Students will then design their totems through art drawing on inspiration from Aboriginal mediums (symbols and colours). When completed, students will then share their totems through presentations to their peers. Following on from this, students will investigate the question: How does my family history impact my beliefs and values? Through an exploration of their own family histories, beliefs and cultures, they will also investigate the history in the surrounding local community. Students will celebrate different cultures and their histories and learn about acceptance of others. Later in the term, Year 1 students will delve into Civics and Citizenship with an Inquiry into the interconnectedness of human-made systems and communities; and their impact on humankind and the environment.

Ways to Help Your Child At Home:

Home Reading - Please ensure that your child is reading every night at home for at least 20 minutes, following up with a conversation about the book (this is very important to help them verbalise their understanding). Please see your child’s homegroup teacher if you having trouble accessing Reading Eggs or Wushka. 

Learning Goals - Your child’s individualised learning goals are listed on Compass. There is a reading goal, a maths goal, a writing goal and an Inquiry or SEL (social and emotional learning) goal for your child. Please read these and support your child by going through the suggested strategies to help at home. These goals are changed every three weeks, and you will also be informed of your child’s achievement of these goals. If you have any questions regarding your child’s goals, please see your child’s teacher. 

Year 1 Homework Matrix - You can find our Homework Matrix on Compass. There are lots of fun activities for your child to complete either independently or with a family member. Please note: This is to be completed at your own pace throughout the term, as we understand you might not be able to complete homework on some days. We recommend choosing 3 tasks a week and completing this in your homework book (if needed)!

Year 1 Team