Year 1

What a memorable and special year it has been in Year 1 at Gilgai Plains Primary School. Term 4 is nearly complete and us teachers could not be more proud of what the students have achieved and the learning and growing that they have done. We still have a few events ahead of us so please put the following dates in your diaries. 

Important Dates & Information

Term 4

• Friday 9th December - School Picnic and Celebration Production
• Wednesday 14th December - Year 1 Celebration 
• Friday 16th December - Last day of school for students
• Monday 19th December - Student Free Day
• Tuesday 20th December – Student Free Day

School Performance

On Wednesday 9th December we will be having Gilgai Plains’ first school performance. A Compass post has been recently sent out, and our students have been hard at work in Ms O’Dowd’s and Ms N’s Performing Arts Class’ to put on something truly special. We’ve seen what they have been working on and it is exciting! Please make sure you return the attendance form to your child’s classroom teacher. 

Year 1 Celebration Picnic 

To celebrate the wonderful year our Year 1 students have had, we will be having a celebration lunchtime picnic on Wednesday the 14th of December. Students are required to bring their brain food, recess and lunch to school. Students will receive some hot chips and an icy pole to enjoy with their lunch. If you do not wish for your child to eat the hot chips or icy pole, please inform your child’s classroom teacher.

Homework

Home readers are being collected now that we are at the end of the year. Please ensure that any home readers you may have at home are returned to school. You may wish for your child to continue nightly reading and use the Sunshine Online app to find levelled books to read. If you have any questions about homework, please see your child’s classroom teacher. 

Learning in Year 1 

Reading 

In Reading the students have continued to build upon their phoneme-grapheme knowledge. We are beginning to understand that graphemes such as ‘a’ can have multiple sounds. For example, /a/ like ally alligator, /ar/ like fast asleep as last, and /a/ like chase to the gate. We are also learning about the silent e that jumps over a consonant to make the vowel say its name or long vowel sound. For example, mad (short a sound) and made (long vowel sound). 

Writing

In Writing the students have been learning about different types of poetry. We have practised changing the rhyming words in nursery rhymes we know to make our own and students have created poems about themselves, for example, using their name to create an acrostic poem or their senses to describe themselves.

Maths 

In Maths, students have strengthened their understanding of division by exploring their problem solving skills to come up with a range of solutions for division stories by exploring the number of ways they can make equal groups with the numbers 24, 12, 16 and many more. We have explored two dimensional shapes and worked collaboratively to create shape pictures for our friends to try and guess what we had made. Can you guess what they made?

Inquiry 

In Inquiry, the students have been learning about traditions and celebrations and how they have a long history. We are exploring a range of different celebrations around the world and reason for them. The students are showing respect and understanding that different cultures and religions have different celebrations that may be different to their own.