Year One
Dear Year One Families,
Wow, can you believe that we have finished the first term of Year One? Over this busy term, the teachers, along with your children, have developed safe and inclusive learning communities. Our learning continued right up to the last day, consolidating the many concepts that your child has learnt over this first term.
Literacy
In Reading, students continued to work on making text-to-self connections. Making connections is an important reading strategy, and one that you can reinforce at home when reading with, or to, your child. You can model this strategy by sharing the connections you can make with a text (this can also include movies and TV shows you may watch with your child) and encourage your child to think of any connections that they can also make with the text. We learnt what a verb is and students were able to investigate these important parts of speech in their independent reading by doing a ‘verb hunt’ in books they read. During our Word Work lessons, we continued to focus on short vowel sounds, this time the short ‘i’ sound – found in words like; ill; igloo; inside, sister and sit.
In Writing this week, we worked on sentence structure, making sure students included a capital letter at the beginning of their sentence, finger spaces, and once they have finished their sentence, a full stop. Students also wrote poems about their favourite colour. They were able to incorporate the other parts of speech we have covered this term, such as nouns and adjectives, to add interesting details to their poems.
Numeracy
Students continued to work on their ability to collect data through asking their peers a range of 'simple' questions e.g. How are you feeling today?. We then represented the responses we collected by creating graphs. Students also learnt about the doubles strategy, which assists with solving addition equations. First, we learnt what the word ‘double’ means 'two lots of something'. Students also learnt some real life doubles facts, which included recognising that the fingers on our hands are a doubles fact. 2 hands, with 5 fingers on each hand, is the same as 5 and 5 is 10. Learning addition strategies such as this will help your child with their mental maths ability and also lays the foundation for multiplication.
Unit of Inquiry (UOI)
This week we investigated our first line of our second inquiry: An inquiry into understanding our different emotions. The students were active learners, playing charades, and solving puzzles in small groups. We also discussed that our emotions serve a purpose and tell us something about ourselves at that moment in time. Our UOI will have a hiatus over the Term One break and will continue in Term Two.
Year One Data Day
Week Ten saw all of the Year One teachers released from our classrooms. The purpose of this day was to examine the mandated English Online Interview data that we collated with the help of Saltwater College’s very own data guru and Assistant Principal, Mr Ryan Ma. This data was invaluable for showing the Year One teachers our students’ points of need. This knowledge is then used to inform our curriculum planning.
Reminders
Term Two begins on Monday the 24th of April. However, please note that Tuesday the 25th of April is the ANZAC Day public holiday.
Our school day starts promptly at 8:30am, the doors are opened at 8:20am for the children to come in and get themselves ready for the day. If your child arrives after 8:40am, they must get a late pass from the office.