News from Room 8 - Grade 1/2 D (Ms. Hannah Douglas)

Literacy

We are enjoying spending time in the Library each week finding 'just right' books for our independent and home reading. Julie loves to read us a story each time we go and we especially love when she finds funny ones for us to have a laugh at. Julie has also been teaching us how to locate books in the Library on the computer and then find them on the shelves, an important skill for us to use in our Violet Street Library and local town Libraries. In class, we have been exploring the elements of Non-fiction texts and talking about the glossary, contents page, index page, photographs, pictures and subheadings to sequence information. We have really enjoyed sharing a Non-fiction book with a partner during reading times and are becoming experts at topics such as Ocean Animals and Space!

Numeracy

We have been exploring efficient Addition and Subtraction strategies that work best for us. We have done this by having a go at different strategies and seeing which one is the fastest and most effective for our brains. We have enjoyed playing fluency/warm up games each day before getting to work adding numbers together and especially love the game Greedy Pig.

We have been learning about Maps, which have changed a lot in the last few years. We found our house on Google Maps which was interesting, as some of the students found that their houses hadn't been built since the last Google Map update!

We were set the challenge of drawing our own map of the top yard at school. We went for a walk around the area, taking photos of landmarks around the yard to include in our own map. Some of us chose to use the photos taken on our map, while others drew each area using different shapes, for example, a circle for the water tank.

Wilson Corner

This term we will be looking at the virtues and actions which lead to empathy. Empathy has been identified as an essential character trait for a socially and emotionally intelligent member of society. The first two virtues are friendliness and resilience.

VIRTUE – FRIENDLINESS

ACTIONS

The habit of being interested in others.
The habit of sharing your time, ideas, feelings, belongings and yourself with others.
The habit of saying and doing things to lessen the labour of others. (helpfulness)

We will:

Not deliberately hurt other people’s bodies or feelings;
Take care of property and the environment;
Be friendly even to those who aren’t our friends;
Remember that what we do can sometimes hurt others, so we must act safely;
Listen beyond what is said to how it is said.

VIRTUE – persistence/resilience

ACTIONS

The habit of trying again and again without complaint or the need for reward.
The habit of accepting failure as the stepping stone to success and bouncing back.
The habit of seeing problems and difficulties as things you can do something about to make better.

We will:

keep trying even when we make mistakes or fail;
trust our teachers and give things a go even if we don’t like those things or find them hard;
have really good reasons for not giving something a go;
look inside ourselves for the bravery we need.

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