Year 1

Introduction

Hello wonderful Year 1 families,

Can you believe how quick Term 2 has gone ! The students have transitioned back from school holidays smoothly and there has already been so much progress across the cohort. 

Literacy

In Literacy, the students have adapted well to our new literacy program, which has looked a little different to Term 1. Our Literacy session is now broken up into 6 different areas, Phonemic awareness, Phonics (Little Learners Love Literacy), Oral language, Handwriting, Writing and Comprehension. Our new program sounds full on, and it definitely is, however, the students have adapted really well to it. 

During Phonemic awareness, which is known as Heggerty, we are focusing on a range of different skills such as, blending words, being one of them. Students are told two small words and they need to blend them together, using the action of clapping both hands together, to blend the words to make a compound word.

For example, the word foot and ball are blended together to make the word football. Students will put out their right palm to represent the word ‘foot’ and then put out their left hand to represent the word ‘ball’, they then clap both palms together helping them to blend both words together. 

In Writing, we are beginning to explore how to write a story. Students will be given picture prompts to help generate ideas to then write an imaginative story. Below is a slide from our powerpoint which helps students identify and understand that a story includes characters, setting, a problem and a solution. 

Numeracy

In Numeracy, we have been learning about subtraction, Length and Mass. In subtraction, students have been practising the counting back strategy using a number line and materials to solve subtraction number sentences. Students have had the opportunity to explore and compare the length of different objects using informal units. 

Below is a slide from our Mass topic which has assisted the students in understanding the meaning of Mass being the amount of matter an object contains. We now know that heavier objects have more mass and lighter objects have less mass. We have explored this concept by hefting different objects in the class to compare the mass and determine which objects are heavier and which are lighter. 

History 

Our focus in History for semester 2 is, personal, family and local history. Students will learn about their own history and that of their family, including stories from different cultures and other parts of the world. We have begun the unit by identifying who is in our family, where we were born and where our families were born. We have identified significant celebrations celebrated in different cultures, which the students found really interesting learning about a celebration that isnt of significance to them but that of their peers. The students' knowledge of personal and family history will expand throughout the term, as we will begin to compare the roles in a family from that of the past and present. The year 1 students will also have the opportunity to share an object of significance to them at the end of term during our year 1 museum.