Year 1

Literacy

Reading: 

Grade 1 students were explicitly shown and modelled the routines and expectations of our reading lessons. Students have been practising and been successful in aspects of the reading lesson such as participating in independent reading, selecting Just Right Texts, participating in buddy ready and looking after the classroom library and their own personal individual book boxes. 

The Grade 1 students read, processed and comprehended a wide range of high quality mentor texts. Students have been shown how to activate their prior knowledge, make predictions and how to retell the events in a fiction text and had time to practise this independently. Other lessons focused on letter-sound relationships (phonics and phonological awareness), strategies to assist in working out unknown words, fluency and vocabulary. We will also began to look at the basic structures and features of fiction and non-fiction texts.

Writing:

To start the year in Writing, Grade 1 students had the opportunity to conduct both teacher directed and personal choice writing using different materials from their classroom writing centres. They set up and personalised their Writer’s Notebooks (these looked great!), which will be used throughout the year to support idea development when writing different text types and for personal choice writing.

 Students participated in an introductory unit on narratives. They began to develop their skills in narrative writing through the context of retelling traditional tales e.g. The Three Little Pigs. Students focused on elements such as planning and sequencing ideas, structuring sentences, using capital letters and full stops appropriately and simple revising/editing before publishing. Each student had the opportunity to publish a few small books to share with others, which included illustrations and writing.

Numeracy: 

Grade 1 students began the year familiarising themselves with the tools and equipment that they use to support their learning in mathematics sessions. Students familiarised themselves with the routines and expectations of our mathematics sessions, including how to work productively with a ‘maths mate’ and daily counting practice routines. 

Our first mathematics unit focused on Time.  Students spent time revising days of the week, months of the year and calendars, before looking  at reading half past time and consolidating o’clock time on analogue clock faces. This focus will be ongoing throughout the year.

Following Time, Counting has been the main focus for the term as this is a pivotal part to all other areas of mathematics. Students investigated, continued and produced a range of counting patterns and began to develop fluency with these patterns. Students have been given counting goals which they will continue to practise with a ‘maths mate’ throughout the year.

In the last few weeks of Term 1 we have focused on Place Value. Students began to work towards recognising, reading, writing and modelling numbers to 100. This will continue to be a focus through our intervention hour in Term 2 and a short revision unit in Term 4.

Inquiry

The grade one and two cohort have had a great start to inquiry learning this term. I have enjoyed getting to know the grade 1 students and continue to build on positive relationships established with grade two students.

In Inquiry learning we began by developing skills that all good learners have such as, growth mindset, curiosity and that mistakes matter. We developed our growth mindset by exploring differences between fixed vs. growth mindset looks like through dual self-portraits and adding the “power of yet” to our vocabulary. Further to this, we introduced the students to the analogy that good learners go into a learning pit and that through resilience and growth mindset we can make learning deeply personal and memorable.

We spent the remainder of the term exploring how we can belong safely to our school and classroom. The learning experiences aimed to create a number of artistic activities that engaged students to develop an expanded emotional vocabulary and how we can all belong safely in a classroom team. We developed a team culture by integrating STEM challenges that provided a wonderful opportunity for students to practice to become collaborative and inclusive members of our classroom.

What a great start to the year, well done grade 1 and 2!

Science

During Term 1, the Grade 1 students have explored the Biological Science strand of Science through investigating the life stages of humans, and the changes that we will go through as we grow older; we have carried out activities, watched video clips and have listened to songs to support our learning. 

Life cycles have been a focus this term, with students investigating the life cycles of humans, animals and insects, and exploring how different living things grow, change and reproduce.

Our Biological Science strand will continue into the start of Term 2 where students continue to learn and investigate how living things grow and change, with a focus on animals and their offspring.

Well done for an amazing Term 1 in Science Grade 1s!

Art

During Term 2 in Art, the Year 1s have practised various skills and techniques to do with drawing, manipulating paper and painting. Each student made and illustrated an accordion book with pictures that express something important about them. 

The students showed lots of imagination in experimenting with collage, inspired by a range of artists, and in creating paper plate hats and masks, inspired by South African artist Zanele Muholi. We explored how and why artists might incorporate colour in art, layering coloured cellophane to create our own versions of stained glass windows and making exuberant paintings. 

The Year 1s demonstrated good knowledge of colour theory and care in mixing primary colours to make secondary colours, with paintbrushes and different types of sponges. Another fun activity involved acting out artworks, my favourite student impersonations being that of Keth Haring's dancing people! Well done on an excellent start to Art Year 1s!

PE

The grade 1 students for term 1 PE have begun working on fundamental motor skills and beginning to learn about how they can be applied not only to sport but also everyday activities. The skills that we have focused on are throwing and catching, both under arm and over arm. Students have been shown how to throw and catch with the correct technique and have explored the different steps to develop their hand-eye coordination. We have explored different fun games to use these skills, for example, bean bag toss and bowling to showcase some of the throwing and catching activities. As a year level they have shown great progress this term and will continue to develop their fundamental motor skills over the course of the year. Fantastic job grade 1’s and keep up the good work! 

LOTE (Chinese)

Well done everyone for a fantastic term! In term 1, the Grade 1 started with the greetings, which include Hello, Goodbye, Thank You and You Are Welcome. Meanwhile, we learned how to ask and answer others'  in Chinese. Then we also learned how to pronounce and write numbers from 1 to 10 in Chinese. 

After this we learned how to pronounce the days of the week in Chinese. During learning, we have also focused on identifying the difference between Chinese and English, geographically and linguistically. In the next term, there will be Chinese culture combined into learning. The photos shown are Grade 1 using Play Dough to learn how to write Chinese numbers, and how to make a caterpillar by cutting and gluing to learn the days of the week.