Achilles Community Report
Term 2, 2020
WOW!! What a busy term in the Achilles Community! We would like to congratulate all of our amazing students on a fantastic term! We know that it has been challenging at times but you have all worked extremely hard throughout remote learning and have settled very well back at school and we are so proud of you all!
Thank you to all of our wonderful families for your support throughout remote learning and through these challenging times we are facing. We appreciate all of your efforts and commitment to ensure our students are engaged in their learning.
Reading
In the Achilles Learning Community we have been learning to understand what we read through ‘right there’ questions; which include asking and responding to questions such as Who? What ? When? Where? We have been using non fiction texts to think and search for important information and we have been exploring different reading strategies such as visualising, predicting, making connections and the strategy of Inferring; that helps us understand how to look for clues in the text with what you already know and talk about what we are thinking the story is about.
Writing
In Writing, the Achilles community have been learning how to write a narrative (a fictional story). We have been discussing how it includes a beginning (orientation, that tells us the who, where and when of the story), a middle, (a series of events that leads to a problem in the story) and the end, (solution to the problem).
We have been focusing on using the appropriate punctuation, descriptive language to describe the characters and the setting and using simple and compound sentences in their writing. We have also been ensuring that our illustrations match what we have written.
Maths
In Maths, we have been learning about Measurement and Additive thinking. We investigated the areas of length, mass and capacity and practised measuring and comparing a range of household and classroom items.
During our Additive Thinking unit, we have been practising different skills to help us add 1, 2 and 3 digit numbers together. Some of the strategies we have been investigating include friends of ten, doubles, counting on, fact families, identifying the value of the digit for example 26= 20+6 and the split strategy.
We have been using lots of hands on materials such as counters, blocks, icy pole sticks, bundles and number lines to help us with our learning. Over the next few weeks we will be working on how to explain and show our thinking through our working out.
Inquiry
This term in Inquiry, we have been learning about the different kinds of physical changes that occur in objects that we use every day. We have been asking questions and making predictions about how materials may change when they are heated, cooled, bent, stretched or twisted. We have investigated how we can describe the changes in various objects and materials when we interact with them in different ways, and we have also practised sorting different objects according to the type of material they are made out of e.g. a table is made of wood and a window is made of glass.
SEL
In SEL we have been learning about understanding our different emotions by identifying what this looks like and feels like in our facial expressions, with our body language and the physical changes that occur, such as muscle tension, increased heart rate, feeling hot etc.
We focused particularly on the emotion of Anger, understanding our different experiences triggering anger and frustration, as well as understanding the difference between hurtful expressions of anger and helpful ways of controlling it. We explored different calming down and cheering up techniques to help us get back into the green zone and we also explored problem solving strategies using our words and actions to help our friends.
Important notes to remember:
- The gates open at 8.45am for year 1 and 2 students
- Students will not be taking home readers or spelling words until further notice
- Please label all belongings
- Students are encouraged to bring their iPads to school each day fully charged
- Students must bring their own labelled water bottle to school each day as we are unable to use the drink taps
We hope you all have a wonderful and safe holiday. We look forward to sharing more of our learning with you next term.
Kind Regards,
Carla, Maddy, Fanny and Addy.