Grade 1

Dates to Remember:

Reminders:

Welcome to our Grade One families,

We hope you all had a great break. We have enjoyed launching the year with our ‘Starting Right Program’. This involves activities to help the students settle into the routines of school, build friendships and further develop their sense of self and social skills. 

IMPORTANT THINGS TO HAVE AT SCHOOL 

• A big smile!
• A sun smart hat (to be worn from September to April)
• A drink bottle containing water for use in class
• Library bag and Art Smock
• Large zip bag/satchel to store take home readers and spelling (provided) 
• Diary (these are checked regularly)
• Snack and lunch (nude food please – healthy with no packaging)
• Brain food- a piece of fruit or small container with fruit or vegetables to eat in the morning
• Labels on EVERYTHING!

BRAIN FOOD

A reminder that students are encouraged to bring along fruit or vegetables that will be eaten during the morning session (no nuts please)! Students will only have 5 minutes to eat their brain food so something small such as grapes, some carrot sticks or a couple of pieces of apple might be enough. We encourage natural and unprocessed food, as this assists with maintaining concentration during the day.

SUN SMART

Being a Sun Smart school, it is expected that all students wear a broad brimmed hat whilst outside. We ask that hats are clearly named so that they will be returned if lost. We also encourage students to leave their hat in their locker at school to avoid disappointment if accidently left at home. Students without a hat are required to play in a designated shaded area of the school.

SPECIALIST TIMETABLE – Term 1

SPECIALIST ACTIVITIES 

Students will need to wear shoes appropriate for running activities in their weekly P.E session. 

Please send a clearly named art smock and library bag to school as soon as possible (if you have not done this already). It would also be appreciated if you could please send your child to school with a large box of tissues for our classroom.

COMPASS 

We encourage you to regularly log onto COMPASS to make use of the number of functions that are available to you. These include - viewing attendance data for your child, event notifications, access to your child’s semester reports, regular reminders from the school and communication to and from your child’s teacher. Please make sure you have provided the office with your current email address. 

IMPORTANTLY we ask that you select a time to share information with us about your child next week.

ATTENDANCE

If your child is absent from school, please mark their absence on COMPASS (with the appropriate reason), or notify the office on the day.

DIARIES

We encourage parents to support their children by reading with them regularly and returning their diaries signed and with the name of the book read written in the diary. The diaries will serve to assist the students in the development of their organisational skills, as a reading record and as a communication book with your child’s teacher. Students’ learning goals will be shared in the diaries during the term. Please check your child’s reader pouch daily for notes and other communication from school. It is recommended that these live in your child’s school bag except when they are being used, to ensure they are at school each day.

READING PROGRAM

Our Home Reading Program needs and thrives on parental support. We encourage you to listen to your children reading each night and ask questions to ensure deeper comprehension of texts. 

SMART SPELLING

Students will bring home their new words each week, after having had the spelling patterns and meanings explained during class. They are strongly encouraged to practice their spelling words at home during the week. You will find a list of activities to do at home in your child’s diary. On Fridays, students will be tested to ensure that they have become familiar with the spelling patterns and correct spelling of the words from their list. 

Our Writer's Notebooks are a creative space where students can form ideas based on exciting and interesting experiences and thoughts. It helps them to collect, store and nurture all their thoughts and inspiration in one place. We will be organising a time for the children to help cover these with photos and images that are important or inspire ideas for writing. Please keep an eye out for a compass email from your child's teach detailing how we would like to collect these photos and images. 

We look forward to getting to know you and your child this year. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any concerns or questions (big or small) that you may have. Email or phone are great ways to communicate with us at school. 

We are looking forward to having a fun and productive year! 

The Grade One Team: Ree, Ned & Mandy

Ree Rogan: maree.rogan@education.vic.gov.au

Ned Wallis: ned.wallis@education.vic.gov.au

Mandy Lord: mandy.lord@education.vic.gov.au

Term Overview:

In Reading for Term 1, Grade 1 students will be focussing on consolidating the reading skills developed in foundation such as reading accurately, fluently and with expression. There will be a strong focus on comprehension of fiction and non-fiction texts. While learning how to make comprehension an important focus when reading, the students will learn about retelling the beginning, middle and ending of a story, making text-to-self connections, text-to-text connections and the importance of asking themselves questions as they read. They will further develop their comprehension skills through a range of purposeful tasks and continuing to explore comprehension of fiction texts by applying a range of entry models in our Reader’s Notebook. The students will also be focussing on an investigation into grammar, including looking at nouns, adjectives verbs and homophones.

During Writing lessons, students will develop a repertoire of writing ideas, as well as strategies to support their writing stamina. In term 1 our focus will be on writing personal narratives, where students will learn about the features of this text type by looking at the organisation of ideas, details and word choice. Students will continue to develop their understanding of using grammatical skills in order to write in complete sentences. This will be done through explicitly teaching sentence structure, interesting word choice and punctuation. Towards the end of the term, students will work through a writing cycle to produce a published personal narrative that will showcase the writing skills developed throughout the term.

During the term, Grade 1 will begin to develop their Speaking and Listening skills through explicitly teaching conversation skills and developing discussion guidelines as well as developing an understanding of the role of a ‘listener’ in a conversation. This will be fostered through our Circle Time discussions and about me presentations.

Over the course of the year in SMART Spelling students will explore numerous spelling rules and letter patterns and apply these to daily spelling tasks. 

In Maths, students will be learning about a range of mathematical concepts within the three strands of Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry and Statistics and Probability.  In Term 1, students will focus on place value and the understanding that the value of a digit depends on its place in a number. Students will use manipulatives to make, break, order and compare 2-digit numbers and beyond. They will also practise writing their numerals correctly while investigating number patterns and the operation of addition.

In Inquiry, students will be investigating the ways in which they experience and express emotions, as well as their sense of belonging and interconnectedness within their shared communities. The development of students’ speaking and listening, and teamwork skills will be fostered through active investigations throughout the year. In Term 1, students will explore positive and negative emotions by learning about the connection between their feelings and behaviour and practised positive actions they could take to help regulate their emotions.

Positive Education  

At BHPS, we teach Positive Education using the P.E.R.M.A. model and Character Strengths to help students learn the competencies and skills they need to build resilience and effectively manage their emotions, behaviour and relationships with others. 

During Term 1 In Positive Education, the Year 1 students will be focusing on a character strength each week which will be outlined on our wellbeing blog: https://wellbeingforprimaryschoolstudents.edublogs.org/ 

There will also be a weekly explicit teaching and learning session related to the character strength as outlined below: