Year 1 News

English

Reading - During our start up program in Reading, the Grade 1 students will be discussing and identifying the routines and expectations of our reading lessons. Our lessons will focus on establishing expectations for independent reading, selecting Just Right Texts, participating in buddy reading opportunities, setting up and taking care of our classroom library and understanding and appreciating varied reading interests. We will also be establishing structures and routines for conferencing, teacher focus groups and learning centres.

For the remainder of the term, the Grade 1 students will be reading, processing and comprehending a wide range of high-quality mentor texts. Our lessons will explicitly focus on letter-sound relationships (phonics and phonological awareness), strategies to assist in working out unknown words, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. The comprehension strategies we will be explicitly teaching this term are Activating Prior Knowledge, Predicting and Re-telling. We will also begin to look at the basic structures and features of fiction and non-fiction texts.

Writing - To start the year in Writing, the Grade 1 students will be familiarising themselves with the Writer’s Workshop routine. Students will have the opportunity to conduct both teacher directed and personal choice writing using different materials from their classroom writing centres. Students will also be setting up and personalising their Writer’s Notebooks, which will be used throughout the year to support idea development.

Students will then be participating in an introductory unit on narratives. This unit will support students to begin to develop their skills in narrative writing through the context of reimagined traditional tales e.g. The Three Little Pigs. Students will be focusing on elements such as planning and sequencing ideas, structuring sentences, using capital letters and full stops appropriately and simple revising/editing before publishing.

Mathematics

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

Our first mathematics unit will focus on Time. Students will spend a short time revising days of the week, months of the year and calendars, before beginning to look 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 will be the main focus for the term

as this is a pivotal part to all other areas of mathematics. Students will investigate, continue and produce a range of counting patterns and begin to develop fluency with these patterns. Students will be given counting goals which they will practise with a ‘maths mate’ throughout the year.

The last few weeks of Term 1 will be focused on Place Value. Students will begin to work towards recognising, reading, writing and modelling numbers to 100.

Inquiry

I would like to extend a warm welcome to grade 1 and 2 students! Our Inquiry has started off with a focus on the unit Learning to Learn. In the first few weeks of school, our focus is on setting up routines and procedures in our classrooms and supporting students to regulate themselves for learning. Students will participate in activities that support them to develop their emotional literacy, to support them with learning, as well as, building team skills. They will also practice and model our expected behaviours in different areas of the school, in line with our School Wide Positive Behaviours matrix. Other areas of focus during our Learning to Learn unit include developing good habits for learning, such as developing positive character strengths and displaying a growth mindset.

Students will then investigate why individuals have the right to feel and be safe in a range of environments through our unit ‘Me School is Cool’. - Mrs Nikolina Perkovic

Students will investigate the following key questions:

What actions help to make a classroom/school a healthy and safe place?
How do we include others to make them feel like they belong?
What strategies can I use when I need help? Who are the people that I can go to for help

Science

Welcome to Term 1 Science and a new and exciting year ahead! This term the Grade 1 students will be focusing on the Biological Science strand. Students will explore the life cycle of humans and the five main stages they go through as they grow – birth, child, teenager, adult, elderly; students will investigate, and discuss, some of the changes that will occur as they grow up (such as growing taller and appearances changes). Students will look closely at the stages that some animals go through and sequence the life cycles of familiar animals, such as frogs, butterflies, and chickens; students will also learn to recognize that animals have offspring similar to themselves. During this term, students will be involved in many interesting learning activities, along with investigations and hands-on experiments. This is an exciting term in Grade 1 Science! - Mrs Natasha Devine

LOTE-Chinese

Welcome to all our Grade 1 students! I am looking forward to seeing all the Grade 1 students in our weekly Chinese session. This term children will start with simple greetings, such as hello, thank you and goodbye. After this, they will also learn how to count numbers from 1 to 10 with both spoken and hand gestures. Then the year one students will learn the days of the week. Meanwhile, the students will be able to identify the difference between Chinese and English. They can use images to show their understanding of characters related to the topic studied. Throughout the term, students will be involved in many interesting activities, along with some hands-on activities, singing and dancing, which will provide them with a great introduction to Chinese. This is an exciting term in Grade 1 Chinese! -Ms Joey Wang

Art

Welcome back to Art in 2022! In Art this term, the Year 1s are practicing using various skills and techniques to do with drawing, manipulating paper and painting. In doing so, we will begin to explore our big question for the Semester, ‘What is ART?’ Through considering this question, students will broaden their understanding of how they might experiment and create as artists, informed by the diverse ways in which artists create in the wider world.

Collaboration and documentation of our progress, through means such as mind maps and photography, will deepen our learning. The Year 1s will make artworks about themselves, investigating how they can use colour and line to express feelings and imagination, as well as tell stories. I am so excited to start making again with the Year 1 students! - Caitlin