Year 1 News
Treehouse
Last week, Noah of 1A, successfully graduated from The Treehouse Program. Noah was presented with a certificate and a graduation cap in recognition for all the hard work he has put into his reading skills this year. Excellent effort Noah!
Well-being Friendships
We were lucky enough to have our Wellbeing Leader Jess Patane come and talk to the children about kind friendships. Students were read the story ‘What does it mean to be kind?’ by Rana DiOrio. We explored what kindness looks like and students shared examples of a time when they were kind and how it made them feel. We discussed if students have had worries before and if they are worried in their friendship group, that they are able to find a person who they could talk to. Thanks Jess for coming and chatting to us!
Mini Metric Commonwealth Games
With all the excitement of the Commonwealth Games, Year One decided to run our own Mini Metric Commonwealth Games with the assistance of the wonderful Year Six students and teachers. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves and it was great to see the two year levels have a great time working together!
Students completed a rotation of four different activities. Shot put, sprint, long jump and how many bounces they could complete in 1 minute using a basketball. Each student had to estimate how far they could throw and jump, how quickly they could run and how many bounces they could complete.
With the help of the Year Six students, they learnt to use measuring tapes and stop watches to measure and record their data accurately. This was a great opportunity for each student to grasp a deeper understanding of estimating and measuring units of length while having a great time outside participating in their own version of the Commonwealth Games!
Inquiry - Research Skills
Through inquiry, students engage in research around interesting ideas and essential questions. Questioning, critical thinking, and the creative development of new knowledge through inquiry are as important (if not more so) to learning as information finding through research.
Over the past fortnight the Year One students have been learning about the importance of inquiry, in research. The students were presented with a project which asked them to inquire about a country or world dish that interested them. We used the ‘World Globe’ to locate the country and spoke about why we think certain countries eat certain foods.
Research skills need to be explicitly taught, so we used this class project as the basis for teaching the students vital researching skills. The teachers posed the questions “How can I find information about a specific topic?” Each class brainstormed the different ideas that children came up with about where they could go to find out more about a specific topic.
The children were introduced to three types of research skills to assist in completing their project.
1. Speak or listen to an expert. The children did this by either speaking to someone knowledgeable about their country or world dish or locating a YouTube video that spoke about chosen country or dish.
2. Access the Internet. Use the iPads to find a simple recipe.
3. Visit the library. Learn to search for resources within the library.
The Year One students came together to use their new found research skills to help each other search their World Dishes. Students partnered up and shared their knowledge using “Google” to search different recipes followed by clips of the procedure and writing the steps. Everyone put in an amazing effort and we are so proud at how well they were able to research!
Taking Action
Inquiry Project - World Dishes
We loved having students follow the procedure and create their World Dish at home. Students shared photos and spoke about their dish to their fellow classmates and teachers and enjoyed answering questions about their experience.
