Classroom News

Grade 1 & 2

Here’s an official welcome back to Year 1 & 2! As mentioned during our Information Night on Monday, we have noticed the students have come back incredibly settled and ready to learn. Thank you to all of the parents and carers who attended this session - it was a great turnout. 

We are starting our Term 1 Integrated lessons with our “Setting The Scene” unit for 3 weeks and then moving into “How Do We Use Technology?” for the remainder of the term. 

Feel free to ask your child questions such as: “what are the school values?”, “how do you show these values?” or “how do we show these values differently at school and at home?”. 

Reminders

-Please complete the Parent Teacher Exchange Google form that was sent to you via email last week, this is due by Monday 13th February

-Consent and payment for ACMI excursion 

-Zip Ups to be brought back in your child’s bag please, if they haven’t been already!

-Continue daily reading (reading log to come home soon - stay tuned)

-No hat no play! Children need to be wearing their hats outside at recess and lunch

-Library bags and art smocks to be brought back

-Please label all of your child’s belongings, particularly hats and jumpers

-We will be doing a Showcase of our work at the end of this term, stay tuned for more details!

Important Dates for Term 1

20th February - Whole School Photos

1st March - Grade 1 Excursion (ACMI)

2nd March - Grade 2 Excursion (ACMI)

13th March - Labour Day Public Holiday (NO SCHOOL)

21st March - Holi Festival Welcome Picnic

24th March - Chinese Day

29th March - Whole School Cross Country

6th April - Last Day of Term 1, 2:30pm finish

Reading & Writing

In Reading, we will be using quality mentor texts (related to our Integrated units) to continue building our phonics, fluency and comprehension skills. We will have a big focus this term on vocabulary and literal comprehension. Students will be using evidence from text to support their understanding and build their inference skills. We are also continuing on building student’s abilities to work in the Reader’s Workshop model. We appreciate the time you take at home to read with your child! We encourage your children to keep their reader books for a couple of nights (or read them twice in a night) in order to practise their fluency and comprehension, as well as their decoding and phonics skills. Ensure you are asking your children open ended questions at the end such as:“(Looking at the front cover) What do you predict will happen in this story?”“How do you think the character is feeling?”“What connections can you make to this story?”(After reading) “Can you summarise the text in a few sentences?”(After reading) “What would you change in this text if you wrote it?”

In Writing, we are focusing on embedding the Writing Process with our students - moving from brainstorming, to planning/drafting, to editing/revising and publishing. We will be using inspirations from our lives and the mentor text to continue building these skills. Don’t forget to keep helping your child upload their inspiration pictures to Showbie to help them out in Writing :) Mathematics

This term in Maths we will be covering the following topics:-Calendars / timetables-Ordinal numbers / skip counting-Place value-Data & graphsWe will be moving through explicitly teaching mathematical skills and proficiencies, participating in real life problem-solving activities and developing our fluency through maths games. Keep an eye out on Showbie for fluency games that you can play with your child at home! Can’t wait for a fun-filled term!Year 1/2 Team