Grade 1/2 News

Reminders:

• Take Home Readers - If you still have any take home reading material laying around at home, in school bags etc. we would ask if you could return it to your child's classroom teacher as soon as possible please.
• Possum Magic Recipes - This week we are reading Possum Magic and we have included a link below with some recipes at the bottom of the page which we thought families might like to try making together!
• Easter Hat Parade - on the last day of term we celebrate Easter with our annual Easter Hat Parade. We love to see the creativity of our students and their families and we can't wait to see some fabulous creations this year!

What we have been up to...

On Friday students had a great time playing with Lego as part of their Maths problem solving lesson! Students built a model and had to calculate what it would be worth if each circle on the top of a Lego block was worth $1. It was great for students to compare models and which was worth the most/least and why there might be differences, especially if they all had to use the same amount of blocks.

We have been doing Number Talks - where students identify all the things they know about a number e.g. odd/even, numbers before or after, 10 more or 10 less, part/part/whole etc. We have also looked at counting patterns and partitioning numbers into tens and ones.

Learning in Weeks 7 & 8

Mathematics:  Over the next fortnight we will cover patterns in number, 2D shapes and 3D objects. We will also begin looking at the concept of money - nothing beats using money in 'real life' so if you have your child at the shops over the next couple of weeks it would be a great time to discuss what is happening with the money, looking at the price of items, if you will need change, how you are paying etc.

English: During reading sessions students will practise 'Checking for understanding; monitoring their reading for meaning and then self-correcting if meaning is lost'. If your child is reading a text that requires them to sound out a number of words to successfully decode, then they may not be reading fluently enough to always gain meaning from what has been read. For this reason it is important that our students are also being read to - with lots of good discussion about the book, and any new vocabulary encountered, as this will support the continued development of comprehension skills.

We will be learning the long i sound, which can be represented in words by a number of different spelling choices i_e, y, ie, igh and i.  It is important these sounds are mastered to ensure students can recognise and blend sounds when reading a word and then can also segment the sounds and recognise spelling choices when writing.

Our writing sessions will continue to focus on recounting personal experiences and also writing stories. Students have been learning about the structure and elements of a successful story, such as: characters, problem/resolution and setting.

Topic: As part of our topic lessons students will explore the idea of getting older - they will do this through generating questions about growing up. We will also begin to explore the concept of healthy food and healthy eating.