Year One News

YEAR ONE NEWSLETTER

The children have had a wonderful start to the year. They have settled into the routines of Year One extremely well and are full of enthusiasm to learn. They are becoming very independent, ensuring they carry their own homework folder inside, swapping over and recording their home reader books and practising their high – frequency words in the morning.

Through our inquiry unit ‘I wonder what makes me special’, the children have been exploring how each individual is unique, different and special. Through hands-on experiences the children have explored the similarities and differences of the physical features of themselves and others. While sharing their ‘About Me’ bags, the children discovered how we are different from others through our families, interests and our talents and abilities. In Religion, we have learnt that through Baptism people become members of God’s family.  We reflected on how God created each person to be different and special and, through role-play,  the children discovered that they are called to use their ‘specialness’ to show love for others.

During our Literacy Dedicated Time, the Year Ones have been working very hard to develop their reading and writing skills. During writing, the children have been creating short imaginative and informative texts. They have been developing the skills to write fluently by focussing on correctly forming lower case and upper case letters, checking for consistent size and writing on the line. The children have become experts at using capital letters and full stops and checking for spaces between words in their writing.

During our shared reading, the children have been introduced to some reading strategies enables them to read decodable and predictable texts. During our Guided Reading sessions the students have been using these strategies to explore new texts while using their knowledge of sounds and letters, high-frequency words, sentence boundary punctuation and directionality to make meaning when reading. The children are given many opportunities to read and re-read familiar texts so that they will become fluent, expressive and thinking readers.

In our Numeracy Dedicated Time we have been exploring numbers from 0-50. Through hands–on learning experiences the children have been working towards recognising, modelling, reading, writing and ordering numbers to 50.  The children have been using their developing knowledge of numbers to count forwards and backwards from 0 – 50 using mathematical language including the number before, the number after, more than and less than. Through our daily ‘Days at School’ learning experience the students are beginning to investigate place value, including partitioning and stating the place value.

In Measurement and Geometry we have been developing our skills to accurately measure length and height. Through varied learning experiences, the children have investigated how to accurately measure the length of a variety of everyday objects using uniform informal units, by ensuring the units are placed end-to-end without gaps or overlaps and by selecting appropriate uniform informal units to for measuring.

Throughout the term, the children will continue to explore how each individual is unique and special by building on their knowledge of families. They will explore the past and observe some of the changes that have occurred in our world through growing and changing. Through play-based learning experiences they will investigate differences in family structures and roles today and how these have stayed the same or changed over time.

We are eager to watch the Year One children grow and develop over the year as they explore new concepts and learn new skills.