Week 10
Dear Parents,
Firstly thank you so much for the cards and presents I received for my birthday. Gemma and the kids had a lot of fun decorating the room for my return with glitter and box construction gifts too to celebrate four decades. I am very lucky and blessed! I would like to say I'm now older and wiser but we will see..
Well it is Week 10 finishing up today and here we are on the home stretch - one glorious week left of learning and together time before a well-deserved break!
Learning and Curriculum
Boy oh boy are we proud of this 1K team! In just one semester the students have really worked hard in their academic pursuits learning to decode tricky words, read with growing fluency, write sentences and even paragraphs for narrative, recount and information reports and spell so many words including new digraphs, trigraphs and a lot of tricky words along the way. We have learnt about our biological and physical world in science, the elements of line, shape, texture and tints/shade of colour in visual art. In mathematics we have built our number sense to learn about two-digit numbers, addition, subtraction, probability and data, reading clocks and 2D/3D shapes and their attributes, in technology we have designed, built and created objects and learnt about our technological world using computers, ipad and apps and finally we have learnt about Jesus, his life on Earth, prayer to our Creator and gratitude for all of his creations and about our relationship with God and our church. Wow!!!! The personal growth in self-regulation, responsibility and learning of every student makes us so very proud and grateful to teach such an awesome class team.
Design Technology
We are looking forward to next Friday where we will be creating our final technology design project with our buddies - an animal with features from recycled products and craft materials. So far our year 1 designers have chosen an animal to make out of listed available materials and labelled their special features along with the purpose and function of these features. This is a direct link with our science topic this term: creatures and their features. We will then be making these next Friday morning with our Year 5 buddies to be our assistants. I have mentioned to our students that they are also welcome to bring in any specific recycled materials from home if they wish (eg. plastic bottles, cardboard rolls, round plastic containers) in a named plastic bag. However, we still have an abundance of box construction and craft materials at OLC which will be available to use.
We will also be looking forward to watching the Dance concert with the Years 3 to 6 classes performing at 2pm on the last day of term. It will also be a great little insight to the dance classes our Year 1 students are really looking forward to participating in for the next two terms every Friday.
Mathematics
The last fortnight we have been working on our geometry knowledge, learning about 2D and 3D shapes and the vocabulary of edges, sides, corners, vertices and faces. We have been doing lots of hands-on learning as well as recording our knowledge in tables and reading columns and rows to complete information about shapes. Look at these amazing 3D shapes we built this week!
Merit awards
Well done to Felix for receiving our merit award last week! Felix you are just an amazing all rounder - always kind, working hard and we love your little learning insights and facts you share with us every day! Well done, Felix - you are a champion!
Well done to Ella for our Star Citizen today for this term's focus value of appreciation. Ella, you are always appreciative of help from others, show manners and gratitude and you are grateful to the creations in our world we are thankful for everyday. A well deserved award, Ella for such a thoughtful and thankful girl!
Cross Country
Well done to the amazing runners on Thursday for our annual cross country event. It certainly seems to be a well liked activity in the 1K group this year as many students seem to be doing it 'just for fun' during their daily fitness break each mid-morning.
Congratulations to our place winners Fletcher, Liam, Emma and Edie for being place winners this year in the Year 1 cohort! You are running superstars who can make that lap around the oval seem like a breeze!
End of Semester Reports
Grades and comments are being finalised into next week and formal reports will be sent home in electronic form via SEQTA on the final day of term. Information and reminders regarding how to set up or use seqta will be sent via administration next week.
Our Semester One reports grading align with the Western Australian curriculum and achievement standards for Year 1. These reports may look a little different to what you are familiar with from pre-primary and we encourage you to read the first opening page of the report which explains what each grade letter means in association with the SCSA WA curriculum rather than thinking about the grade letters we used to receive in our schooling years. A 'C grade' on your child's report is likened to an average achievement grade and relates to the majority of the WA year 1 population achievement/progression level of the curriculum and our OLC reports also include their personal values and attitudes for their learning.
I am so proud of how far they have personally all come over the semester and their dedication towards achieving individual goals. Please feel free to contact me via email or in class if you wish to discuss anything at all either this week or early next term about the report or any other matter at all.
Homework
We will be collecting homework folders this week and give you the week off next week if you wish - Yay! We will use this time to do a stocktake for the home readers and ask if you have any home reading books or library at home to send them in please. Comprehension packs will also not be coming home this week from the library and library books will also not be accessioned.
On Monday we will send home a list of tricky words and digraph spelling sounds we have learnt over the last two terms for review if you wish to test your child and see which words they personally are still finding difficult. We have studied these words and sounds for reading and spelling explicitly in class each day as a part of our InitiaLit1 literacy program. You may wish to write up your own grid of particular words to practise speed reading and read some of them out loud for them to practise spelling independently over the last week of school and the holidays if you wish. (Please note the extension list is only for those students who currently receive the extension spelling words and it is not expected for most year 1 students to read and spell the extension list words.)
Okay! I think that is it for now. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or queries at all.
Thank you also for your continued support and assistance. We really appreciate it!
Penny and Gemma
Comments
Post a Comment