Week 1 Term 2 2022
Dear Parents,
We hope you had a wonderful holidays and a Happy Easter. The children were all very excited to be back yesterday and I loved hearing all of their adventures of camping, fun in the sun and for some us, in COVID isolation. 🌞😎😥😀
Welcome
A big welcome to Mrs Leanne Gibbons who will be our new classroom education support assistant. We are very lucky to have such a lovely lady to help our students learn and be their best. Please make her feel welcome if you see her. Mrs Edwards is continuing to work at the school and will be taking students for literacy intervention and Mrs Spencer is continuing her role in the office.
Wadandi Totems 🌨💧🍂🍁
We are now in the season of Djeran - This is when the weather starts to get cooler and the leaves turn orange and fall off the trees.We are very lucky that Josh Whiteland from Koomal Dreaming has approved every classroom with a native flora and fauna and their traditional Noongar name. Over the coming weeks, we will be spending some time learning about the significance of these. Please see below for the Wadandi Totems assigned to both Year One classes.
1S | Native Peach | Quandong | Blue Wren | Chiriger | P |
1K | Banksia | Polgala | Willy Wagtail | Djidi-Djidi | P |
Today we sent home the latest Year One fluency grid with this fortnight's focus sounds and tricky words. Have a look at our previous blog post last term which shows you how you can use this at home to increase your child's reading fluency. These words contain our focus sounds and reflect the reading words and sentences we are working on in class during the InitiaLit1 literacy program. We have also photocopied two levelled spelling lists for your information on the back of the fluency grid that are used in class for the fortnight. The yellow list is the target for Year One from our InitiaLit program (pink and cream are intervention support and blue is extension). Please feel free to use these lists at home to increase your child's spelling abilities. The last four to six shaded words on the list are known as 'tricky' words which are high-frequency English words where we learn that there are tricky parts in each of these words that we need to learn and remember when we are reading and spelling.
We ask that all fluency grids are taken out and removed from your child's reading folders and put in a prominent place in your home to ensure they are practised every day - suggestions could be the fridge or on the pantry door. Replace the fluency grids with each new grid that is sent home each fortnight. No fluency grids need to be returned back to school at any point.
Please send in the homework folder with RED reading file each day to ensure that your child's books are swapped every two days.
Learning Intentions
This fortnight we are learning the spelling sounds 'ai' as in rain, 'ay' as in play, 'ea' as in ear and 'ee' tree'. Please have a look at the generalised rule for using 'ay' & 'ai' and 'ea' & 'ee' below:
We are completing our final fortnight focus on the text genre of narrative and have used the mentor text "Edward the Emu" to work on our sentence structure and grammar when writing stories. Last term, we completed our own text innovation about finding a mysterious object following the story mountain structure of a narrative. Next week, the children will then complete a 'Hot Task' of the narrative genre to complete our focus unit on narrative story writing which will show their knowledge and understandings of the unit that has been taught. Keep an eye out on Seesaw for this to be shared soon after that.
Mathematics:
We will be focusing on number operations over the next few weeks beginning with a focus solely on addition, then subtraction, number bonds and the concept of part-part-whole to complete number calculations and solving worded problems. We will be specifically focusing on different addition and subtraction strategies that assist solving number problems, beginning with addition strategies.
Learning Intention - Maths:
We can solve addition problems by using different thinking strategies such as knowing one more/one less, knowing two more/two less, friends of tens facts and think big and counting on.
Winter Uniform ☃❄
We are making the move into our winter uniform so fingers crossed everything still fits! Please do not stress if they do not fit as there is a two week transition period. Please note that most days we will still need to have the door open to keep our classroom healthy and fresh so it may be worth your child having their jumper in their bag as it can get cold! Please note that the school changed rules last year to make boys trousers optional for winter. Please also name jumpers very clearly on both the neck tag and the white tag on the inside side to ensure they can be returned back to the owner.
Wheels After Meals 🚲⛸🛹
This will kick off on Tuesday of Week 2. Please make sure that your child brings their wheels (scooter, skateboards and roller skates) and their protective gear if they wish to participate. Your child will not be able to participate if they do not have the appropriate head wear and guards.
Parent meetings
Now that we are granted to have face to face meetings back on grounds, I welcome parents I spoke to at the end of last term (and anyone else of course) to organise a meeting. Rather than just request a meeting, I ask that you include in your email me a couple of suitable times and days that would work around your work and kids after-school schedules, preferrably afternoons after school at 3.10 or mornings before school (8.10 to 8.30 is a good time) are welcome too. The only times I ask you do not request is Tuesday afternoon due to staff meetings and Thursday afternoons. I am more than happy to have a casual meeting too as a check-in if you would just like to see how your child is going in Year 1, again feel free to just email me with some suggested suitable times to organise.
Thanks for your ongoing support,
Penny and Gemma
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