The Grade One students thoroughly enjoyed sports day last Friday. It was so nice to see students engaged and having a go at all of the fun activities. The students loved learning new skills and participating in a variety of sports. The sports included soccer, basketball, dancing, tunnel ball, muay thai, an obstacle course, parachute, skipping, football, cricket and yoga.
The Grade One students have enjoyed participating in the intensive swimming program and water safety lessons at school. They have been learning about water safety, how to walk around a pool safely and being responsible with our own belongings. Students have been listening attentively to their swim instructors to improve their swimming ability and skills.
The Grade 1 cohort commenced Book Week by going for a visit to the Avondale Heights Library, where we were immersed in the Shortlisted Books and celebrated the awesome authors and illustrators who won awards for 2024. On Tuesday, students enjoyed dressing up as their favourite book character and watching others students showcasing their creative costumes during the parade. In Literacy this week, we have been focused on the winner of best picture story book ‘Gymnastica Fantastica’ and writing creatively to respond to this text. What a fun week!!!!
The Grade One students have been exploring 2D shapes. We have sorted them according to size, number of sides
and colour. Students have been learning the names and properties of 2D shapes and exploring how to halve a shape.
In Week One and Two of Term Three, the Grade One students reviewed our SWPBS recess and lunch expectations,
along with other school agreements.
Our students and student SRC leaders have been reinforcing that:
- The oval and the Futsal Court are the only areas where balls can be kicked
- Balls can be bounced on the basketball courts
- Running games are only to take place on the oval
- The Grade One decking area is for walking and passive play
- We walk on concrete paths
- If students don’t finish eating inside the classroom, they can eat their lunch/snack on the synthetic grass area
near the canteen
In Maths, Grade One students have been learning to measure and compare the mass of objects using a scale. We made our own class balancing scale and used this to find items that were heavier, lighter and the same mass. Students were required to find 5 things lighter than a glue stick and 5 things heavier than the glue stick.
In Inquiry, Grade 1 students have been exploring decomposition. We placed the pumpkin into different conditions and observed how they changed. The most noticeable was the water tub and air tub, we observed mould, fur and spores! Yuck! We have also been exploring how to grow seeds and what plants need to survive. Students created their own greenhouses to house a seed and will observe the growth process. They wrote a procedure for how to plant seeds in a greenhouse.
The Grade One students have been exploring ways to measure and compare length using informal units. This week, students worked collaboratively in pairs to compare the length of different sized strings and order them from shortest to the longest. They measured the length of the strings using unifix cubes. We have also been consolidating our knowledge of place value by matching 2 digit numbers with their written form and visual representations, focusing on seeing the number as ‘how many tens?’ ‘How many ones?’
Grade One students listened to the story, ‘Lest We Forget’. We discussed ANZAC day and the importance of remembering. We created a ‘Peace is in our hands’ display, where students used photographs of their hands and made a poppy to hold inside of them.
In Grade One we listened to stories about Harmony Day and linked the idea to our Inquiry unit, in which we are celebrating different cultures. This week, students have learnt about India. After making Rangoli, students wrote a recount about the learning experience.
In Numeracy, we have been consolidating our understanding of trusting the count, by making numbers in different ways using a variety of materials. Students have been grouping items into 2s, 5s and 10s to allow faster counting of collections.
Through the Inquiry Unit ‘Celebrating Differences’, the Grade 1’s have discussed how we are all different. We have shared our origins, cultures and discussed how we celebrate events in different ways. We plan to learn from each other and celebrate the diversity in our classroom, looking at the different foods, games, music and traditions we celebrate. This week we focused on a dish that represented our culture. We also learnt all about the country Italy and were immersed in the traditional Italian game Bocce. Students listened to Italian music on a mandolin and joined in by dancing along to the music.
Grade One students have been creating class feelings charts to display the Zones of Regulation. Students have learnt about what emotions and feelings they may have in each zone, and what that looks like. We explored a range of emotions and feelings and how these are shown through our body language and facial expressions. Students will now practise identifying what zone they are in throughout the day, and move their names or faces to match that zone.
The Grade One students have settled well into their new classrooms with some old friends and got to meet some
new friends. We have established routines and expectations to set the students up for a successful year. This has
included thinking about an area the students want to improve in and creating a learning goal. Each class came up
with expectations and drew a picture of what this looks like.
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