Grade 1 Term 4 2022 Curriculum News

Dear parents,

This Term Newsletter will provide you with information about your children’s upcoming teaching and learning experiences in the new term. There is also plenty of additional information provided via Compass throughout the school year, so please make a point of touching base regularly.

Reading:

This year the Grade 1s have had access to hundreds of high-quality texts to select from in their classroom libraries, this will continue in term 4.

An early focus for this term is to refresh how the students can select Just Right texts, where they can read most of the words, and enjoy the subject. Throughout the term, there will be a weekly focus on different comprehension strategies, to ensure students understand and enjoy what they are reading. We will be summarising and retelling, activating prior knowledge, predicting, making connections, inferring, visualising, questioning and critiquing. The Grade 1s will also engage in readers theatre weekly.

Writing:

It has been fantastic witnessing the growth that our Grade One students have achieved so far this year! Throughout our daily Writer’s Workshop sessions, students will continue to be supported to develop their love of writing, be encouraged to see themselves as authors and celebrate their writing with peers.

As the term progresses, students will continue to explore the stages of the Writing Cycle. They will be supported in selecting ‘Just Right’ writing ideas as well as plan, draft, revise, edit and publish their writing. Students will continue to produce a range of imaginative and informative texts of their choosing. During mini lessons, students will explore different text types and further develop their knowledge of grammar, word choice, spelling, and punctuation.

During Word Study, students will continue to build their knowledge of digraphs (two letters that form one sound), consonant blends (cl, tr, fl), the Oxford 400 sight words, as well as a range of different spelling conventions.

Maths:

The grade 1s have had a fabulous year in Maths to date. We have planned daily activities that have allowed children to both consolidate learning and challenge themselves at their own level.

This term we will be working on counting collections using place value knowledge, telling the time to the half hour and working on duration using months, weeks, days and hours. We will work on recognising, modelling, writing and ordering numbers. Children will solve and represent addition and subtraction problems using a range of strategies and work on repetitive processes for solving problems. Towards the end of term, we will work on revising important aspects of the Grade 1 curriculum covered earlier in the year.

Inquiry:

Throughout the Inquiry unit in this term, students will have the opportunity to explore several different areas in our Inquiry unit ‘From Paddock to Plate’. By the end of the unit, students should have a deeper understanding of how food gets from the paddock to our plate and how we use animals and plants for food, clothing, and shelter. They will also investigate how a plant grows and what it needs, how plastic affects our environment, how food packaging materials are varied and how some waste and packaging can be recycled. Students will also research how product packaging is designed and created for a particular purpose.

All grade 1 students will have an opportunity to attend an incursion (week 6) coordinated by Urban Upcycle to learn more about the environmental impact of plastics and packaging.

Each year level team has provided their families with a detailed newsletter such as this. If you are interested in reading about all the exciting things happening across the rest of the school these can be accessed online at our school website from early next week.

Grade 1 Team