After a nice 3-day return to school last week, we are all back for a very busy and exciting Term 2!
This week for our inquiry the students spent some time reflecting on what they have completed so far within each of their respective project groups: Animations, Story writing and Puppetry. We asked the students the work they completed from last term, provide details about each of their unique stories and finally what steps they will need to work towards next. For the Animations group, most students have finished creating their characters and are now onto bringing their stories together with the photos and creating animation stories. The story writing group have continued finishing their stories, editing to improve and eventually will publish them on a laptop. And finally, the puppetry project group have begun the process of creating storyboards within small groups as well as combining ideas to develop the best story they can.
Our focus for literacy this week was about describing – or in particular, describing our characters/settings. Here, the students have had experiences of how we describe characters or settings in stories, in the animations or generally in conversation. We had a close look at adjectives and how important they are in describing something or someone. During a reading response opportunity, students were able to identify the describing words and how they might be able to use these same words in line with their own stories.
A new learning focus in maths has begun and will continue for most of the Term – Addition and Subtraction! We all started with understanding what addition means, the sign ‘+’ and how it is used in maths terms. And finally, the different words we use for addition – adding, plus, together etc. From here, the students were introduced to ‘renaming’ or ‘regrouping.’ Using MAB blocks or counters, students were able to experience playing with place values of ones and tens – 10 unit blocks can equal 1 ten. From there, we linked this back to addition and how sometimes when we add numbers together, we need to ‘carry’ or ‘rename’ our place values.
As busy as this term has started, we thought we’d place a few reminders below for everyone that are coming up:
Reminder 1: Reading Journals! Tomorrow, all students will be visiting the library to change over their books! Remind your kids to ensure their reading journals are packed!
Reminder 2: Walkathon 8th May! Please read up on the upcoming walkathon! All of the details for parents have been provided in the previous blog post. If you are unable to print out the running/collecting money sheet for your children, we have copies at school that we can provide. And finally, please support as much as you can! Sponsor sponsor sponsor!!!
Reminder 3: Junior School Assembly! There will be a brief junior school assembly this Friday at our usual spot.
Reminder 4: Whole School Assembly! Next Friday, there will be a special mothers/carers day assembly where the school community will come together to celebrate a lovely occasion.
If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact one of the Year 1 teachers!
Year 1 Team
To finish with, below are a series of quotes the students learnt from the recent Anzac Day inquiry from last week:
Lisa “My dad was in the second world war and he came back to tell me a couple of stories. My dad offered some chewing gum to the enemy who was Japanese”
Adi “On my mum’s side, two people from my family went to war. They both made journals and they both came back alive and they were given medals”
Charlotte “A journal is something you write stories inside with. It could be stories about the war or even stories about your life”
Max B “My grandfather went to war and he won lots of medals”
Why do we get medals after we get back from war?
Max A “My great grandmother is 91 years old”
Felix B “He saved many people from the war, but he also died from a gunshot”
Tucker “He got shot by a Turkish person, but he also helped Turkish people too!”
Makaila “People should live in harmony”
Vivienne “My dad’s grandfather in the second world war, where he got on an aero plane but there are too many people. He missed out, but the same aero plane took and got shot down by the enemy – everyone died”
Kiaan “It was a story that was very lucky her great grandfather didn’t die”
Tucker “It’s important to know and respect Simpson and how many people he saved”
Jack B “Some people want to know how your grandfather’s came back alive”
Aurelian “You don’t have to know about your family’s past”
Jared “I want to learn about these stories so I can teach other people”
Iggy – “Anzac D is important because it’s full of sad stories to tell families back home”
Thomas “Because we can learn from stories”
Owen “We learn from stories lessons from older people when things were different”
Ivy “For some people they might have a good idea and you might work together on that idea”
Edie “When you tell stories, you can remember the people and you can think about when they were little”
Tucker “Some people tell stories to learn more stories”
