During our first session this week, the students walked into their neighbourhood areas to find several books, pictures, background sounds and videos that all correlated with stories. The students were invited to read, watch and listen to the many different forms of stories and to discuss what they find. We provided this opportunity for students because they wanted to look further into stories and their importance in the world. After the experience, students had the opportunity to reflect and further discuss their findings with their peers. They were also asked to complete a series of questions:
- What was their favourite story they read?
- Why do you think their chosen story is important?
- In general, why are stories important in our world?
After their reflections, the whole neighbourhood came together to discuss their answers – particularly the last question in the reasons why stories are important in our community and/or world. This week, we are encouraging students to go home and discuss with the community why others may think stories are important. Therefore, this week, we’d like you to talk with your child about the importance of stories in your lives which, in turn, they can bring to the discussion next week.
Students are on the finishing end of their Math Machine addition creations. It has been pleasing to see students give the teachers plenty of feedback of their enjoyment with recent project work in line with our maths focuses. Students are continuing their development and extension of subtraction skills – from single digits to double digits and those that can rename and regroup from higher place values.
Spelling will be a big focus for everyone this week in guided reading, whole group reading and writing tasks. In line with our ‘editing training,’ we’ve encouraged students to continue having a go at spelling unknown words by using their letter recognition/knowledge and blends. If students are still finding the word challenging, they will be encouraged to spell within their mini spelling books. They are also to ask their peers before approaching a teacher for further assistance. During guided reading, each student will be completing a list of spelling phonics/blends from their chosen texts. These words will be chosen and focused around the spelling blends students misspelled in their recent test.
To finish, here are some fantastic quotes directly from the students from the above questions:
Why are stories important?
Max B “Stories make your smart and make you learn things”
Heidi “Stories can be fun to read and read to your kids”
Evie “Stories help you learn more and become more intelligent”
Oberoi “They teach you many things about life”
Dara “Makes you feel lots of different feelings that you want to feel”
Zoe “They are fun to read because they have lots of things in common – like the indigenous stories have kangaroos on the front of their books, which is an Australian animal”
Iggy “They make my imagination go crazy”
Isaiah “Stories are important because they can take you away from reality and put you in a different place – it could be another world, it could be another land or with many different characters or cultures”
Jack B “They teach me to be kind and generous to my friends”
How do stories make us smarter?
Wilco “I think information about stuff in a book, like about plants, it will tell you what plants do and how they grow. (Teacher) – “do you know what sort of book that is?” “A nonfiction book.”
Tayma “I think stories help us learn to read because of the letters, because there are some upper-case and lower-case letters.”
Louis “The story kind of tells you what to do and what not to do. By people writing it in the book and you writing it?”
How do they decide what is the right thing to do?
Louis “Maybe by discussing it with other people.”
Edie “The Boy Who Cried Wolf, that can teach you not to scream if something bad hasn’t happened, because if you do nobody will come to you if you need help…”
Why did the author want to put it in a book?
Tucker “The lesson – you need to be scared and thoughtful but not too scared.”
“Maybe it would help people…so they could learn the lesson because if they did not learn that lesson it might happen to them..”
Year 1 Team
