This week, students have continued looking deeper into their own environmental projects within the desert, ocean and rainforest learning spaces. An environmental conversation has come about in each of the learning areas outlining how each nature is affected by human impact or mother nature. Some of these examples include the cutting down of trees in rainforests, droughts in deserts and a strong focus we looked into carefully was plastic and how it has dramatically affected the coral and marine life of the oceans.
On Friday, students were shown a moving clip about how marine life are affected by plastic waste. From here, students were asked to respond to the clip by writing what they SEE, what they THINK and what WONDERS they have. Next week, not only will the students continue looking into how different contributors affect our natures, but express on how we all feel when we see this happening in our world and more importantly, what actions can we come up with to ensure we can all make a positive difference.
Students have also completed a number of different reading responses. Again, having a focus on the different parts of the environments within the world, students have connected (what they knew), extended (something they learnt) and challenged (a fact they found interesting). This particular reading response has not only given the students an opportunity to find out information in a home group context, it has also allowed them to individually think deeper about the topic and share back with the group.
Partitioning and place value has been a strong focus for our numeracy program this week. Students have been involved with a series of activities which allow them to understand place value in a different context such as partitioning (35 = 30 tens and 5 ones) or (127 = 100 hundreds and 20 tens and 7 ones). We have encouraged students to share their learning with you at home by not only explaining what partitioning means but how this process can help them work out how to read and say the numbers orderly. Some students have even pushed themselves into adding or subtracting two numbers using partitioning. For example, 34 + 28 could be written as 30 and 4 plus 20 and 8.
Next week, it will be BOOK WEEK!!!
Not only are we very excited to dress up as a character from a story on Friday 16th, we are inviting all students to bring to school their MOST FAVOURITE book to share with the rest of their home groups. Throughout the week, we will be having a number of opportunities where students can read aloud their favourite books back to the home group!
Year 1 Team