Dear 1/2 Neighbourhood 1 families,
Welcome to Week 4! It has been a lovely few weeks as we continue to settle into our routines in the 1/2 Neighbourhood. The students have been focusing on their collaboration skills and the need to be respectful, kind, and active listeners as we deepen our understanding of who we are as individuals and as a whole neighbourhood.
We are now well into our Welcome Project and have spent the last three weeks exploring who we are. Students have participated in a number of provocations and workshops including designing maths games, authoring short stories and autobiographies, creating self and family portraits and building our dream homes with construction materials.
Daisy – “I made animals with building blocks because I like animals.”
Dexter – “I have been collaborating to build.”
Rafael – “I have been writing nouns about me like Minecraft.”
Riley – “I collaborated to make a campsite because I like camping.”
Ronnie – “I wrote a storybook about what would happen in our neighbourhood if no one cleaned up and monsters came in over night to eat the mess!”
Across the neighbourhood, take-home reader routines are now in full swing. Please assist your child in developing a consistent and enjoyable home reading routine each day by encouraging them to read aloud and record their books on the sheet enclosed in the folder.
Neighbourhood Sculpture
In a recent neighbourhood meeting, the students decided they would like to represent who we are by creating a neighbourhood sculpture. This week, students took inspiration from several artists to design plans of what they believe the sculpture should look like. Common themes that came through include showing our favourite colours and shapes. Next week, students will begin creating the sculpture. We look forward to seeing the end product!
Favourite Colours
Students in Neighbourhood 1 have been excited to create things using their favourite colours. Building on from the neighbourhood birthday pictorgraph display made in week 2, Daisy from 1/2E suggested we make a graph display of our neighborhood’s favourite colours. Students have been using mixed media to create coloured squares that will form a basis of this maths investigation into data collection and graphing.
Our Families – writing and portraits
To better get to know each other, students have been sharing information about their families. During provocations, students have been creating watercolour portraits and written biographies about people in their family. In workshops, students have been learning about simple sentences and how to use nouns, verbs and adjectives to write a sentence about a special family member. These sentences have launched investigations and curiosities into other types of words, ways of describing things, and how words can change from nouns to verbs such as the word ‘love’ – a popular word when talking about family!
Maths and Reading targets
Following the initial settling in and testing period of the year, students are now working in target teaching groups to develop key literacy and numeracy skills. Students are working on letter formation, phonemic awareness, word building and comprehension skills in literacy targets. In maths targets, students have been working on number formation, skip counting, 100s charts, modeling numbers up to 1000 and extensions into 5 and 6 digit place value concepts. All homegroups have been enjoying the game ‘mastermind’ to practice saying numbers.