Dear Families of Neighbourhood 1,
Firstly, a very big thank you to you all for your support in this first term. We feel overwhelmed by your kind and encouraging words and look forward to continuing to work with you for the remainder of the year. The students in Neighbourhood 1 have worked hard over the last 10 weeks covering topics such as decoding strategies, summarising, narrative writing, exploring the features of non-fiction texts, sentence structure, simple and compound sentences, patterns, place value, addition, shape and time. We have also spent time learning collaborative skills such as communicating, turn taking and giving and receiving feedback. Overall, the growth in students so far has been exciting to witness. We have celebrated many events including Harmony Day, the walk-a-thon and a talk from a zookeeper. Next term, we look forward to taking part in yoga sessions and will explore opportunities to learn beyond the classroom.
Inquiry: Our focus in inquiry and during provocation sessions has shifted from animals and the environment to exploring change. Within that, we have learnt about animal adaptation, climate change and advances in technology. After looking at changes in the past, students are now thinking about and predicting what the future might hold.
Literacy: In literacy workshops the last two weeks we’ve been learning to make compound sentences using conjunctions BECAUSE they help us explain and elaborate on our ideas. Students have been sharing experimenting with the conjunctions but, so, because and or. We’ve been giving opinions about our favourite things and backing our opinions up with reasons. Some students have leaned into activism and written persuasive sentences about looking after the environment so we can protect it for the future. Compound sentences have also made their way into students work in provocations as students create written pieces about the adaptations animals will need to make to survive in the future.
Maths: In maths, we have continued to learn about time with students practicing reading analogue times to the nearest quarter hour. We will continue to practice this skill daily. We have also learnt about duration and how to order events from shortest to longest in duration as well as listing events that take a certain amount of time. To conclude the term, we revisited addition strategies and put them to use when working to solve problems.