Great Learning Happening in Year One!

Each fortnight we like to put a spotlight on the great learning happening in a particular grade in our school. In this report the spotlight is on Year One.

In English, the Year One classes are continuing to engage in their reading group sessions with a high level of engagement and motivation. The students are enjoying having their own decodable reader each week, which enables them to use the reader during group sessions and practise reading the text at home. The decodable reader the students have week is linked with the class sound focus which assists the students in building their knowledge of more complex letter sound combinations. Each day students read the class reader together to build reading fluency and work towards their goal of reading a target amount of words per minute. Students take part in a daily dictation within their groups where words containing the sound focus are included in the sentence the students need to record.

During writing our Year One students are learning to construct quality sentences to include in their narative writing pieces. Over the past fortnight teachers have been modelling how to include adjectives to sentences to make them more interesting. The students have enjoyed using think/pair/share to verbalise their interesting sentences before attempting to write them in their books. The students have been listening to a variety of different fairytales to gain inspiration to write their own fairy tale narrative. During this process the students were so keen to share their thinking and discuss their progress with their peers. When students were happy with their story plans in draft form, they were able to progress to drafting the orientation of their fairytales.

During Maths our Year One students have been busy investigating 2D shapes in a fun and hands-on way! Through exciting activities, they explored different shapes, counting their sides, vertices, and parallel lines while developing their mathematical thinking. The students enjoyed using shape hunts around the classroom and playground to find real-world examples of circles, squares, triangles, and more! They worked in small groups to sort and classify shapes based on their properties, discussing what makes each shape unique.

In Religion, the students have been learning all about  the season of Lent. The students know that Lent lasts for 40 days which is the length of time that Jesus spent in the desert to fast and pray leading up to Holy Week. The Year One students learnt that Lent is a time to remember Jesus' fasting in the desert. Each student made a Lenten promise, which is something they would give up during Lent that would be challenging for them just like the fasting in the desert was challenging for Jesus. Here are some of the Lenten promises made by our Year One friends.

In Science, Year One have been working on a unit titled ‘Living Things’. In this unit, the students have observed the external features of living things. They are learning to describe the features of both animals and plants. Students now understand the reason why plants are classified as living things and have recorded their observations in their Science Journals. Students have enjoyed investigating how living things can be grouped according to their external features. The highlight of the unit has been creating a birdfeeder that is appealing to a variety of birds and is durable for the outdoors.