Prayer Liturgy this Friday 3rd May

Good afternoon parents,

This Friday the Year One students will be leading the prayer service based on the resurrection of Jesus. We would ask that all the children come clothes from Jesus' time. This can be something as simple as putting on a sheet and a tea towel around your child's head. Please see some examples below:





As it will be the casuals for Catholics day, the children may wear the costumes over their free dress.

Thank you for your ongoing support

Mrs. Birch and Miss Prowse

Welcome back to Term 2

Dear Parents,

Welcome back to Term 2.  I hope you have had a very restful and relaxing holiday and enjoyed some of this stunning weather! After two weeks off,  I'm sure the children will be ready to get back into it!

This term we have a focus on Mini beasts in Science, Aboriginal Culture and places of significance in our local environment in our HASS and Art units. We will also be looking at ANZAC day and how the importance of this day is recognised in our history.

We will also be looking at the narrative writing structure, the report writing structure and using the Talk 4 Writing Program to help the children learn these writing concepts. In Maths, we will be exploring the concepts of money, skip counting, the relationship between addition and subtraction, time and chance of events occurring.

We will also send home a news roster for this term, however, news groups have not changed. News will begin on Monday week 2.

Casuals for Catholic Day

A reminder that this Friday the 3rd of May is our Casuals for Catholics day where the children may wear free dress for a gold coin donation. This donation will be going towards helping families within the Bunbury diocese. Hopefully some of the children will be sporting their football colours for a big win this weekend...GO the Dockers...and I suppose... the Eagles too.

Below is some important information about homework and some of the programs and events that we will be running in class.

Targeting Mental maths book

The children are very excited to be starting their Targeting Mental Math book NEXT week (week 2) which was purchased at the beginning of the year.

Mental maths such as addition and subtraction, counting on, sequencing of numbers and number recognition are some of the concepts that we have covered in class. These will be reinforced in our Targeting Mental Maths book that will help your child gain confidence and apply mathematical concepts in a fun and supportive way. Please be aware that book is seen as a revision of concepts learnt in pre-primary, so it should be very achievable for them to complete at home.

In supporting our Math program in class, we would like for your child to complete one unit over one week. When completing questions with your child, we would ask that you support them by reading questions if necessary and marking the questions to give your child instant feedback on how they went and writing their score at the bottom of the page. 

An example of one unit

We encourage you to use a combination of visual and manipulative tools such as number lines, hundreds charts or counters to help your child complete these tasks.

Please do not spend more than 10 minutes at a time completing these activities and make it a part of your child's reading and sight word routine.

At the end of the week, the books will be collected by myself and checked to make sure your child understands the concepts covered. We ask that your child does not complete more than one unit a week as to ensure we can review these concepts in class if necessary.

Unit One will be due at the end of week 2 (Friday 10th May)

If you have any questions or concerns, please email me.


UR STRONG Friendology 101 JR

This is the wonderful friendship and social emotional program that we will be continuing this term to support the children in helping them make better friends and strengthen and foster healthy relationships.

Within the program the children may be starting to use the language of UR Strong: Friendology including: 'Friendship fire', 'Talk it out', 'Quick comebacks', 'Mean on purpose', 'healthy and unhealthy friendships' and the 'Friend-o-cycle'. We will be providing some information to parents on the blog as we complete the lessons of the program.

Parent Roster

As we often have double parent help across the two year one classes, Mrs. Birch and myself have decided that we will have one central parent roster for BOTH classes that will be located outside on the pin up board. Parent roster will start in week 2 and will run from 8.45-11.00am. I ask that you only put one name in each of the spaces and you only put your name down once as there were some parents who missed out last term.

If you have any questions please email me.

Thank you for your ongoing support

Miss Prowse

Exploring Data

In the last week of term, the children learnt about how they can read and interpret data as a part of our Maths unit on Data collection.

The children enjoyed participating in hands on activities in small groups grouping types of shapes and problem solving how they can represent this information in a graph.

The conversations and skills that the children took part in during this unit was a great indication of their understanding of data representation.

The children were then asked to formulate questions about their data to present to other groups of children, a great thing to watch!

We also loved finding our our favourite ice cream flavours and graphing our information on a picture graph. No surprises that bubblegum was the class favourite!

We had lots of fun learning about Data!

Miss Prowse

Week 9 Merit Award winner and Star Citizen for Compassion

Congratulations to our Week 9 Merit Award winner Jaxon and our Star Citizen for Compassion Zoe! 

You are both Year One super stars! 

Miss Prowse 

Reading eggs and Mathletics passwords

 .        

Good afternoon parents,

The lovely Mrs. Hughes has attached each of the children's Reading eggs and Mathletics passwords to their reading file under the top flap (or sticky taped to the file). Please feel free to use these over the holidays.

If you could practise letting your child log in and out of these programs, I would be very appreciative as we often use these logins for our English and Maths rotations so the quicker the children can log on, the more time they will have to complete their tasks.

Thank you for your on going support

Miss Prowse

Week 10 Information

Good evening parents,

A few messages for the last few days of the term :)

Sight words

As the holidays approach, Mrs. Hughes and myself will do a few more final tests to check your children's knowledge of their sight words. Please be aware that although we give a list of 25 sight words, we only test the first 10 words, THEN the next 15. We have found in the past when testing 25 all at once, the children do not retain the spelling of their words (both in isolation and in their writing) and they can also find the testing quite stressful.  If you receive a letter to say that your child has been tested, please check if they will receive the next set OR have to concentrate on the next 15 sight words.

If you have any questions or queries, please let me know. Please see the first 100 sight words below for your records.

I know my first 100 sight words!
Stage 1.1	Stage 1.2	Stage 1.3	Stage 1.4
at	up	will	down
in	if	day	out
it	had	way	about
on	but	may	part
and	not	her	has
a	him	over	find
I	did	number	one
from	get	long	said
with	can	all	your
this	an	call	two
that	then	each	do
for	them	first	many
is	than	oil	other
his	look	when	what
as	see	which	word
was	been	make	were
to	by	made	there
be	my	like	their
he	no	time	use
of	go	write	more
have	so	these	water
are	we	come	who
the	she	some	people
they	into	how	could
you	or	now	would

Easter Assembly

Next term the Year One students will be acting our the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday. This will be on the first Friday back at school (3rd May) at 8.50am. Please keep this date in your diaries and there may be a small costume request (nothing too big) for each of the children (shepherds, crowd people etc.)

Holiday packs

As the holidays draw near, I can feel your little ones bursting to get out and about and enjoy their break! I definitely encourage children to have a rest from school and enjoy their holidays but if you would like to do some writing about what you’re doing in the holidays, I am going to make up some little writing packs so your children can write about their adventures!.

In this pack, I’ll include:

- Some dotted thirds pages

- A guide of how the letters should sit on the line

- Some stimulus pictures that children can choose to write about if they feel so inclined

- A list of story starters

- Sequencing pictures that the children can cut out and write about

Let me please make it clear that THIS IS NOT COMPULSORY. This is just a way to encourage your little one to be more confident in their writing and letter formation when beginning term 2.

Some ways you can support your child with their writing at home....

- Read your child’s writing or have them read it back to you and comment on the positive aspects. For example “I really love the way you have used a capital letter at the start of your sentence”.

- Praise your child for having a go at writing words that are new to them.

- To develop word and spelling concepts it’s always fun to play games such as scrabble, boggle and even I spy eg. I spy something beginning with the ‘ch’ sound.

- Write notes, letters or stories together. Your child will love creating something with you!

- Keep a holiday journal where you might write down two sentences of what you did that day and how you might have felt after.

- Ask your child to label some of the things around the house with scrap paper - encourage them to sound out all the words and to have a go even if they are not sure.

- Ask your child to write to someone else in the class over the holidays - this can include your child telling them what they have been doing and even asking questions of what they might be up to.

- Use fun and funky coloured writing implements...kids go crazy for gel pens, textas and coloured pencils or crayons!

- To practise letter formation, the best thing I have found is for children to use a thick paint brush and a bucket of water and let them go crazy with it on the wall...they will be able to see their writing, with no mess for you! Another alternative is to use chalk on the ground or wall which will wash off with water.

- Display their writing at home...children love seeing their work up and the fact they did it at home is even more special.

I will have some of these packs available on Thursday for the children to take home but if you are not going to be here before this day, please let me know. 

I have also spoken to a couple of parents and I just wanted to make sure everyone is getting my blog posts so I have emailed this one just incase. Make sure you have logged onto our actual blog and typed your email into the follow me tab which will then lead you to a security screen which asks you to type in some letters or numbers.

Thank you for your on going support

Miss Prowse