Year 1

Dear Year One Families,

Year one students have had a great start to the 2021 academic year. Students in both classes have adapted quickly to classroom routines and are soaking up new content like sponges.

This term our maths topics have seen us focus on number, simple geometry and measurement. We have investigated the place value of two-digit numbers and learnt to skip-count in 2s, 5s and 10s. We have learnt to identify horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines and we have investigated the mass of objects using balancing scales.

Our reading and writing has been supported by our daily phonics practice and we love our sessions with Fred the Frog. Our writing unit has seen us draft descriptions and year one have gotten pretty good at using descriptive language. We wrote detailed descriptions about a number of characters including The Cat in the Hat, Mia the Mermaid and The Big Bad Wolf.

Our integrated studies unit has allowed us to delve into the past and study our own family history. Congratulations to students and families for completing such impressive family tree projects.

Thank you to parents for your continued effort at home. Children’s reading and comprehension can be improved ten-fold with regular one-to-one reading each night. Year one students are expected to read to an adult for approximately 10-20 minutes each night. Students will bring 5 home-reader books from the library each week and children should be able to read these to you with minimal assistance. Having a chat about the book after reading is a great way to consolidate comprehension and is a very important skill for reading. Please use the prompts below as discussion points when reading with your child.

• Can you tell me what happened in that story?
• Who did we meet in that story?
• Can you think of three words to describe that character?
• What was the main problem in the book? How was it resolved?
• Why do you think that character did that? What would you have done differently?
• What time of the day did this happen? How do you know?
• What do you think our next book will be about?
• Was that book fiction or non-fiction? How do you know?

We are delighted with year one’s effort throughout term one and look forward to another enjoyable term in April.