Grade 1/2L

As we near the end of Term Two and the winter chill sets in, 1/2L has continued to enjoy a busy and rewarding term. We’ve taken time to reflect on our progress during the assessment and reporting period and celebrate just how much we’ve grown. This term, we also welcomed Abbey Hayes, a Deakin student completing her final placement, into our classroom for four weeks. Abbey showed great initiative, and we loved having her teach us and will welcome her back in Term Three for another four-week block. Our students also continue to enjoy the swimming program at Bluewater, where they develop their water safety knowledge and swimming skills. A special congratulations goes to our Grade One and Two students for stepping up as positive role models and leaders for our younger students during this time.

Our literacy block has continued to run smoothly, with students becoming more confident and familiar with the routines of our programs. In Sounds Write, we have been focusing on blending and segmenting skills, with students growing in confidence when reading and writing polysyllabic words. During Morphology Monday, students are developing a solid understanding of prefixes and suffixes and how they can change the meaning of base words. It’s been great to see students reading with improved fluency and expression during our structured sessions. Many are now rereading for understanding and offering each other thoughtful ‘grow and glow’ feedback during partner reading. Our text-based unit has centred around the picture book ‘Feathers for Phoebe’ over the last few weeks. The story’s message, we are all special just as we are, along with its rich illustrations, made it an ideal text for exploring descriptive language. Students have learnt about narrative structure, noun phrases, and have worked on expanding their vocabulary by using more interesting and precise adjectives in their writing.

In Mathematics, we have been focusing on subtraction. Through hands-on games and activities, students explored a range of strategies such as using backwards 10s facts, doubles, and halves, many of which were familiar from our work on addition, to solve problems. The more we practised, the more exciting it became to notice the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction. We also touched on fact families and were pretty impressed to discover that knowing one number sentence could lead us to knowing three others!

In Inquiry, students have continued exploring the concept of life in the past and present. They compared how family structures have changed over time and explored that many tasks had to be completed by hand. We highlight of the unit was making butter in a jar and then tasting it on fairy bread! Although there were a lot of sore arms afterwards! Students also looked at how toys have evolved and used their imaginations to design creative and futuristic toys of their own.

In Respectful Relationships, our focus has been on diversity and personal strengths. Students shared family traditions and cultural practices and were surprised by how many similarities and differences they discovered among their classmates. We also explored the idea that everyone has unique strengths. This led to some fun and lively role play activities, where students showed off their creative flair and teamwork with some entertaining and powerful performances.

A big well done to all the students in 1/2L for a fantastic semester of learning. It’s been a pleasure to see their growth and celebrate their achievements. We’re already looking forward to more learning adventures in Term Three!

- Miss Lowe