Our week.....

Another busy week here in Grade One with lots of learning, going over routines, making great bonds with classmates, connections to past knowledge and building on what we already know! Phew we have been busy!!

On Tuesday's we visit the Library. It is a really nice time for us all to have some quiet time and look through the books, read to each other and of course have a read aloud. We love reading here in our class :-)

Maths

We have been collecting data to graph. This week all the students came up with their own questions that they would like to ask their classmates. What's your favourite ice cream flavour? What colour are your eyes? What colour car do you like? Who is your favourite super hero? and many more. Once they had collected their data they had to show the result on a bar graph. They all did a fabulous job!

We also had Maths centres during the week where we rotated around different activities. We used number lines, tens frames, filling in the missing numbers, addition and subtraction and lots more.

We had a great question from our calendar time - 'Pick-A-Problem'. On Friday we had to estimate how many students it would take to get from one end of the classroom to the other. We all had a guess and then lined up to work out the problem. It took 30 Grade Ones! 

Interactions

We had a bit of fun creating and expressing the way we can feel. We made play dough expressions and then we had to try and match the same feeling on our own face. We had a great laugh doing this!

Reading

We have been doing guided reading in class and have been enjoying reading books together and talking about what we see in the pictures and what we think the story is about. We also made puppets which we will use for role play. We will post these on your child's individual 

Computer Lab

We are very excited to tell you we sent our very own class tweet on Thursday. A very big thank you to Mr. Jon for connecting us with a KG class in Luxembourg. As a class we have our very own twitter account and will be chatting with our friends a lot this year.

The students at ISPP are always very lucky to have special guests visit out school! Last Wednesday, all the students in Elementary were treated to a special performance in the Black Box Theatre by Worldship Orchestra from Japan. They enjoyed listening to the music and even recognised some of the songs. Near the end, one of ISPP's very own teachers, Ms. Natalya, joined in and played the piano. It was amazing!

Our unit of inquiry into 'Interactions' - we have been working toward our central idea - 'Being aware of how we interact with people can help us to make good choices for ourselves and others'.

We have been doing activities where we have to interact and co-operate with each other:

Lastly on Friday we helped Benjamin celebrate his 6th birthday. A very happy Birthday to you Benjamin - we hope you had a fabulous day :-)

Have a great weekend everyone!

Back To School Night!

Wednesday 24 August

• Elementary Back to School Night

6:00 - 8:00pm

• Black Box Theatre

KINDERGARTEN - GRADE 5

Please join us for an overview of your child's single subject lessons, an opportunity to chat with single subject teachers, and to spend time with your child's homeroom teacher in the classroom.

Another Busy Week!

Our week was full of continuing to master our classroom and school routines. We discussed our safety drills as a class - Fire drill, Lock down and Safe haven. The children were very good at following instructions and know exactly what they have to do for each situation. Well done Grade One :-)

Next week we will start our reading program. The children will take one book home each day, they should read this book to an adult at home and then that adult needs to sign the reading log so I can see that they have read to someone. The following day they are able to change for a new book ONLY if they have had their reading log signed. Please help your child at home with reading everyday and also remind them to bring the book back to school the following day. If they don't bring the book back they can't take a new one home and then they will miss out on enjoying reading a new book. Thanks in advance for your help with this. More information will be posted under the Language tab at the top of the home page. 

The following week each child will bring home either five sight words or five spelling words that they will learn for the week and then be tested on every Friday. These words will not only help the children with reading but also their writing skills.

Recount writing

On Monday morning we usually write a recount of what we did in the weekend. The students are doing a great job at being risk takers by attempting to write words that they're not so sure how to write. We know that if we come to a word that we're not sure about we can sound it out and write down the letters that we hear. In Grade One it is ok to make a mistake, because that is how we learn :-)

We also spent some time with Ms Dee (Learning support) and Ms Hannah (K-8 School Counsellor) refreshing our memories about 'Gecko's Choice' and to introduce this to all of our new students at ISPP. We worked in small groups and drew and wrote about all the things we know about 'Gecko's Choice'.

PE

I went along to check out what has been happening in PE. The students were playing a hilarious game called 'toilet tag'. Ask your child how to play this game, it really is very funny.

Our unit of Inquiry - 'Who We Are - Interactions' had students this week trying out many different activities where they worked in groups. Students had to work together to complete tasks and work as a team. This involved a lot of discussion, team work and co-operation. 

They had a challenge to see how many blocks they could stack on top of each other before it fell!

They brainstormed what they thought a positive interaction might be and what a negative interaction could be.

We helped each other find out what two numbers added together make ten.

Friday afternoon we got to see our Grade 4 buddies. Together we decided we would do some role plays. In groups of 4 we had to choose either a positive interaction or a negative interaction and as a group work out how to act out. We were only practising today but next week we will be recording the role plays and putting them on each students individual page so you can see them.

Here we are practising:

Finally we have helped 2 people this month celebrate their 6th birthday. Suixin had her birthday on the very first day of school and Liam had his today. A very happy birthday to you both!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Hopes and Concerns Conferences

Tuesday 16 August & Wednesday 17 August

(EARLY DISMISSAL FOR ALL ELEMENTARY STUDENTS AT 12:00 AFTER LUNCH)

Dear Parents/Caregivers,

Please remember that we will hold our Hopes and Concerns Conferences this week from 12:30 - 4:30pm.

This is an opportunity for you to speak to me directly without your child to discuss your hopes and concerns for your child this year.

I look forward to meeting all of you!

What a great first week!

We have just finished out first full week of school!

We have been very busy this week with our Unit of Inquiry learning about 'Interactions' and checking each day about how we feel and sharing the interactions we may have had. We worked in groups and each group discussed and brainstormed about different ways we can interact with people. It was a completely open-ended activity where the children could share their thoughts and feelings. We then shared our ideas as a whole class at the end. 

We did a lot of work in small groups this week for Unit of Inquiry, Language and Maths. We talked about what it was like to work in groups and what you need to do in a group to successfully complete an activity. Communication and good listeners were the two main goals we worked on this week.

We spent this week reviewing Language by going back over our letter names and sound. We also spent some time on long vowel sounds and blends. We also wrote our first Journal entry about our weekend and the children did a great job writing in their books independently for the first time in Grade One! We practiced our handwriting and concentrated on remembering where to place letters on the line when writing. We also checked that we could remember how to write both the upper case and lower case letters all correctly. 

Maths

In Maths we have also been doing a lot of revision. We practiced writing our numbers and making sure they were written correctly, we did a lot of counting - all the way to 100, skip counting in twos, fives and tens and singing lots of fun number songs. In small groups we rotated around various activities which included - showing different ways to make numbers from 1-20, snakes and ladders, dice addition games, practiced writing our numbers, created pictures using different shapes and much more!

Buddies

Friday was such a busy day! We also met our Class buddies for the first this year. We are partnered up with Mrs Alison and her Grade 4 class. During Friday afternoon we had a couple of activities to do. First we had the chance to meet our buddies and get to know them. We did this by talking to each other about what we like and don't like. Then we drew each others portrait and wrote all the things we found out about each other. Once finished we got to read or listen to a story. We had a great time meeting our new buddies and chatting to the 'big kids.' It really is a great opportunity for our Grade Ones to have buddies that are higher up the school and we can't wait to see them again!

Have a great weekend everyone!

A full class and swimming!

Delighted to introduce you to our final two friends who joined our class today.

Swimming

Our first swimming lesson was fantastic! Everyone showed great confidence in the pool and enjoyed cooling off after lunch.