This past week we have begun our new unit of inquiry: How we organise ourselves. This unit will focus on this central idea: Community spaces can have positive effects on the well-being of its community members. We have taken a walkabout just outside the school walls to have a look at the desert, then we worked with a partner to develop a See, Think, Wonder poster which helps us build our ideas to explore within this unit. We have brainstormed our ideas about spaces and what types of spaces we like to be in.
In literacy, we had our first handwriting lesson which mainly focused on how we seat, grip our pencil and slant our paper, depending on if we write with our left or right hand. We got ready for handwriting practise by stretching our bodies, especially our hands. The letter ‘c’ was our letter of the week which we tried very hard to keep between the lines.
Our phonics sessions have focused on the short vowels ‘i’ (as in kit) and ‘a’ (as in cat) this week. We have written some familiar and new words building on our knowledge of sounds and letter patterns.
The reading strategy we practised this week was how to read-to-self and what this looks like during our guided reading lessons. Each student has been placed with a reading group which works at their appropriate reading level. Within our reading groups we discuss a book, what might happen in the book and practise our reading. We also build our reading skills through a variety of activities.
Your child has now brought home a folder with two books from our book boxes. Please read this book with your child, the books should be read more than once so your child can build fluency and comprehension. Once that is done, please return the books so your child can choose two new books to read. Some students have been given a list of words to study, please work with them to read these words and knowing them will support their reading development.
RAZKids is our platform for home learning, yesterday we had a look to see who had logged in and had been reading using this platform. Please support your child in reading English for at least 20 minutes every day. We discussed that this equals 140 minutes every week! Your child can also record their reading which will show us how their reading fluency is growing.
For writing, we have created a list of ideas which we might write about. From there, the students will add details to their topic and begin writing about their ideas.
In maths, we have continued with our ‘Leaping Numbers’ to identify a variety of patterns and discover a secret number. We have also continued with data handling, taking surveys, working on identifying what we found out from these surveys. We worked with pictographs and then answered questions about these types of graphs.
Please see photos here.
Next week:
In maths:
- identify patterns and begin learning about shape and space
- begin working with shape and space
In literacy:
- phonics work
- guided reading: strategies, skills and comprehension
- reading strategy: how do we pick a book to read?
- writing our ideas into short pieces of writing
- begin exploring poetry and the features of poetry
In UOI:
- walkabout to explore the ABIS’ play and facility areas
- compare the desert and our community space
- add to our brainstorming chart
- vocabulary to use with this unit
- discuss what the central idea and lines of inquiry mean to us
Monday: swimming
Tuesday: library, please remind your child to pack their library folder the night before so they can choose and enjoy new books
Thursday: Professional Development day for teachers