Good afternoon everyone!

This Friday the 7th May 2021, students will have the opportunity to purchase gifts from the Mother’s Day Student Gift Shop. Students will be attending the stall during class time to complete their purchases, with gifts priced from $1.00 to $6.00.

There is also an opportunity to enter the Mother’s Day Raffle to win 1 of 3 gift packs. Tickets for this are available online: https://www.raffletix.com.au/?ref=d9n3g

Congratulations to Will, Paris, Eleazar and Raavi for reading for 50 nights and Harjas for reading for 75 nights! It was a wonderful surprise to see the progress you have made over the holidays and your dedication to reading, well done!

Congratulations to Vedika and Hannah who have achieved 25 nights of reading! It is wonderful to see so many students from 1SD and 1KJ achieving their reading goals, well done!

A huge congratulations to our enthusiastic readers, Oliver and Harjas, who have reached 50 nights of reading! Your dedication to reading is wonderful; keep up the amazing work!

Students across year 1 have spent much of term 1 learning all about living and non-living things, including both plants and animals. Just like real life scientists, we have been exploring and investigating this concept through hands-on experiences to help students develop their knowledge and understanding.

Planting Seeds

Last week 1SD and 1KJ became gardeners for science and planted their very own seeds to investigate plant growth. Prior to planting our seeds we worked as a group to create a procedure for planting, and what we need to do to ensure we provide our plants with space, light, nutrients (soil), water and air. Students came up with a variety of different possibilities, however, agreed it is most important to provide the seeds with lots of soil, water them regularly, place them in the sunlight and ensure they have access to fresh air. Following this discussion we worked in small groups to plant our seeds, as seen below.

MUDLA Visit

Today, 1SD and 1KJ visited the MUDLA to explore and investigate the different features and habitats of animals. Just like scientists, the students were required to investigate one of the animals in the MUDLA and visually record what the animal and their habitat look like. Students were particularly interested in the Green Tree Frog, Bearded Dragon and Long Neck Turtle. We can’t wait to recreate the animals and their habitats during our next science lesson!

Congratulations to Eleazar and Agamjot who have read for 25 nights! Both are well on their way to achieving their next reading goal of 50 nights, well done! We can’t wait to see who will meet their 25 nights of reading next!

Congratulations to Will and Paris who have read for 25 nights! It is wonderful hearing about all the stories Will and Paris are reading and how they are growing their minds each time they read. Well done, we can’t wait to see who will be next to achieve 25 nights of reading!

Today we started discussing pattern making with 1SD and 1KJ. We explored an image which contained a variety of patterns to help us build our understanding of its definition and the various ways in which we are able to build a pattern. Following this visual exploration, students were given 2-minutes to investigate the classroom and find as many patterns as possible. Students then came together to share their findings as a group, which included;

‘The carpet pattern – it goes blue, brown, blue, brown…’ – Brodie

‘Square, circle, square, circle, square, circle’ – Carter

‘2, 4, 6, 8, 10… they are even numbers and is skip counting by two’ – Ayan

‘Chair, stool, chair, stool, chair, stool…’ – Oliver K

‘The book boxes go pink, blue, green, orange, purple’ – Eliana

‘I know a worded pattern. Row, bow, row, bow, row, bow’ – Will

‘Square, cylinder, square, cylinder, square, cylinder’ – JK

Following this discussion, the students were given some time to create their own patterns in their numeracy books by using coloured paper and pencils. To conclude the lesson students sat in a sharing circle and those who were feeling brave shared their patterns with the class. Please see some photos from our lesson below.

We have recently started discussing Character Strengths with 1SD and 1KJ; what they are, what they look like and why it is important for us to use our character strengths.

Yesterday, we focused on the character strength of Zest, which means to approach life with energy and excitement. As a class we discussed what zest is, what it might look like and how we might show zest in everyday life. A few of the students stated that you can show zest by:

‘Jumping around’ – Will

‘Running around’ – Harmony

‘Playing chasey’ – Paris

‘Shaking your hands around’ – Brodie

‘Playing hide and seek’ – Oliver T

‘Going out somewhere exciting’ – Joshua

‘Being silly and running around’ – Nicole

‘Being kind’ – Eliana

The students where then given some time to respond to the prompt ‘I showed zest when I..’ as seen in the photos below.

Congratulations to Oliver who has read for 25 nights!

We are very proud of Oliver’s dedication to his reading. Keep up the excellent work Oliver!