ANZAC Week

ANZAC Day

This week sees the 100 Years Commemoration of the Australian troops landing in Gallipoli.  We briefly looked at this in class, viewing our defense forces as  brave defenders of Australia working to keep us all safe.

On Friday we had a whole school assembly where the last post was played, and we observed the Minute Silence to think about the sacrifices made by those defending our nation.

Student of the Week

Congratulations to Maddie in getting student of the week for her skills in hearing the beginning sounds in words.

This Week's Maths

We have been working on counting, starting at any number.

The children roll a ten sided dice to give them a starting point.

They place their peg on this number on their number line, and count on to 20.

The children become more familiar with number to 20, able to read as recall the next number after the given number.

We have also been developing our skills to instantly recalling the number that comes after a given number. 

For this activity we played our floor games again, but this time we used cards which asked for the number which came after.

The children used this information to know how many jumps to take in the game.

Zara and Jai are here doing some great work matching the correct number to the picture.

Here they are drawing a line from the picture to the correct number.

We have also been developing our understanding of time.  We have been looking at the special words that we use for measuring time from seconds to years.  You will have seen some of the work that came home, showing what we have done when sequencing events in our day.

Reading Workshop

The children are making very pleasing progress in their reading.  Congratulations to all of you who listen to their readers each day, and practice their yellow words.  We have been working on our new green words in class, and soon we will be sending half of them home.

Guided Reading

This week we started our Guided Reading Program.

In these sessions the children work on books that are a little more challenging than the books they are taking home.

 We work on developing those skills to help us to decode their reading, and more importantly, to listen to and think about our reading. 

Here the children are using 'phones' to listen to themselves read.  This helps them to read more fluently, and to check if what they are reading makes sense.

Missing Beginning Letter

Our new activity during the small group session was missing letters.

The children said the name of the picture, listening for the first sound. 

Then they recorded the missing first letter on the sheet.

Writing Workshop

We have continued our work with realistic fiction writing.  

The children had to think of a setting for their writing, a place that they knew well and liked.  Then they added a fictional happening.  Finally ending with a conclusion.  Thus producing a 3 page book.

The children have done a wonderful job here, and just to prove it I have included a couple of examples of their writing from Ryan and Mia.

Note the wonderful pictures, with their attention to detail.  These act as our pans for our writing.

Ryan

The fish pushed the hook away.

The crocodile ate the fish.

I ran away from the crocodile.

Mia

We went to the Cafe for afternoon tea.  I took my bird.

I played with my tweety bird.

We went home. I had fun.

Craft

This week we made an Eskimo with his Igloo.  We are using this to focus on the difference between the sharp 'i' sound and the flatter 'e' sound.

Welcome Back to Term 2

Welcome back everyone to another very busy term.  I was so impressed at how much of our wonderful learning from last term was still firmly in place after our two week break. Consequently we were able to get right into it all straight away.

The Reading Workshop

Here are a few photos of some of the games and activities that we do in the reading block to build skill levels in reading and writing.  Ask your children how they play these games, and which ones they enjoy playing the most.

Fishing focuses on building the children's knowledge of the high frequency words.

Picture letter match builds the children's skills in hearing and recognizing the first sound in words.

Playing games such as 'I spy' at home is another wonderful way of helping your child to develop this skill.

As you see we are getting fairly good at this activity, with just a few errors.  (Whatever happened to eggs and Eskimo?  We may need some more work with the letter 'e'!)

Mrs Salathiel is doing 'Look, Say, Name, Cover, Write, Check,' with these children.  Many children have started to build a nice little bank of known words that they can now write on their own.

Mrs Lloyd is helping these children with 'Cut up Sentences'.

 In this activity the children build their ability to fully understand how individual how words come together to make sentences.

Velcro Wall

This game is designed to practice those high frequency words again.  It has certainly proved to be a very popular new game.  Ask your child how we play this game.

We also played 'Petals' where we listened for beginning sounds again.  

We also played memory as part of this game too.  Ask your child how we play this game.

The Writing Workshop

This term we are learning about fictional writing, where we make up ideas and events in our stories.

We started by making a postcard about a real event from the holidays.  We then made a second postcard, set it in the same setting, but added some exciting fictional events.

The children have done a wonderful job with this.

Ask your child to tell you about their post cards.

The Maths Block

In Maths we have been doing an activity where the children have to point to, and name, the mixed up numbers 1-9. 

This activity is a lot trickier than the children thought it was going to be.  

This is a great brain exercise as it helps the children to scan the card quickly, and coordinate their thinking.

We have also been working on our skills in recalling what numbers come after a given number.

We played a number of our floor games.  

To know how many jumps to take we used cards that asked for the number that came after a given number.

Craft

We have started on our quest of filling the classroom with all our work again.  Thinking of our letter of the week, 'L', we made Leo the Lion, who has made a very bright start to the creation of our colourful classroom.

Take note of the huge improvements in scissor skills and the careful following and sequencing of instructions.

Rainy Play Time

All that long awaited for rain on Friday had the children kept indoors during both play times.

They were kept busy with Duplo,

colouring in,

peg boards,

and this spelling game given to us by Mrs Nyman.

Just look at this vehicle that the boys have made with the Mobilo!