Year 1 Update – Wk 13
Tuesday 1 December – Year 5 bake sale!
Friday 18 December – early release at 12 noon for Term 1 break.
Monday 4 January – Term 2 begins.
After a busy camp week at BHS it was great to settle back into the classrooms this week. It was also nice to get back to the football pitch on Friday since last week’s visit was cancelled due to rain. We have had three great parent guests in this week talking about what they do in the community! Classes came together to learn more about the roles and responsibilities from community members themselves. A fashion designer, a computer programmer, and a virus scientist came and talked about what they do! The children were very interested and curious. Thank you very much to those parents!
We also said goodbye to Mrs Evers this week who is leaving to help with her family’s transition to Australia. We will miss Mrs Evers very much, but we wish her the best of luck in her family’s new beginning!
How We Organise Ourselves
Central Idea: People play different roles in the communities they belong to
In addition to hearing from parents about their jobs in the greater community, students have been thinking about what other roles are part of our community. We have been looking at books from the library about how cities and towns are organised, as well as receiving responses to the letters we wrote to different people at Beacon Hill school. We learned that Mr Gibson has been a teacher since the year Mr Greene was born! And that Xu Lao Shi became a teacher after deciding not to be an engineer.
We have also been learning about how communities are organised by looking at and making maps, building floor plans, and thinking about what is under our streets!
Many students STILL think that moms’ and dads’ jobs are to “go to the office” or “go to work”. But that does not tell them what you do for the community! Have a conversation about your job in terms of how you help people. For example, “I am a boss at a bank, so I make sure everyone is doing their job well while looking after people’s money.” Or, “I am a lawyer. So when people have broken the law or think someone else has broken the law, they can come to me and ask for help.”
While working with the relationship between addition and subtraction many students seem to have little experience solving real world math problems. For example, a story problem: “Ms Heywood went for a walk and saw seven mice! How many tails did they have? How many legs?” Most students knew that seven mice meant seven tails, and some knew that two mice would have eight legs. But once the numbers get high, just counting and memorization doesn’t work very well.
Drawing a picture is a great way to solve math problems! Think about drawing a picture next time a math problem comes up with your child. How many socks will they need for a week? How many cookies does everyone get if there are only 9 cookies?
Mouse The Mouth! Let’s take a closer look at this reading strategy. It reminds students that if you don’t know a word, start by saying the first sound. This often works well with looking at the picture, which is also a good strategy! But sometimes things get mixed up and the reader will say a different word that corresponds with the picture, like saying “paste” by looking at the picture when the word is “glue”. Saying the first sound right away helps stop the mix up. Say the first sound, look at the picture, and try the next couple of sounds!
1F – Yeonseo Kim
1G – Casie Lau
1H – Sin Lam Yeung
In the next couple of weeks the Year 1 classes are going to be making some model community projects! Creating roads and buildings, shops and vehicles… and people! We could use a few more small boxes to make buildings and other items, so if you have some in your recycling we’ll take them! Or finish off that cereal or make some cookies with that last bit of flour. 🙂
