15 Sep 2017

Year 1 Update – Wk 5

Tuesday 26th September – Parent/Teacher consultations – sign up on the Gateway soon.

Thursday 28th September – Parent/Teacher consultations – sign up on the Gateway soon.

Friday 29th September – Colours Day Please see below for more details.

Half Term Holiday – Monday 2nd October – Friday 5th October

Monday 9th October – School starts again

This week has been another busy work in Year 1 with the children enjoying their first school trip to Wise Kids. Last week the children looked at the Wise Kids website and planned what they would like to play with and who they would like to play with on the trip. The experience at Wise Kids gave the children the opportunity to follow their play plan and connect with the peers they had chosen. After the trip the children reflected on their experiences by thinking about the friends that they have made, the play activities that they enjoyed and the green choices that they made whilst they were playing. Throughout this unit, it has been so nice to see the new friendships that have developed in each class and the ways in which the children have learnt to interact with each other in a positive way.

During UOI Rotations the children have given the opportunity to experience messy play. Last week the messy play tray contained water spheres that doubles in size and this week they have loved getting their hands messy with a gloop mixture which is made from cornflour and water. Messy play is important for the children to experience as it allows them to explore materials with their senses, solve problems, mould and manipulate materials and overcome fears. A simple recipe for gloop is at the bottom of this Weekly Update in other information. Please have a go at making it with your children at home and send any photos of the children engaging in messy play into their class teachers. Have fun!

Central Idea:Relationships develop through play and connecting with others.

Aswell as enjoying their trip to Wise Kids this week, the Year 1 children have been reflecting on the unit as a whole by discussing what they have learnt and how they can make connections through play in future units and in the wider world. As the unit has progressed we have explored how to solve conflicts that may occur when playing and how to ask a friend to play.

Next week we will begin our second Unit of Inquiry. The Central Idea is:

Individuals contribute to the way communities function.

We will be tuning the children into the unit by looking at the roles and responsibilities of people in our school community. The children will build upon the questioning work that they have done with Ms Jeves in our first unit by thinking of questions that they would like to ask people in our BHS community.

Just a reminder that next Friday 29th September is BHS Community:Colours Day.

As part of our 50th celebrations we are aiming to give back to our community by holding an Action Day on the 8th December in partnership with Bethune House, Sunshine Action, Sai Kung Stray Dogs and Soap Cycling. On the 8th December each year group will have the opportunity to help make food parcels to help those who are in need in Hong Kong. More details will follow about that day as we get closer to it. We are aiming high and the amount of money we need to raise equates to $250 per child.

To kick-start our fundraising, we are going to have 4 days of lunchtime activities where children can make a minimum donation of HK$20 to join in fun events such as karaoke. This will build up to a very special day on Friday 29th September we are calling ‘Colours Day’ where all children will take part in one of two sponsored events – either a sponsored walk/run or a sponsored readathon depending on their interest. Each year group will have half an hour for the events. Sponsor forms can be downloaded and printed off from today’s Newsletter. We encourage all our students and their families to support this day of action to help in our drive to support those in our community who are in need. And of course, on Friday 29th all students should come dressed in their house colours.

Deli Fresh

Please complete and return order forms for October.

Remember that if your child orders lunch from Deli Fresh they need to bring their Deli Fresh spoon and fork in the Deli Fresh plastic container every day. Please ensure that your child’s name is on the cutlery container. If your child loses the cutlery then you will need to contact Deli Fresh for a new set of cutlery.

maths

Shapes are classified and named according to their properties.

Next week in maths we continue with our shape unit.

This is an inquiry into: Naming and classifying 2D shapes. Form – what are the names of the common shapes? and Function – how do we classify these shapes? will drive our inquiry.

We are ready to explore new shapes and the children have begun to think about what we call shapes with more that four sides. We will be learning that shapes can be used to make other shapes and that sometimes shapes with the same name can look a bit different from each other.

Mathletics: All of the children have their Mathletics usernames and passwords in the front of their Home-School Diaries. Please spend some time each week exploring the different activities that we have set for the children. Under the ‘play’ section children can practise their basic facts by playing games with partners from around the world. It is not intended that the children will do these tasks totally independently so please help your child to become familiar with the layout of Mathletics and how to go about completing the tasks. Have fun!(This week we have been continuing our unit based on number sense. The children have been exploring the different ways that we can make numbers using our fingers. They have also been counting, reading, writing and ordering numbers.)

Building on last week’s excitement about creating the play date invitations we will explore other forms of writing to other people so watch out for some thank you cards hidden in school bags next week.

Our reading sessions will continue to build our understandings of words and letters. Children will begin to build their own small collection of books which interest them ready to use in various lessons. We also hope this will encourage them to be curious learners and enjoy finding out more about things which interest them.

We will be continuing with handwriting, improving fluency through line tracing and focussing on correct formation of lower case letters.

Library

Monday is again library day so please enjoy the books for the last time over the weekend and get them ready to send back to school in the red book bags.

It is very helpful to your child and the teachers if you fasten a key ring or piece of colourful ribbon to the handle of the book bag to make it easily recognisable. Thank you!

Phonics

We will continue to teach and practise the first set of phonemes and camera words. You will have received the unit one bookmark outlining the phonemes and camera words that we will be covering and some games that you can try at home with your child.

Phonemes: s m c t g p a o

Camera Words: to are she I the was

Not all words can be decoded phonetically. We call these tricky words, ‘camera words’ because children must learn them as though they were taking a photo of the word with their ‘mind’s eye’. They are encouraged to memorise the part of the word which is tricky.

Congratulations to the following children for their Golden Book certificate on Monday.

1W – Ethan Yang

1P – Jamie Loynd

1L – Sylas Ng

Mandarin – Ethan Yang

Writing: We have noticed that some of our year one children are writing using capital or upper case letters. Also we have seen some children use a mix of lower and upper case letters in words such as their name. We would like to ask that if you do any writing at all with your child at home that you only use small or lower case letter. At this stage the only time that we encourage the children to use a capital letter is when writing names of people or places. At Beacon Hill school the font that we teach the children to use is the Nelson font. This is what the Nelson font looks like:

Year 1 Update – Wk 5

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