7 Sep 2017

Year 1 Update – Wk 4

Thursday 14th September – Year 1 Power of Play Workshop – Please see letter sent via The Gateway eNotice.

Friday 15th September – PTA Bowling Evening

Monday 18th September – 1L Trip to Wise Kids – Please see letter sent via The Gateway eNotice.

Tuesday 19th September – 1P Trip to Wise Kids – Please see letter sent via The Gateway eNotice.

Friday 22nd September – 1W Trip to Wise Kids – Please see letter sent via The Gateway eNotice.

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

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

This week was a week of firsts for our year one children:

P.M.P:

This week the children attended their first P.M.P session with Mr Teahan. During P.M.P children move through different stations in their groups focusing on a variety of motor skills. Many thanks to the parents who are helping with P.M.P. Please remember that year one children need to wear their P.E uniform on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

U.O.I . rotations:

This week the year one rotations started. In each year one class the children are put into groups of five. Each group takes turns to visit each of the stations. The stations include the shared area, the outside area, a group works with Miss Chung, a group works on an independent task, a group works with our educational assistants and a group works with class teachers. This week children experienced different types of play such as imaginative play, play with rules and play that required children to co-operate. Many thanks to the parents who helped for U.O.I rotations.

Learning Centre:

On Monday all of the year one children visited the Learning Centre for the first time. The children met Mrs Lowe who works in the library. Miss Jeves talked to the children about how the Learning Centre is organised as well as introduced the children to the system that we use at B.H.S to borrow books. All children who came to school with a red book bag were able to borrow a book. Please enjoy the book with your child and remember that all learning centre books need to be returned to school on Monday in the B.H.S red book bag so that the children will be able to borrow a new book.

Central Idea:

Relationships develop through play and connecting with others.

Next week during U.O.I, children will have the opportunity to plan their play. After playing as they planned children will review and reflect upon their play choices. The idea of plan, do and review is for children to think more carefully about their play choices. We will be asking children to think carefully about who they choose to play with, what they played with, the type of play that they choose as well as reflect upon their choices. Also next week we will be providing many opportunities for children to play, make and create with another child or in a small group. Much of this will happen during U.O.I rotations. Co-operative games with Miss Chung will continue, she will focus on how to communicate an idea to a friend.

Miss Jeves will continue to work with the year one children next week. She will keep focusing on the skill of questioning. Children will be encouraged to think about the difference between a question and a statement. Much of the learning that the children do with Miss Jeves requires them to talk with a partner. When the children talk with a partner they sit knee to knee, eye to eye which supports and helps children to build upon their communication skills.

School Book Bags

Your child needs a named book bag in school to carry their reading books to and from school, this is for both home readers and library books. This means that the younger children will need to remember their book bag everyday, it should contain their reading book, reading journal and on library days, library books. The reading journal is an important part of the communication between you and your child’s teacher, please remember to add a positive comment when you have read with your child.

Start of School Arrangements

Please note that students should not arrive at school before 8.30am. Teachers are on duty from 8.30am. Any child who arrives early cannot be supervised.

Healthy Living at BHS

We promote healthy living at BHS and therefore children should only bring water to school. Please do not send milk drinks, sugary drinks or any other kind of drink. We have water fountains and taps where students can refill their (BHS) water bottles throughout the day.

Deli Fresh

Please 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.

Parent Helpers for UOI & PMP

We still have a few gaps to fill for Parent Helpers for UOI rotations on a Thursday from 11.15-12.30pm. If you are able to help at these times, please contact susan.chung@bhs.edu.hk

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 classify these shapes? will drive our inquiry.

Next week the focus will be on naming and describing the properties of 2D shapes and grouping 2D shapes according to their like properties. Children will be given open tasks such as make a shape with…draw a shape with …describe a … (name of 2D shape). Children will also be comparing shapes discussing their differences and similarities.

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.)

Next week we will focus on writing to socialise. The children will be listening to a story about an invitation, looking at the language and vocabulary of invitations as well as writing an invitation on their own.

During writers workshop children will be choosing the type of paper that they would like to write on. They will have some choice of what they would like to write about. Children may choose an idea from this weeks discussion about ideas that they can write.

Our reading sessions will focus on concepts of print such as; what a word is, where a sentence starts, and the link between text and illustrations.

Library

Next week the Year 1 children will borrow their second book from the library. They will need to bring their book bag to school. Please make sure that it is clearly named. We will provide a waterproof cover for those few children who have been unable to buy a school book bag due to no stock being available, we have a list of these children.

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 – Emma Woo

1P – Alice Deleu

1L – Joshua Duke

Information Literacy – Leonardo Li

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 4

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