19 Oct 2017

Year 1 Update – Wk 9

Tuesday 31st October – Bake sale. Children can bring up to $20 to buy some tasty treats at break time.

Wednesday November 8th, 15th, 22nd, 29th and 6th December – Year 1 Pitch – More details to follow shortly

This week in Year 1 the children have been busy continuing with their inquiry into the different roles that people have within our school community. Classes have written invitations, letters and What’sApp messages to members of staff who they would like to invite into class and interview about their roles and responsibilities at BHS. Some classes have already had visits from Mr Harrison and Miss Chung. Next week the children will continue questioning members of our community.

Planting Seeds with Mr Melsom

Mr Melsom worked with each Year 1 class planting a variety of vegetable seeds and herbs to go into our Butterfly Garden which is currently under renovation. It was lovely to see the children taking an active role in contributing to an aspect of our school community. Over the next few weeks, it will be the children’s responsibility to look after the plants as they grow. The plants will be eventually planted in the Butterfly Garden for everybody to enjoy!

Reading Workshop

Thank you to all the parents and helpers who attended the Reading Workshops on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was lovely to see such a good turn out. We really hope that you learnt about how we approach reading at Beacon Hill School. The most important thing to remember is to enjoy the experience of reading together and to talk about the books that you are reading. So much joy and understanding can come from this shared experience.

Central Idea:

Individuals contribute to the way communities function

Next week we will be continuing to look at aspects of our school community that could be improved. The children will be trying to put in place new systems etc. that will help to improve our school community. They will also be continuing to interview people in our school community using the questions that they wrote during Writer’s Workshop.

Peter Sullian Maths Workshop Wednesday 22nd November – 6:30p.m. in the school hall

Professor Peter Sullivan

Peter Sullivan is Professor of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, at Monash University in Australia. He is the immediate past President of the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers and was the lead writer of the Australian Mathematics curriculum.

Professor Sullivan is one of the world’s leading authorities in Mathematics, and will be making his a visit to Beacon Hill School this November. During his visit, Professor Sullivan will work alongside the teachers to challenge all our students to reach their full potential in Mathematics through the use of open-ended, rich learning tasks and problems.

We are thrilled to announce that Professor Sullivan will run a workshop for parents in order to enhance your understanding of how you may help your children in the development of Mathematical thinking. This is for parents only, there is no need for children to attend.

An e-notice will be sent to all parents, please let us know if you are attending.

We look forward to seeing you at the workshop.

Pizza Lunch

Some of you may have noticed on the Deli Fresh form that we have a Year 1 Pizza Lunch coming up. A letter from the PTA will be sent home shortly. Basically this is an opportunity for your child to enjoy a pizza lunch with their classmates. The letter that comes home will ask you to order pizza on the order form and then no other lunch will be required on that day. This is not compulsory so if your child does not like or want pizza please just send in lunch as normal. Please look out for the letter!

Reading Diaries

Thank you so much for all the support that you are giving to your child with their home reading. Please remember to write a brief comment about how your child has found the book and sign each day so that we know how they are getting on with their reading at home.

Christmas Cards

Christmas is fast approaching! ESF wish to prepare an e-card for Christmas and are inviting ESF students to come up with a design. The Christmas artwork could be a painting or drawing on A4 or A3 paper with any media such as water colour, pastel, photography or digital. Please send the original artwork to Ms Yu by 13, November if you would like to enter this exciting competition. Please refer to this link if you wish to see the cards in previous years: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B1e1HGWSZqL0clF3MlF2aWk3OEE?usp=shar

maths

Central Idea: Numbers can be added and subtracted

Over the past few weeks we have spent a lot of time working on addition so next week we will be focusing on the concept of subtraction. We will be exploring how to subtract number within 10 and beyond using concrete objects and Maths manipulatives. The children will also be focusing on counting backwards and how to use a number line to subtract. Please support this work at home by encouraging your child to practice counting backwards from 100 aswell as forwards.

Through our unit we are also looking at how days of the week and the concept of time help us organise our lives and cooperate with others. This is something you can support at home by talking through what is happening on different days and encouraging children to take notice of the times daily routines and activities happen. Everyday at school we do our daily calendar looking at the date, day, month and year. This is an easy thing to incorporate into everyday life at home too.

Mathletics: 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!

Next week we will continue with our unit based on using writing to inquire. The children will be writing questions for their interviews with people in our school community. They will also be sorting their questions into important and interesting questions.

One aspect of writing to inquire is writing surveys so next week the children will have the chance to write a simple survey about their favourite places in Beacon Hill School. They will carry out their survey with their classmates and will use tally marks to record their data.

Our reading focus for next week will be retelling. When children retell or tell a story in their own words we encourage them to talk about how the story started, what happened in the middle, how the story finished, what the problem and the solution are and what the main idea and key details are. Please encourage this at home by having discussions about what you are reading with your children.

Phonics

Phonemes: r l d b f h i u

Camera Words: day of a he today for

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.

Due to the whole school photo there as no Golden Book certificate this week. Our next Golden Book assembly will be on Monday 30th October.

Mathstart – maths picture books

If you are looking for some picture story books to buy or borrow from a library that help teach maths concepts we recommend the mathstart series. Mathstart books are fun, engaging and are about real life problems and experiences that children may face. These books are are even published in Chinese and Korean!

Please visit the following website to view the Mathstart books: http://www.mathstart.net/level-2-books.html

Year 1 Update – Wk 9

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