Years 1/2 team updates - Turner School

Years 1/2 puppets

1/2 Team – Term 1 Letter

Dear families,

It’s great to see our students back at school, and settled so quickly into their new classes. The first few weeks of school have a particular focus of getting to know each other and building shared routines. We can see already that our 2024 cohort is an enthusiastic group of learners!

The aim of this letter is to provide you with a greater level of insight into what the 1/2 team plans to achieve over the term. We teach content side by side with learning dispositions. This term we will be focussing on the Turner Learner Assets of “I am a Positive Contributor” and “I am a Collaborator”. Our content from the Australian Curriculum is detailed at the end of this letter.

We understand how important it is to establish and maintain positive relationships between home and school in order to support every child for success. We are keen to build connections and look forward to working with you to achieve the best for your child. If you would like to contact your child’s class teacher to discuss their progress, please email them directly or call Turner School on 6142 2430. Please also feel free to contact Jocelyn James (team leader) if you have any queries. Our staff meeting times are currently Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, with Jocelyn also attending a leadership meeting every Monday afternoon.

This year we will be holding our STEAM Festival, with the theme ‘Tinkering Takes Time’. You may remember previous festivals and all the exciting and engaging learning activities that were held around the school. The 1/2 classes are linking their class names to ideas around ‘tinkering’, and we will share our class names at the parent information night.

There are other important dates this term, including our first Junior assembly hosted on Wednesday March 28 by 1/2SL and 1/2ES, and our Swimming Carnival on March 6. Please check the newsletter for more information.

In every classroom, you will see flexible learning environments and spaces that promote collaboration and cater for individual learning needs. These spaces are co-created with students to promote autonomy and ownership. This includes co-constructed displays, a class library, inquiry stations and the use of the outdoor learning spaces.

There is no formal home learning grid for Kindergarten, year 1 and year 2. Instead, we seek the support of families to read with their child every day aligned with our Home Reading program and to look for opportunities to explore number concepts in real contexts. There are also times where teachers may ask children to prepare for oral language groups or do some finding out about topics they are inquiring into that term. They may ask children to bring in interesting objects or photos as ‘seeds’ for their learning.

Community Singing

Jocelyn James and Kayla Gifford will run 1/2 Community Singing this year. Sessions are currently on Thursdays, and the aim is to build connections across the cohort of five classes through enjoying a range of shared songs. They will build a repertoire of songs over the year, many of which will be performed at assemblies, to the preschool classes and other events. Community Singing began in Week 1.

Fruit and Brain Breaks

Our classes have a short fruit (or vegetable) break to help maintain energy levels in class each morning. This encourages healthy eating and it may help children who participate in these breaks to maintain focus in learning experiences for longer periods of time. Please make sure fruit and vegetables are easy to eat and do not require cutting.

Learning Overview for Year 1/2

Please find below the Term 1 Overview (including Achievement Standards from the updated Version 9 Australian Curriculum) that will frame your child’s learning experiences.

Learning Area

Focus

Australian Curriculum v9 Achievement Standards

HASS - History

How do people’s roles and connections change over time?

History Content

Year 1

Identifies continuity and change in family structures, roles and significant aspects of daily life

Year 2

Identifies the significance of a local person, group, place and/or building

History Skills

Year 1

Interprets information and discusses perspectives
Shares narratives and observations about people, places and the past, drawing on sources and incorporating subject-specific terms

Year 2

Interprets information and data, and identifies and discusses perspectives
Uses sources, and subject-specific terms to present narratives and observations about the past, people and places at different scales

English

Writing, reading, spelling, speaking & listening

Year 1

Interacts with others, and listens to and creates short spoken texts including recounts of stories
Reads, views and comprehends texts, monitoring meaning and making connections between the depiction of characters, settings and events, and to personal experiences
Creates short written and/or multimodal texts including recounts of stories with events and characters
Spells most one- and two-syllable words with common letter patterns and common grammatical morphemes, and an increasing number of high-frequency words
Writes words using unjoined upper-case and lower-case letters

Year 2

Interacts with others, and listens to and creates spoken texts including stories
Reads, views and comprehends texts, identifying literal and inferred meaning, and how ideas are presented through characters and events
Creates written and/or multimodal texts including stories to inform, express an opinion, adapt an idea or narrate for audiences
Spells words with regular spelling patterns, and uses phonic and morphemic knowledge to attempt to spell words with less common patterns
Writes words using consistently legible unjoined letters

Learning Area	Focus	Australian Curriculum v9 Achievement Standards
Mathematics	Place value, numeration, data	Year 1 Connects number names, numerals and quantities, and orders numbers to at least 120 Demonstrates how one- and two-digit numbers can be partitioned in different ways and that two-digit numbers can be partitioned into tens and ones Solves problems involving addition and subtraction of numbers to 20 and uses mathematical modelling to solve practical problems involving addition, subtraction, equal sharing and grouping, using calculation strategies Collects and records categorical data, creates one-to-one displays, and compares and discusses the data using frequencies Year 2 Orders and represents numbers to at least 1000, applies knowledge of place value to partition, rearrange and rename two- and three-digit numbers in terms of their parts, and regroups partitioned numbers to assist in calculations Uses mathematical modelling to solve practical additive and multiplicative problems, representing the situation and choosing calculation strategies Uses a range of methods to collect, record, represent and interpret categorical data in response to questions
Physical Education and Health	Being a positive contributor Fundamental Movement Skills	Years 1 & 2 Explains how personal qualities contribute to identities Describes how emotional responses affect their own and others' feelings Demonstrates skills and describes strategies required to develop respectful relationships Applies fundamental movement skills in different movement situations and explains how they move with objects and in space effectively
The Arts	Music (with Jocelyn) Visual arts (with class teachers)	Years 1 & 2 Identifies where they experience the arts Demonstrates arts practices and skills across arts subjects Creates arts works in a range of forms
Indonesian (with Rima)	Language and Culture	Years 1 & 2 Give factual information about self, family and significant objects using labels, captions and descriptions Use familiar words, phrases and patterns to create captions and participate in shared performances and games Whilst learning about Indonesia and its language, the students will be encouraged to practise songs and dances such as Cicak – cicak di dinding’, ‘Panjang umurnya’ and ‘Gundul Pacul’

We are looking forward to a great year of learning!

Regards,

The 1/2 Team

Sarah – sarah.scotland@ed.act.edu.au

Tracey-Anne - tracey-anne.leahey@ed.act.edu.au

Eleanor – eleanor.stuart@ed.act.edu.au

Adam – adam.volmari@ed.act.edu.au

Maddi - maddisone.mcbride@ed.act.edu.au

Christine - christine.elliott@ed.act.edu.au

Jocelyn – jocelyn.james@ed.act.edu.au