Welcome to Year 1 with Stacey Bennetts, Julie Chambers, Lauren Hill and Luke Richards
Our aim is to provide a safe, caring and enjoyable learning environment where children are challenged and encouraged to achieve to the best of their ability. Our classroom program caters for all learning styles and abilities, and promotes a self-regulated, have a go philosophy. At SCAS, we have a weekly Chapel service and encourage our students to think about how they can be kind, just like Jesus.
General Classroom Expectations
In Stage One, we believe that all students are fantastic and promote positive behaviours for learning. We understand that our students may make poor or impulsive choices from time to time, and we use our Traffic Light System to discourage these behaviours. An orange light is a warning and repeated behaviours result in 5 minutes time-out. We refresh this system every session as we want our students to realise that a poor choice does not define their day. Should the behaviour continue, a red traffic light will be given and result in some time out of play to discuss the cause of the behaviour. Should repeated red traffic lights be given, contact will be made by your child’s class teacher.
School Arrival and Departure Expectations
Please ensure your child arrives by 8:40 am for an 8:50 am start. This allows your child time to unpack their bag and prepare for their day. It is very disruptive for the class if a student arrives late as our lessons begin immediately on the bell.
It is expected that your child’s usual routine will be communicated to their class teacher and your child. Any modifications to this MUST be noted in your child’s diary as a reminder to them and alert their teacher.
If your child needs to leave during the day or early please note this in the diary where possible. Students are collected and signed out through the front office for this. Please be mindful that locating a student during break times is more challenging.
Eating Procedure
Students will be encouraged to crunch on some fruit or vegetables and drink water at some stage during their morning learning session. During breaks, students are given 10 minutes of designated eating time where no play is allowed. Healthy food is encouraged, and please make sure all lunch boxes and drink bottles are labelled clearly. As we are promoting nude lunch boxes, please be aware additional non-recyclable rubbish will return home. No hat, no play!
Homework
Homework will be accessible via the Google Classroom each Monday and is to be digitally turned in by Friday. We recognise that our young students are engaged in a wide range of extra-curricular activities, and we also encourage positive family interactions and time for students to relax and pursue their own learning. A reminder that daily reading with an adult for at least 10 minutes, along with high-frequency word revision, is expected homework. We also encourage regularly accessing Mathseeds, Sound Waves and Reading Eggs/Eggspress.
Specialist Lessons
Stage One students have French with Mrs Moore, Visual Arts with Mrs Catlin, Music with Mrs Corrigan, Christian Studies with Mrs Erga and Performing Arts with Mrs Finnecy, Mrs Lukes and Mrs Grootenboer.
English: Literacy
Our main aim is to foster a love of and passion for literature. As we learn to improve our reading, spelling and writing skills, we continue to explore the codes and conventions of literacy. We are also exploring larger English concepts, and through reading and viewing several Australian texts, they can reflect on how and why the author may have written the text the way they have. This helps us improve our own writing. Literacy sessions are explored through whole class, group, pair and individual activities. Students have individual learning goals which they are working towards and will often be clustered with other students with similar goals.
To support our literacy program, home readers will be sent home often. Research supports the benefits of daily reading and also being read to. Your child will bring home a reader, which they have chosen from a selected range. The aim is that your child can showcase their reading skills to you, rather than have another reading lesson. To this end, the readers coming home should be able to be read with minimal support and for enjoyment. Each library lesson, your child will also be encouraged to borrow a rich quality text from the Premiers Reading Challenge List. We encourage you to read this text at least 3-4 times that week with daily discussion points to have with your child that directly link to the skills we are developing in class. This term is all about how our prior knowledge and the connections we have with the text help us comprehend a story.
Mathematics: Numeracy
Our main aim is to foster curious, creative and confident problem solvers. Maths is a part of everything we do, and we encourage our students to embrace learning maths with as much real-life application as possible. Maths relies on students having knowledge of the number count and patterns, recognising symbols and knowing what to do, names of shapes and conversions in measurement; but we acknowledge this is only a small part of maths. Maths is more about developing a deeper understanding and willingness to explore and try to explain why things happen the way they do. It is also about application—do our students draw on their knowledge and understanding when posed with unfamiliar problems. To this end, we encourage flexible thinking and encourage our students to solve problems in several ways, we encourage reflection and checking, and we also want our students to realise the focus is more on the process than the answer.
Digital Technologies
Every child in today’s world needs to be digitally literate and digitally aware. In Stage One, the focus is on developing foundational skills in computational thinking and an awareness of personal experiences using digital systems. Our students will have opportunities to create a range of digital solutions through guided play and integrated learning, such as using robotic toys to navigate a map or recording science data with software applications. Students use the concept of abstraction when defining problems, to identify the most important information, defining a sequence of steps for carrying out instructions (programming). At SCAS, our emphasis is also on students learning to apply safe and ethical practices to protect themselves and others as they interact online for learning and communicating.
Parent Helpers
We love having parents assist our students with their learning and hope this can resume when COVID-19 regulations allow.
We are all honoured to be teaching and learning from your children. We look forward to seeing you throughout the year.
From the Year 1 Teachers.