Year 1

Welcome back to a new school year. Insha Allah you and your child have had a restful break and are now ready for the school year ahead. It has been wonderful to see the children arriving and settling into their new classes, looking ready to take on their learning experiences to come.

This year we are using the Words Their Way program in our classroom. Words   Their Way is phonics, spelling, and vocabulary instruction through daily word study. This program will provide skill instruction that will cover spelling patterns and focus on examining and manipulating words, not memorizing them. Students will be thinking more critically about words and work on transferring their skills to reading and writing. Words Their Way will focus on teaching students how to spell, decode new words, and to improve word recognition speed in general. 

At home you can support your child with their Spellings by helping them to chop their words in four simple steps. Yes! you read that right:

• Listen to the word (say it out loud)
• Break the word into paths (CHOP)
• Write the word (you could also say it)
• Check the word.

Example:   Say the word : black

                   Chop the word : bl/a/ck

                   Write / Say it : black

In line with our HASS programme, this term we are learning about family structure – how it was in the past, how it is now in the present and how this structure can vary from home to home. As a class we have been having some good discussions as to why our family is special. Children have contributed to these discussions by sharing their stories from home and expressing their thoughts down on paper.

To help build our classroom community, we have created an area to display family photos in your child’s classroom. Thank you to all our parents who were able to send in their family photo. The children really enjoy visiting this wall display and seeing pictures of themselves with their loved ones. 

As a school we also celebrated Harmony Day this term. Harmony Day provides an opportunity for our students to celebrate our success as a culturally diverse society and re-commit to harmony. Students were encouraged to wear their traditional clothes from their country of origin. The children all looked wonderful as they proudly represented their culture in their beautiful traditional clothing.

Furthermore, this term we are looking at ‘swimming’ as a tool to promote children’s learning and development. Study shows that there are cognitive benefits from movement experiences, particularly in the early years as these are critical for a child’s growth and development.

Before the start of the actual swimming lessons, children have had the opportunity to attend a workshop from Royal Life Saving WA. At this workshop, children were introduced to the concepts of water safety and why this was very important. Needless to say our children are excitedly looking forward to their swimming lessons at the local community pool.

Thank you again to all our parents for your ongoing support. We look forward to another exciting year ahead. Insha Allah, if we work in strong partnership between home and school, we will be looking at another successful year for our students.

The Year 1 Team