Grade 1

Grade 1

Grade One Teachers for 2024 are:
1W – Siobhan Walkden​ 
​1OD – Karlee O’Donnell 
1O/P – Karly O’Toole & Karen Plain 
​​1G/P – Mandy Gladman & Karen Plain ​
What’s on in our week
Monday – 
Tuesday – Phys Ed, Performing Arts, Chinese
Wednesday – Chinese, Art, Environmental Science
Thursday – Art
Friday – Assembly, Phys Ed, Performing Arts
*Please check with class teachers for more specific timetable information.

Grade 1 Curriculum

Literacy

​Reading

Students at Grade 1 continue to develop their reading skills and decoding strategies using the Little Learners Love Literacy program.
We focus on specific phonemes and graphemes, along with appropriate reading strategies during Reading sessions. Students will be reading decodable readers that closely align with the  Spelling and Phonics sequence they are learning in class.  Supportive strategies that we will be focussing on include:

  • stretching out the sounds in unknown words, eg m-i-l-k, milk
  • chunking sounds in words together, eg sh-u-t, shut
  • a simple retell of what you have just read

Spelling

Children will continue to focus on the sounds found in the Little Learners Love Literacy program. 
We also continue to use Secret Stories to help children remember the rules for digraphs (2 letter sounds) and trigraphs (3 letter sounds).

Writing

In Writing we will have daily lessons on using the starting points, writing on dotted third lines and formation of our upper and lower case letters. Any practise at home would be great! 
Throughout the year, students learn the components of writing a Recount, a Response, an Information Report, and a Narrative. 
Each week we will focus on specific grammar that is applicable to their Writing focus.

Speaking & Listening

Speaking, listening, negotiating, and taking turns to express ideas is an important part of learning in all curriculum areas at Maiden Gully Primary. In addition to this in Grade 1, Share-time is the chance for students to show or tell about special topics. This develops confidence in speaking to a larger audience. 

Numeracy

Mathematics

In Grade 1, learning in Mathematics builds on each student’s prior learning and experiences.
Students engage in a range of approaches to develop their understanding and fluency with concepts and processes by making connections,
reasoning, problem-solving and practice. Students employ mathematical strategies to solve problems as they:
  • use their curiosity and imagination to explore situations, recognise patterns in their environment and choose ways of representing their thinking when communicating with others
  • demonstrate that numbers can be represented, partitioned and composed in various ways; recognise patterns in numbers; and extend their knowledge of numbers beyond 2 digits to at least 120.
  • use physical or virtual materials and diagrams when modelling practical problems through active learning experiences, recognise existing patterns, employ different strategies and discuss the reasonableness of answers
  • explain ways of making direct and indirect comparisons and begin to use uniform, informal units to measure some attributes
  • reason spatially and use spatial features to classify shapes and objects; recognise these shapes and objects in their environment; and use simple transformations, directions and pathways to move the positions of shapes and objects within a space
  • use simple surveys to collect and sort data, based on a question of interest; recognise that data can be represented in different ways; and explain patterns that they see in the results
  • develop a sense of equivalence, fairness, repetition and variability when they engage in play-based and practical activities.

Arrow Reading Intervention

The ARROW Program offers further support to our reading program for targeted students.

Integrated Studies

A feature of Grade 1 is exploring and learning about the world around us. We learn about our local community, but we begin with a look creating a happy classroom community and how we each contribute to this. We explore the social messages and imagination in Fairytales. The world around us is full of science and in Grade 1, we learn about Push and Pull forces, Non-living and Living things and how they survive, their habitats and life cycles.

 

Extra-Curricular Highlights

There are many special events for our Grade 1 students to look forward to during the year. 
The Fairytale Parade, Spelling Bee and the Prep/One Games Afternoon are several favourites, as well as excursions. On the sporting calendar, the House Athletics and Cross Country are a great opportunity for students to get involved in House spirit. On the performing arts stage, we can’t go past the Easter Hat Parade or the Junior School Concert.

Wellbeing

At Maiden Gully Primary School, we believe that Wellbeing begins with relationships and getting to know each other both individually and as members of a group. 
Students participate in three wellbeing programs, The Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships program, Play is the way program and the Smiling Minds program. 
The RRRR learning materials are designed to develop students’ social, emotional and positive relationship skills. 
​Play is the way is a practical methodology for teaching social and emotional skills using guided play, classroom activities and an empowering language. It is a process that gives students a way to develop, improve and entrench the personal and social capabilities. Smiling Minds is a life-long, evidence-based tool to deliver the essential mental fitness skills needed to underpin good mental health and resilience from an early age.

Home Partnership

Daily Home Reading

All students at Maiden Gully Primary are required to read 5 times a week at home and parents need to sign their yellow reader diaries each night. 
Independent Home Reading Goals that focus on the areas of Accuracy and Fluency are stapled into student diaries. We encourage parents to support these goals when reading each night at home. Other learning goals related to comprehension and exploring and building vocabulary are focussed on more in the classroom.

Communication

The Compass Parent Portal is one of our major communication methods between Teachers and Parent/Carers. Please check your child’s profile regularly for any updates.

Numeracy at Home

The parents role in helping to point out maths in everyday life is crucial to early learners seeing themselves as capable mathematicians. How can you help?

  • Involve your child in measuring activities e.g. pouring drinks, ordering objects according to their length, when cooking, comparing size/weight, telling the time. 
  • Estimating, then counting (and checking) objects and identifying number patterns eg how many grapes will fill your cup?
  • Reading numbers in the environment, eg road signs, catalogues…
  • If you are shopping talking about money. Recognising the value of coins and notes especially the difference between dollars and cents.
  • Playing addition games like car cricket when travelling.