Dear Parents and Families,    

We warmly welcome our students and families back to Term 2! We have another busy term ahead with a number of exciting activities and events planned. Our students will continue on their learning journey and we look forward to sharing many wonderful learning experiences with you, throughout the term. Thank you for your ongoing support. If you have any questions or concerns in regards to your child’s education, please do not hesitate to contact your child’s classroom teacher either in person or via email.

Below is an overview of the learning that will take place at St Angela of the Cross this term. We are so looking forward to an exciting and engaging term of learning!

Kind Regards,

Leah Missen and Rachel Braun

LITERACY – READING                                                  

Home Group 1                                

Students will continue to build on their knowledge of identifying and recording letter names and sounds. When reading, our beginning readers are being introduced to the strategies of pointing to each word, looking at the words, using picture clues and recognising common words such as ‘I’, ‘a’, ‘to’ and ‘the’. Our independent readers will focus on strategies to comprehend and answer questions about the texts that they read. During Shared Reading, we will be listening to Fairy Tales to introduce the Narrative text type. We will focus on the structure, characters and features of narrative texts.

Home Group 2

Students will be focusing on their understanding of Narrative texts, incorporating the skills of making connections, making predictions, asking questions, inferring and understanding and building vocabuarly. They will continue to develop their knowledge of phonics and will begin to explore some flexible and efficient spelling strategies. Students will be involved in Guided Reading sessions with their teacher to improve accuracy, build fluency, expand vocabulary and develop comprehension skills. A reminder that all students are required to read for a minimum of fifteen minutes each night, record their reading in their reading diary and bring their reading diaries to school daily (RAZ-kids is an acceptable nightly reading resource).

LITERACY - WRITING

Home Group 1

At the beginning of all writing sessions, students are encouraged to plan their writing through drawing and verbalise their ideas in full sentences to their teacher or learning partner. They are learning to hear and count the sounds in words and to record the sounds they can hear. Students will continue to write Recounts about past events and will experiment writing different parts of a Narrative. We will begin to recognise some elements in familiar narratives, for example, characters, setting, problem and solution and will learn to write a simple sentence to tell an imaginative story.

Home Group 2

Students will be learning to plan, compose, edit and publish writing that focuses on the structure of Narrative texts. They will use the correct structure of writing a narrative that includes an orientation, complication, series of events and resolution. Students will reread and edit their writing, checking for spelling, punctuation and text structure, before publishing their writing pieces. They will investigate the use of vocabulary and how a range of interesting words and phrases enhance the meaning, mood and theme of a narrative.

NUMERACY   

Home Group 1

Students will use drawings, numerals and words to record addition and subtraction sums. They will learn vocabulary related to addition and subtraction and explore the ‘Count All, Count On and Count Back’ strategies. Students will develop fluency with forwards and backwards counting. They will understand that numbers are said in a particular order and there are patterns in the way we say them. Students will collect, sort and display data gathered through a picture graph and will answer yes / no questions about data that we have gathered.

Home Group 2

Students will be focusing on using various strategies to solve addition and subtraction problems and will continue to extend their knowledge of place value. They will explore the connection between addition and subtraction using partitioning or writing equivalent number sentences. Students will recall addition facts from single to multi-digit numbers and related subtraction facts to develop increasingly efficient mental strategies. They will compare the effectiveness of different methods of collecting data. Students will explore different ways of presenting data such as, using lists, tables, picture graphs, column graphs, line graphs and pie charts to show the results of their investigations.

RELIGION    

In the Unit, ‘Celebrations’ students will explore the Church as a believing, welcoming, serving, caring and celebrating community that shares God’s love. Students will name and describe family celebrations and events and will explore some of the ways that people celebrate religious traditions. They will recognise that Sacraments are special celebrations in the life of the Church and will name some symbols and actions that are part of the Sacrament of Baptism, the first sacrament of Initiation.

INQUIRY  

Home Group 1

‘Changes in our Sky and Landscape’

Students are learning about the difference between night and day and what makes the night sky dark and the day sky light. They will investigate the four seasons, how they change our environment, how they affect us and what changes in our everyday lives we make, when the seasons change.

‘Living Things and Their Needs’

Students will identify the difference between living and nonliving things and explore what living things need to survive. They will understand the difference between what plants and animals need to survive and will investigate different habitats of living things.

Home Group 2

‘Turn and Tilt’

Students are learning about different types of Scientists and their focus areas. They will investigate how the Earth rotates on its axis, how day and night happens and will identify the different features of Earth.

‘Lifecycles’

Students will identify that different living things have different life cycles and depend on each other and the environment to survive. They will explore the difference between living, once living and products of living things and will investigate how the growth and survival of living things are affected by the physical conditions of their environment.

WELLBEING  

At St Angela of the Cross we have a strong focus on student wellbeing. We will be running a variety of lessons that will enable students to monitor and improve their own wellbeing. Students will be involved in regular circle time sessions, class meetings and RRRR (Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships) lessons. This will help students listen with understanding, tune into feelings, share opinions and begin to see the world from another’s viewpoint. These are the very skills our students will need to function successfully in any social setting.