Week 23

Dear parents,

This week we has been a busy week!

Students have been working on their inventions and inventors booklets. We have been learning about different inventors and how their invention impacts our lives.

We learned about the telephone and how it has changed. We made paper cup and plastic cup telephones to see how our voice travels!

We have been introduced to energy and how we use it. Next week we will start our projects for our summative task.

In language, we read The Boy Who Cried Wolf for reading circle time. Students have been working on integrity and the importance of telling the truth.

We have also been working on our language centres:

We received our certificates and medals for the speech competition at assembly:

We also had Japanese Cultural Day on Thursday!

Finally, we had PikaPika today. We helped clean up our community.

Just a reminder that it is Numeracy and Science Week next week. We got to do a dry ice experiment to get us excited for next week!

Have a great weekend.
Kind regards,
Sara Matthews

Reading journals

Grade1 students like reading weekend journals for their friends.

It is a great chance to practice public speaking in Japanese.

Listeners can ask some questions after listening to the journal.

They can learn how to ask questions in a polite way. 

For example, they say "Sore wa oishikatta desuka?" not just "Sore oishikatta?"

They are learning when they can talk in casual and when they should talk in polite way.

Week 22

Dear Grade One parents,

This week, we got into our fourth central idea. One of our provocations this week was to think of something that could help move our cushions from our desk to their rightful place.
We came up with some good inventions that help move items, such as the trolley, the basket, and trays.

Next, we looked why people made these things and why they are helpful. Then we looked at our central idea and broke down some of the words such as create and invent.

Some of the students had already read a great book called "My Bright Idea" during guided reading time, and were able to bring it into class to explain what invent means. We found out what an inventor was and what an invention was.

We made a list of all the inventions we could think of. Then we tried to put them in order, as a class, as to which invention is the most important invention in our lives.

So far, Grade One have decided that the refrigerator and glasses are most important.We have some spare cards for new inventions we come across and we will keep updating the list as we learn more about how inventions impact our lives.

In math, we did revision of odd and even numbers and comparing numbers as this was an area that we were struggling with during math quiz time. We played some games that were really fun!

In language, we have been working more on our consonant blend sounds. Here are some of our classmates using the dictionary to find some "Ch" sounds!

We also had our speech competition! The speech competition was for grades 1-6 and it was voluntary entry. Students who chose to do the speech competition worked very hard independently to write and practice memorising their speech. All students will receive a medal and a certificate.

The overall winner for Grade One was:
1. Sumire
2. Beyza
3. Leyla

Kind regards,
Sara Matthews

Week 21

Dear Grade One parents,

This week we finished up our math unit on measurement. Students had so much fun measuring capacity this week! We spent a lot of extra time on the unit as students had many questions about comparing and measuring.

We also updated our signs from our How We Express Ourselves unit by putting the answers to our signs around the school.

Next week we will be delving into our new unit of inquiry: People learn how things work so they can invent and create.

Have a great weekend!

Kind regards,
Sara Matthews

Momotaro song

Grade1 students have been practicing Momotaro song for Japanese Culture Day.

Momotaro is a very popular old story.

The theme of this year's Japanese Culture Day is Japanese Traditional stories.

Hopefully they can show this song for the opening.

They also got a new Kokugo textbook this month.

They enjoyed the story "Kujiragumo" and wrote the letter to the whale cloud.

Some students wrote really cute letters to him.

Week 20

Dear grade 1 parents,

Thank you for coming to our Celebration of Learning today.
The students were very excited to share their learning with everyone.

At the start of the week we put up our signs around the school.

Then we told everyone about our signs at assembly. We asked JIES to try and guess what they mean!

Today we showed everyone what our signs meant by communicating through drama. We made up plays using gesture and movement rather than sound.

Next week we will be putting up the answers to all of our signs!

Have a great week,
Sara Matthews