Montessori Yr 1/2 Term 1 Overview 2024

Term Overview

Welcome to all our existing and new parents and carers in Year 1 and 2. We have a fantastic school community so please if you can, take some time to connect with each other ahead of a busy term 1.

It is very important for students to attend school every day so they do not miss out on any of the curriculum or fall behind. It is also important for every student to have a healthy breakfast before coming to school to help their concentration and ability to learn. Please ensure your child comes with a healthy lunch, preferably as soft plastic free as possible.

In Montessori year 1 and 2 our children now join the rest of the cohort at break time to eat lunch together in the undercover JLC area.  After they eat, their lunchbox and water bottles are stored in our class tubs and then brought back to classroom fridge at the end of breaktime. If names come off lunchboxes and water bottles, please make sure you rename them throughout the year, to avoid confusion and lost property issues.

QParents

QP is an online portal helping the school move toward a cashless and paper friendly school. 

• The QP portal allows Parents and Carers to grant participation consent online for activities such as swimming and excursions which reduces our need to print out paper consent forms
• Also, the QP portal enables Parents and Carers to make payment online for school activities and viewing unpaid invoices payment history.

Thank you to all those parents who have registered for QParents. This means every registered parent now has the opportunity to access to their children’s student records at their fingertips, anytime, anywhere. Haven’t received an invitation from us yet? There’s still time! Please let us know immediately. Or if you are simply looking for further information, videos and FAQs on QParents, visit https://qparents.qld.edu.au

Attendance

How to report an absence: 

• Email attendance@trinitybeachss.eq.edu.au or
• Call the school's absence line on 4057 1444, then press #1 and don't forget to leave a reason why your child/children are away, or
• Send a note to the classroom teacher on their return

Our schools attendance target is 95% 

Reading / Spelling

Our school continues to embed a whole school approach to reading and spelling across Prep to Year 6. This involves teaching the reading and spelling demands of the Australian Curriculum, providing students with a systematic synthetic phonics approach and unpacking the Big 6/Science of Reading through engaging and meaningful lessons. Students engage with decodable texts when learning to read and rich authentic texts when reading to learn and continue to use the PLD approach for their spelling and sound focus.

English

In Term 1, they will begin with an on-going focus on grammar and the role words play within what they read and write. This will incorporate the unique Montessori Grammar approach of assigning each part of speech with a shape, colour and special story meaning. It will be hands on, visual, verbal and fun! Students will then begin to research, plan for and write real facts about planets. Punctuation and handwriting skills when writing simple and compound sentences will be practised and developed.

They will also practise giving their personal opinions re this writing topic and explore as well as compare text types. 

In Term 2, our students will continue to consolidate and expand the above literacy skills via information report writing. Their focus will be to research, plan for and write informative reports about Australian animals.  They will also practise answering questions about their knowledge of text structure, language features and give personal opinions.

Maths

This term we are focusing on building children’s understanding of numbers. For our year one children, this means ensuring they have a sound foundation in numbers to 20 including zero. They will then work with numbers to 100, ordering and connecting number names, numerals, quantities and applying knowledge of place value to partition two-digit numbers. Year two will work with numbers to at least 1000, applying knowledge of place value to partition, rearrange and rename two and three-digit numbers in terms of their parts, and regroup partitioned numbers to assist in calculations.  Measurement will also be a strong focus this term. Our year one children will compare and order objects and events based on the attributes of length, mass, capacity and duration, communicating reasoning. They will also explore the use of uniform informal units to measure length.  Year two will extend this knowledge to use uniform informal units to measure and compare shapes and objects re a range of different attributes.  Our children will continue to use a range of learning methods, including the specialized Montessori number materials to develop their mathematic knowledge this year.

Science

This semester our year one and two students will participate in guided investigations of toys. The year ones will work to describe toys and the effects of interacting with them, make predictions and respond to questions.  The year two children will investigate and report on the push and pull forces that cause the toys to move and describe how changes made to the toys could affect movement. To compliment the investigation of forces this term, elements of Montessori’s 6-12 Cosmic Science framework such as the telling of the Great Stories and opportunities to participate in cross-curricular related science tasks will also be offered.

HASS

This Semester all students will engage in a unit entitled Connections to Places. During this time, students will learn to describe and represent the features of familiar places. While year 1 will largely focus on a local scale, year 2 will explore places and features of locations at the national and international scale as well. All children will need to be able to recognise their place within the world and locate it on the world map. They will begin to recognise the world is divided into geographic divisions. Children will represent or identify different places/geographic divisions on labelled maps. Students will explore the significance of places for themselves and/or others and describe how to care for places and build an understanding why it may be important to preserve significant places. 

HPE

Our HPE lessons will take place with both Montessori classes at the same time. All of the year one students from both classes will work with one HPE teacher and all of the year two students will work with the other HPE teacher.

Year 1

In PE, students in year one will develop the fundamental movement skills of dodging and running and test alternatives to evade others and objects in tagging games. They will explore positive ways to interact with others, including strategies to work in groups and play fairly during tagging games. In Health, students will select and apply strategies to keep themselves healthy and safe and will be able to ask for help with tasks or problems.

Year 2

In PE, students in year two will demonstrate fundamental skills to test alternatives to solve movement challenges, to reach their targets in different games and sports. In Health, students will describe changes that occur as they grow older. They identify how emotional responses impact on others’ feelings. 

Music

During Term one, students will reinforce knowledge of the rhythmic elements – crotchet, quavers and minim. They will learn about strong and weak beats, rhythmic ostinato and percussion instruments.

Technology

Students will explore a range of familiar services and identify how each services meets a particular need within the community.

Visual Arts

This term in Visual Arts, year 2 students will be exposed to each of the seven basic elements of art. Elements of art are stylistic features that are included in artwork to help the artist communicate. These elements are line, shape, colour, texture, value space and form. Students view various famous artworks that have each element depicted in the artwork. Students will use and experiment with different materials, techniques, technologies and processes to make artworks using the basic elements of art. This year in Visual Arts our theme is ‘Bugs, grubs and all thing nice.’

Drama

'Amy and Louis’. Story Book Drama

Students create and perform roles in a story book drama based on the book Amy and Louis by Libby Gleeson and Freya Blackwood

Assessment Schedule

Homework

Homework Folders will be sent home Friday afternoons.  The folder will contain a letter explaining homework process.  Please return the folder Thursday mornings so readers can be changed over by parent volunteers. 

Contact Information

Year 1/2 MA  -Kat Davies (kdavi226@eq.edu.au)

Year 1/2 MB – Jacqueline Williams (jwill68@eq.edu.au)

Specialist Teachers

HPE Jodie Donovan jdono63@eq.edu.au

HPE Steve Kotzikas sskot0@eq.edu.au

Visual Arts Vanessa Graham vgrah5@eq.edu.au

Music Svetlana Walker swalk146@eq.edu.au

Drama David Terry dater1@eq.edu.au

Technology Alex Einerman aeine0@eq.edu.au