Montessori Yr 1/2 Term 2, 2024 Curriculum Overview

Term Overview

Welcome! 

Welcome back to Term 2, we hope you all had a restful holiday and that our students are ready to get back into learning! This term will be jam packed for both the teachers and students with different activities happening throughout the school. To stay up-to-date, please keep an eye on the regular school newsletter and school emails that are emailed out.

We would still appreciate your continued assistance in encouraging our students to maximise their independent skills. The expectation is that students should be able to enter the classroom in the morning by themselves, put their own lunch in the fridge, their own bag on the bag hooks and then get themselves ready for the day by going to the toilet, getting a drink, filling up their water bottle, sharpening their pencils before school starts and handing in homework folders when due.

During class-time students will continue to expand on these skills of independence via a variety of practical life skills such as answering the class phone, keeping the bookcase in order to cooking and cleaning up completely.  Our aim is to encourage the full-cycle of activity and a keen sense of order in all that our students do.  In all things we work to also encourage a cooperative learning approach. Our goal is for the child to be ready to observe, listen and follow but also to support one another with kindness and empathy as they work together in the classroom.  It is through kindness to ourselves and others that we start to recognise the significance of our own actions and self-worth. Developing the habits of becoming a learner promotes a passion to be a life-long learner -  a happy quest to become the best that we can be.

Before School

We encourage parents to ensure arrival at school to allow sufficient time for their child to prepare to enter the classroom ready to learn. The first bell rings at 8:30 with a warning bell at 8:55 so that learning can begin at 9:00. If children arrive before 8:30, they are to sit in the COLA until the 8:30 am bell.

QParents

QParents is here

Great news: Trinity Beach SS provides our parent community with the opportunity to register for QParents.

We will be sending out invitations for parents to register for QParents next week.  

QParents won’t replace the traditional ways you communicate with our school, but it will provide another way to communicate with us.

More information about QParents can be found at https://qparents.qld.edu.au/#/about

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

We are continuing our work with our structured synthetic phonics approach implemented last year. This program includes:

Reading: Students work in guided reading groups 4 days per week, at similar levels to develop skills of comprehension, fluency and vocabulary. Students are tested at the beginning of each term/end of the term to determine their progress and new guided reading groups.

Spelling: Students work in ability groups with different goals, 4 days per week, developing their spelling skills.  Students are tested at the end of each term to determine their progress and new spelling words/groups.

English

Our year 1 and 2 students will continue to research, plan for and write an informative report.  This term their focus however will be on our unique, native Australian Animals!  They will also answer questions re text structure, language/visual features and reflect on their own personal opinions in relation to the text subject. Throughout this unit, students will continue to consolidate their grammatical understanding. This will be done via the highly regarded Montessori way of linking each part of speech with a unique coloured symbol.  As they form simple, compound and complex sentences, punctuation handwriting skills will also continue to be emphasised.

To complement this study of animal life, 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.  In this way, the great diversity of life shall be emphasised, and special care given to the “jobs” that each living thing does to contribute to life on earth.

Maths

In mathematics this term, our children will partition collections into equal groups and skip count in twos, fives or tens to quantify collections to at least 120. They will also practise using numbers, symbols and objects to create skip counting patterns.  In particular, they will focus on describing and repeating increasing and decreasing patterns, identifying the repeating units and missing elements. In addition to this, our students will continue the study of geometry to make, compare, classify shapes and objects using obvious features. They will particularly aim to compare and classify shapes, describing features using formal spatial terms.

Science

Last term, our year 1 students described toys and the effects of interacting with them.  Students also responded to questions, make predictions, and participate in guided investigations of the toys.  

Our year 2 students elaborated on this task by describing a toy that will move with a push or pull, a change to the toy and how this would affect the toy’s movement. They posed an investigation question and made predictions about the toy’s movement, then represented and communicated observations and ideas. 

HASS

This term, our students will be working on a HASS unit entitled ‘Connections to Places’.  They will describe and represent features of familiar places and suggest ways to care for these places.  Students will also delve into the fascinating world of geography as they explore the way the world is divided into geographic divisions and investigate how people are connected to places.  They will have an array of tactile and visual experiences such as handling speciality made Montessori globes, puzzle and pin maps to really develop their map making skills as the expand their geographic understandings via this unit of study.

HPE

Students in year one will continue to develop the fundamental movement skills of dodging and running and test alternatives to evade others and objects in tagging games. They will also explore running, jumping and throwing activities and take part in simple challenges and competitions in athletics. .

Students in year two will continue to demonstrate fundamental skills to test alternatives to solve movement challenges and reach their targets in different games and sports. They will also explore running, jumping and throwing activities and take part in simple challenges and competitions in athletics. 

Visual Arts

Drama

‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’

Students explore the legend of The Pied Piper of Hamelin and consider how the parents of the missing children would have felt (empathy). They make choices about the roles of the Pied Piper, the mayor and the parents of the missing children as they participate in a process drama. The students explore ideas and solutions by participating in the developing drama and, while in role, share these with others.

Assessment Schedule

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