Welcome to the Grade 1 and 2 class (6 and 7 year olds). It is a pleasure for my assistant Hasanah and myself to be teaching this class. We have a great little group of 10 students (seven grade 1’s and three grade 2’s). They are all energetic, enthusiastic and excitable.
This year there is a strong emphasis for children to be independent, “have a go” and try your best. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses and we want to appreciate what we are good at and find ways to help improve at others.
Children will learn how to identify the PYP student attitudes as they occur through learning experiences during the year. (Appreciation, Creativity, Respect, Commitment, Independence, Tolerance, Cooperation, Confidence, Empathy, Integrity and Enthusiasm.)
For the first term our Unit of Inquiry has been: Rules and Routines. This has been a good way to start the year as we established our classroom essential agreements, talked about why we have rules, what if we didn’t have rules and how to change rules from a negative into a positive. The class ran a whole school presentation to parents at shared assembly relating to rules and routines. They displayed a lot of confidence speaking with a microphone and following the sequence of their speeches and performances. It was also interactive for the parents and entertaining. Ibu Hasanah and myself and I’m sure the parents who were there were all very proud of the students.
Some routines that occur in our class are as follows:
- Units of Inquiry, Literacy and Numeracy daily.
- Computer usage – daily – Lexia and Symphony Maths which can also be followed at home.
- Specialist subjects – P.E., Swimming, Dance, Music, Library – once a week, Bahasa Indonesia – twice a week.
- Cleaning teeth after lunch daily
- Every Friday afternoon we do rotational group activities with the Reception class.
- Eating at school – Try to provide your child with some healthy foods for snack and lunch. Definitely some fruit at snack time.
Homework is given to the students Monday to Thursday. Work in their book is always related to the daily activities in the class so this is a good opportunity to talk to your child about their day. Listening and reading with your child using a different book selected each night at their level is of huge value and benefit to your child’s literature progress.
Parents, family and visitors are always welcome to our class.
Scott Masson.
