Prep | Year 1 News
Welcome to Year One. We’ve had a great start to the year, which has been filled with new and exciting experiences. The boys have been developing an understanding of their new classroom environments and developing new friendships. We’re looking forward to building collaborative partnerships with you and your son as the year develops.
We have commenced the year by inquiring into the Transdisciplinary theme, ‘Who We Are’. We have been busy inquiring into our ever-evolving personalities, who we are as individuals, who we want to become and what the Learner Profile attributes look like, sound like and feel like. The boys will continue to revisit this overarching inquiry throughout the course of the year.
Central Idea:
- Individuals and communities grow by appreciating rights and responsibilities
Lines of Inquiry:
- Growing as a learner/person by making positive choices
- Our choices have consequences on our health and wellbeing
- Taking responsibility for the rights of myself and others
Concepts:
- Connection, Responsibility, Causation
In week 4 the boys will embark on a new inquiry into understanding cultural diversity and what it means to be a globally minded citizen. We will start the unit by exploring various cultural artefacts from musical instruments such as rainbow sticks, didgeridoos and clapping sticks to bi-lingual story books, cultural games, traditional Chinese celebrations and the smells of popular spices from around the world such as cardamom pods, cinnamon and ginger. The boys will also be asked to give a short presentation on their own culture. We strongly encourage the boys to bring in an item of cultural significance from their family to use alongside their presentation in Week 4. We would encourage you and your family to assist the boys in their inquiry. If you have any cultural items or artefacts that you would be happy to send to school with your child, please begin to send these in from week 3 onwards. We are intending to explore the various cultures of significance to our boys. This could be traditional cultural clothing, images of cultural foods, items or images from religious events or festivals or even items that you treasure when you have visited other cultures.
We are hoping to be able to go on an excursion towards the end of term to develop our appreciation of different cultures and religions. If you have a connection to a place of worship, please let us know so we can explore these options.
Central Idea:
- Appreciating and understanding cultural differences can create global citizens
Lines of Inquiry:
- Being open-minded makes us global citizens (Responsibility)
- Traditions and beliefs influence our lives (Perspective)
- Cultures can have similarities and differences (Form)
Concepts:
- Responsibility, Perspective, Form
Maths
During our Maths engagements, students have been exploring time through sequencing months and seasons through using calendars to identify days and months of the year, including significant cultural and personal events. We explored how many boys have their birthdays in each month and season. The next focus areas in Maths will be data. We will be exploring the use of tally marks and how to create simple bar and column graphs.
Art
In art we were inspired by the Happy Objects exhibition at The Australian Design Centre as a way to get to know each other. Students and teachers photographed and published their Happy Object to a padlet. We had lots of fun in class looking at everyone’s objects and finding others within the Trinity community with similar interests, and objects.
