Premiers Reading Challenge launch and Book Fair - 6 March!

It Here! The NSW Premiers Reading Challenge (PRC) starts on Monday 5 March and to launch the reading initiative the school is holding a Book Fair.

The Scholastic Book Fair will be open in the Learning Hub Tuesday - Thursday 6-8^th March from 8.00-830 and 2.30-3.00.

Your children will be enrolled on the PRC website and your child will be able to log in and start recording books read from 6 March.

K-2 students – you can read the books on your own, read them with someone, or someone can read them to you. If your child is reading simple chapter books they can attempt the 3-4 challenge – please let Mrs Duffy know if this is your child.

3-6 students – you must read the books on your own, but someone can help you choose them.

Book lists are found here: https://online.det.nsw.edu.au/prc/booklist/home.html 

Complete rules are found here: https://online.det.nsw.edu.au/prc/rules.html

The Learning Hub team is gathering all the PRC books we hold so you will easily find some titles with us but a visit to your local library will be required to access the vast majority of books – there are over 1500 book titles for each age group!

     

Logging-on is easy from the 6 March at:                                           https://online.det.nsw.edu.au/prc/home.html 

Students will receive a Certificate for each year they complete the Challenge:

                                             

The online Student Reading Record must be completed by 31 August 2018 (11.59) to complete the Challenge.

If your child meets the challenge target, their certificate will have their name and school printed on it and the Honour Roll has names listed by alphabetical order but does not mention your school name. 

If you do not want your child to receive a certificate or be on the Honour Roll, you must not enter any books in your online Student Reading Record.

By entering this challenge, your child is declaring that they have read the books entered in accordance with their school year rules.

I look forward to encouraging your children to take up the challenge and 

share new books with them.

Home Readers – The What, When and How

At Bayview we use a home reading scheme known as PM Benchmarking. This scheme has been developed by educational reading specialists and is very prescriptive with regard to placing students on particular reading levels.

Students are allocated to a reading level based on testing carried out 2-3 times per term. The testing involves one on one reading with each child, assessing many aspects of reading, including:

• Accuracy (how many words are read correctly)
• Fluency (speed)
• Comprehension (what has been understood)
• Expression (the emphasis placed on certain words)
• Decoding (the strategies used to sound words out)
• Punctuation Cues (pausing and changing pitch for punctuation marks)
• Error Analysis (are errors being made because a child is guessing based on the first sound, are words substituted for similar meanings?)

Science - Week 4

In science over the last few weeks, we've been investigating materials, their different properties and determining what purposes they are best used for.

During this process we have met a little friend called Sid.  Sid is a lemur and is having a sleepover party for his friends at the end of the term.  He has asked the boys and girls for help getting a few things ready for his party.

On Wednesday, we designed a bed for his guests, thinking about the best materials to use for each different part and why.  We collaborated with others to share our ideas and then set to work in teams to build our design.

Here's what we came up with...

COLLABORATION

Our focus L@SL disposition for the next fortnight is COLLABORATION.
At this morning's assembly Year 1 helped everyone consider how to make the most of our 'Collaboration learning muscles'.  Mr Potato Head helped us remember the important elements of working collaboratively with others -

Ice Cream Day!

The Benefits of Music

Music enriches a child’s life. Research has found that music enhances other areas by facilitating learning. It’s more than the voice singing or the fingers playing an instrument. Music taps into multiple skills sets, often simultaneously eg. using eyes and ears as well as large and small muscles. Musical training physically develops the part of the left side of the brain involved with processing language. Linking familiar songs to new information can also help imprint information on young minds. As teachers we often sing times tables, or the Thrass rap, to enhance learning. Research indicates the brain of music students works differently to that of non-music students. Apparently children involved in music have larger growth of neural activity because more of the brain is used when playing an instrument or singing. Research has also found a causal link between music and spatial intelligence. This means understanding music can help children visualise various elements which should go together, like they would do when solving a maths problem. These skills are used when solving multistep problems in engineering, maths, art, gaming, IT and architecture. It doesn’t end there: along with better performance results on concentration-based tasks, music training can help with basic memory recall. Music is also associated with other cognitive strengths such as verbal recall proficiency. People who have had formal musical training tend to be better at remembering verbal information stored in memory. So, get very excited when your child tells you they enjoy music! The benefits are greater than you imagine!

Odds and Evens

Today in Maths we met "Odd Todd" and "Even Steven", who helped us remeber which numbers belong to each counting group.

THRASS Parent Discussion and Lesson Demonstration

Please join us on February 28th if you'd like to know more about THRASS, how it is used in our teaching programs and also see Year 1 'in action'.

Characters Everywhere!

This week we have continued our English unit on ‘Characterisation’. We thought really hard about all the places we find characters – movies, books, plays, games, comics, cartoons, songs, television shows, Fairy Tales, nursery rhymes . . . . and the list goes on! We then thought about some of the characters we find in each of these and how they are similar or different to each other. We found that in lots of stories there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters. We also discovered that the way we find out what these characters are like is through the words and language the author / character uses and also their behaviours, shown through the pictures or images that we see.

We are putting together a list of questions to send to Gus Gordon, one of our favourite Australian author/illustrators. Gus has kindly agreed to answer our questions and share his thoughts on characterisation.

Parenting Workshop

Measurement - Length 2

This week in measurement, we were talking about the importance of choosing uniform units (the same size and shape) to measure and compare the lengths of different objects.

Through our investigations we found a very interesting thing.  If the units are bigger/longer, then it takes less of them to match the length of the object you are measuring.  If the units are smaller/shorter then it takes more of them to measure (and a long time!!).  The length of the object doesn't change - just the number of units used to measure it.

We all remembered to measure carefully, without any gaps or overlaps.

Well done Year 1!!!