End of Term 1 Thanks and Photos

Hi everyone,

Term One has come to a close so we would like to extend a huge thank you to all of the parents who have supported the learning within the Neighbourhood. Your contributions have been invaluable including parents who have spoken about what happiness means to them, parents who have shared areas of expertise during Learning Agreement projects and parents who have helped with mini projects (science, animation and gardening). A big thank you to our parent reps who are making us all better connected and to Alison Kealy who has organised an excursion that has been postponed to term 2. Thank you also to Nicola (Miro's mum) who is helping us shape up some special songs.

We are having our Happy Shop Grand Opening this Thursday and while our original idea was to invite parents, we have decided that this will be an event just for the children and then next term we will invite parents for a celebration of our learning. The end of term has just been a little too hectic, particularly with illness going around, to organise an event for this week.

Please be reminded that Term 1 ends at 2.30pm this Friday 4th April. Term 2 commences on Tuesday 22nd April so Week 1 is a short week with Friday 25th being Anzac day.

Here are some photos to update you on some of our Inquiry progress. The captions give you a little more insight into what we have been up to.

Message from Parent Reps

Hello to all Parents of Year One.

Currently Anna (Zahra's mum), Gina (Ren's mum) and Kate (Ames' mum) are collecting the information for the Neighbourhood contact list. If you haven't filled one out and want to be on the list please contact any of the parent reps above and you will be included.

Otherwise just send an email to one of the parent reps with your name, child's name, telephone/mobile number and email address. We will add you to the list.

Gina at gbellarina@yahoo.com.au is collecting for Simone's Roll Group

Kate at kater@yahoo.com.au is collecting for Rita's Roll Group

Anna at anna_rogers@bigpond.com is collecting for Louisa's Roll Group

Thank you kindly,

Anna, Gina and Kate.

Year One Newsletter: Inquiry Concepts and News

Hi everyone,

Here is an update on what is happening in the Year One Neighbourhood.

Inquiry Concept Development:

The question driving our Inquiry is still 'what is happiness' but we are now moving toward the question "What can we do to bring happiness to others?". We are organising a time for a member of Clowns without Borders to come and share her experiences of working with sick children. We are also attempting to establish a relationship with the Royal Children's Hospital Education Institute to see if we can take some action to bring happiness in our own ways to the children who are ill. We are developing ideas and possibilities such as pen pals, video messages, hand made gifts and so on. We want to explore the different ways that we can bring happiness to others through acts of kindness, caring relationships as well as gifting and see what other means the children come up with.

The Happy Shop is almost ready, the children have been writing job applications for various roles including shop assistant, banker, stock inventory, visual merchandise, merchandise repairer etc.
The children will interview for these positions and have a roster for their work. Children will be able to purchase items in the store at various times. They can save their allowance or spend it, earn money if an item they made is sold, and take orders for a product that seems popular. The children will explore the use of money when shopping. They must provide at least enough money when purchasing an item and work on calculating change, they will get experience using a calculator to calculate daily sales and they will record prices and sales if they are a shop assistant.

The children in the shop model project group will be designing signs, catalogues and visual merchandising for the Happy Shop.

Children developing a performance have come up with script ideas and are collaborating to develop a message to their play and will start storyboarding in different ways to organise their scenes.

Children working on music projects are engaged in sound patterns, melody, and song meanings and messages.

LITERACY:
Literacy is embedded in all of our Inquiry projects and Learning Agreement provocations. Children are writing labels, signs, job descriptions, procedural text, recounts, interview questions, descriptions of their merchandise, etc. Children also engage in Writing workshops and Targets to develop personal goals in their writing skills and genre.
Children engage in guided reading each week and shared and modelled reading experiences for word study and author's craft. Children are encouraged to read every night and make an entry into their Reader's and Writer's notebook regularly.

NUMERACY:
Children are targeted in number concepts at their point of need. Maths Targets are very interactive and focussed on the use of materials to deepen understanding of number concepts. Please don't be alarmed if your child's maths book is looking a little bare - they are very engaged in exploring number concepts visually, orally and kinaesthetically. The formal recording of algorithms and other number processes should will come after the development of strong mental concepts and fluid mental calculation. The children's writing of numerals is targeted within writing workshops and will be a focus in week 9 and 10.
The concepts being developed in the various target groups include:

• Trusting the Count and flexible concepts of the numbers 0-20 (ordering, counting backwards orally, one more than and less than, different ways of constructing each number, teen numbers as one tens frame plus some more, estimation of the size of a collection)
• Using ten as a countable unit (grouping items by 10s to facilitate efficient counting, thinking in tens to prepare for place value understanding, skip counting, explaining their thinking and counting strategies)
• Place Value concept development (exploring the 0-9 number system, understanding that the value of each digit in a number depends on its position in the ones, tens and hundreds columns, understanding the relative value of two and three digit numbers, counting in place value parts). 

Our Mini Projects (clubs) of Science, Animation and Gardening will continue until the end of term and we will offer the children a chance to try a new project next term. The children have been very engaged in these sessions and have made strong links to our overarching Inquiry of Change.


Thank you for staying in touch with the Year One Happenings.
See you next week!

Walking Excursion Thursday 27th March

Hi everyone,

On Thursday 27th March (week 9, this coming week), we are taking the whole neighbourhood on a waking excursion to Melbourne University.

Alison Kealy is designing workshops for the excursion and a pre-excursion workshop on Wednesday morning at school that will include the following concepts:

• Measuring Happiness
• How happiness changes
• Random Acts of Kindness project
• Making a map of happiness
• Idea that happiness can come from things that you do for other people and happiness changes over time.

Excursion Time: 9.30am-12pm. Thursday 27th March.

Location: Engineering Department, Melbourne University, walking through the Cemetery.

Helpers: We have several parent volunteers so far but the more the merrier so please advise a neighbourhood teacher if you are interested in coming along. You will need to sign in and out at the office as per usual.

Lunch: A Pizza lunch will be provided for free at the University thanks to Alison. If your child cannot eat Margarita pizza please provide a sandwich or alternative lunch that they can bring with them. Please pack your child a snack for afternoon recess. 

If you have any questions please see a neighbourhood teacher.

Warm Regards,
The Year One Team.

Anaphylaxis Awareness

Hi everyone,

Just a reminder regarding Anaphylaxis Awareness at PHPS:

Princes Hill Primary School is not a nut free environment. However, a number of children in our community are allergic to nuts and/or other food. Please discuss with your children the importance of not sharing food with others to help reduce the possibility of anyone suffering an adverse reaction.

We ask that you also talk to your children about our no food sharing policy as some children are reporting that their friends are displeased if they refuse to share a snack packed from home. 

Thank you,

The Year One Team

Our Weekly Year One Newsletter of concepts and happenings

Hi everyone,

Here is an update on our Inquiry concept development, what's on and how you can help.

Inquiry Concept Development:

Our Inquiry questions at present are:

What is happiness?

Is happiness the same thing to everyone?

Is happiness the same thing to adults as it is to children?

How do we know we are happy? Can we be happy in different ways at different times?

How can we improve our happiness and the happiness of others?

We are investigating happiness because if we want to make positive personal change to improve the happiness of ourselves and others, we need to know what makes people happy!

This Inquiry is developing through projects that occur during Learning Agreement. Our current projects are Performance Project, Music Project and Shop Design Project. 

The performance group is learning about how to express the concept of happiness through a play that they will develop collaboratively. 

The music group is developing songs using instruments, digital music and vocals to express the concept of happiness.

The Shop Design group is currently making scale models of what will become the Happy Shop and they will construct the shop that our happy products will be sold in. 

During Learning Agreement, there are target groups run by one teacher and Learning agreement involves the rest of the children either working in their project group if it is on that day, or working independently on other activities like making products for the happy shop and writing their procedural text etc. 

THANK YOU TO THOSE PARENTS WHO HAVE BEEN COMING IN TO TALK ABOUT WHAT HAPPINESS MEANS TO THEM. If you are interested in coming in to speak with the children at 9.10am one morning, please book a morning with Simone. 

We will be collecting the data from you as adults as well as surveying each other on what makes us happy so that we can display our data and make some conclusions around the questions above. 

Please write your response to the question: "What makes you happy? Is it the same for you as an adult as it was for you as a child?" in your child's Reader's and Writer's Notebook so they can share with the neighbourhood. 

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

In Number: 

Please continue to practice counting and number skills with your child at home. Ask them different ways to make a number (part, part, whole) i.e. 5 is a 4 and a 1, a 3 and a 4, a 5 and a 0 etc. 

Practice making numbers in different ways on a tens frame. Flash tens frames to your children to develop their concept of ten and building on from ten using two tens frames together.  

For our Inquiry:

We need helpers for:

•  performance workshops (developing a play storyline, dialogue, acting skills, body language, expression, set and prop design later on etc)
• Shop Construction (when the models are complete, we will need helpers to construct the shop)
• Music development (writing lyrics, instrument use)

For our Mini Projects:

We need helpers for:

• Science helpers: any parents who can teach us something about matter (solids, liquids, gasses). We have a dad coming to teach us about dry ice in a couple of weeks! exciting!
• Gardening helpers
• Animation helpers

For Literacy:

• Please encourage your child to write in their Reader's and Writer's notebook a few times per week. They might like to write about what happiness means to them and discuss how what makes them happy is different to what makes you happy as a parent.

LOST PROPERTY:

Please check the lunch tubs in the hallway to see if your child's hat, jumper, lunchbox is inside. We will be sending items to the main lost property in the Gym foyer every Friday. 

Thanks everyone,
The Year One Neighbourhood Team