Yr1 Weekly Update – 05/12/17
People’s choices can help or hurt the Earth
Unit of Inquiry, Maths and Literacy
We had our Year 1 sale last week. We each decorated a used, plastic pot in our own way. Then we sold it to a friend from another class! We will use our new pot for planting and will be growing our own herbs. We will use the money we raised to organise our beach clean-up! You will shortly be receiving information on our beach clean-up trip. Please remember to sign up on the google doc if you want to accompany us, but remember to be quick…we can only take 10 parent helpers for each class.
This week we have been discovering how much rubbish we each make over a day or two. In our plastic bags, we collected all our rubbish. Later we sorted our rubbish into the different categories – paper, packaging from our snacks and lunches, plastic and foil. Once we had sorted our rubbish, we learned how to use tally marks to record how many of each material we had. Then we used our new information to help us to create a graph so we could look at how much rubbish we made in 2 days.
At lunch time, we collected all the food we had not eaten into a large box. Then we weighed it. In 1W our food weighed 5kg! From just one day! From just one class! We wanted to see if this was the same weight as one of us, so we weighed Anna Xu. We discovered that in just 3 days we would collect food that equaled the weight of Anna. We were quite horrified.
We decided that we need to try to eat more of the food we are given and some people will ask their parents to put less food in their lunch box so we create less waste.
Our teacher then told us we were not allowed to throw our rubbish in the bin…we had to use one of the 6R’s (reduce, refuse, reuse, recycle, repair, rot)! We had some extremely imaginative ideas on how to reuse some of our rubbish – glitter shakers, paint pots, jewelry containers etc. We recorded them using a flow chart then put the rubbish in the correct places.
Questions: What is waste? Where does waste come from? What do we do with waste? What goes into the rubbish? Why is it rubbish? How is rubbish disposed of? How does waste get into the ocean? What happens when it gets there? How can we stop this? What can we do to help?
Literacy
We continue to explore phonics in class through a variety of games, direct instruction and reading.
The children continue to read a variety of fiction and non-fiction books linked to our inquiry. We have been using a wide range of media to explore and see what the 5/6R’s are – video’s, cartoons, posters, books and photographs.
Maths
We are continuing to explore measurement and have been using real life situations to apply our learning. 1S made bread to put their new knowledge of capacity and weight into practice! It smelled lovely!
Suggested activities: Encourage your child to describe everyday objects in a measurement form, such as this feels heavy, this is tall, that is long, this can fit so much. Have your child make comparisons of size with a focus on the correct descriptive vocabulary. Longer/shorter, bigger/smaller, heavier/lighter, taller/shorter, more/less.
Questions: Can you describe the height of the chair? Can you describe the weight of the chair? Can you describe the size of the chair? Which is the longest/shortest? Can you compare the lengths?
Reminders
HATS, SUNSCREAN AND BUG SPRAY
It has suddenly gotten a lot hotter in Hong Kong. Can you please ensure that your child brings their hat to school EVERY DAY! It is school policy that students wear a hat at both lunch and playtime.
It is also a good idea to put sunscreen and bug spray on your child before they come to school. They are not allowed to apply it themselves and should not bring it to school.
Dentist Visits
You will be receiving a letter to inform you of your child’s upcoming visit to the dentist. All children who have returned the form will be seen by the dentist. On this day your child should bring their toothbrush and their dental booklet with them to school. The booklet will be returned that day.
