Year 1

Lights, camera, action! Our Friday Friends assembly was an opportunity to have our moment in the spotlight and display our character strengths. Kate explained, “I loved our Friday Friends assembly because I felt famous and I got to read my poem to the whole school.”

During rehearsals we practised the character strengths of teamwork and creativity. We shared our creative ideas and these were used in the show. Juliet thought “everyone had amazing costumes”. These were lovingly created at home with the help of our parents. Finally, we were transformed into African animals –singing and dancing African animals, that is.

On the big day we dramatised the inspiring story, Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andreae. Gerald the giraffe was told he couldn’t dance by the other animals. Through perseverance and bravery, Gerald set out to prove the animals wrong. We finished with a stirring dance to Can’t Stop The Feeling! which we all performed with bravery and zest. Gabrielle and Elyse cried, “We loved doing the Rock’n’Roll dancing together”. Lucia exclaimed, “It was so much fun to dance for everyone and my mum came to watch”.

Fun in and out of the classroom

Our character strengths of curiosity, perseverance and teamwork were used in so many of our classes. “Mathematics is a bit tricky but always exciting”, explained Emma, and Sofia “loves it when her teacher reads stories to the class”.

Year 1 was such a great learning adventure and every day was fun packed.

A highlight for Lucia is music “because we get to play the instruments”.

PE has been popular too. Sarah loves gymnastics, especially “doing flips and jumping on the trampoline”. Georgia is a fan of swimming “because I am a swimming person” and Olivia enjoyed “running and playing banana tag”.

Gabrielle and Amelia W particularly enjoyed biblical studies “because the plays are so much fun and we learn the Bible at the same time”.

There were many special events this year that were exciting and fun. These are the days we will never forget.

Isabella exclaimed, “Book Week is the best because we get to celebrate books”. Willow explained “I love library because the books take me into another world. I loved Book Week because we dressed up as our favourite book character and persuaded other people to read that book.” Even the teachers dressed up as crayons from the book, The Day The Crayons Quit.

We all went to Queens Park for the cross country carnival and our parents came along to cheer us on. It was the furthest we had ever run but no one gave up, we persevered to the finish line. Daisy decided “I loved the cross country carnival because I could run fast.”

There were many dress up days to raise money for charities. One of our favourites was dressing up as farmers, to help Australian farmers who are battling the drought. Jade said “Farmers Day was great – we got to appreciate the wool, fruit and vegetables that we get from farms”.

Anoushka thought, “I loved the Celebration of Learning because our parents came to our classroom and we made a time capsule.” We wrote a letter to our future self and our parents wrote a secret message. We sealed it in an envelope and look forward to opening it when we grow up.

We were all asked what we liked most about Year 1, Elizabeth said “I love my teachers and my friends.” It has been a fantastic year.