Junior School Learning

Numeracy in Foundation

This week the Foundation students have been focusing on the reading numbers and the formation of the numbers from 0 to 9.  Students have been working on the correct formation of tricky numbers such as 3, 4 and 5.  Later on in the week we will be working on careful counting and then writing the correct digit to match a collection of objects.  Careful counting is important so that students can count using one to one correspondence.  

Year 1 and 2 Reading, Writing and Maths

In Reading, students have been learning to make personal connections between the text they are reading and their own experiences eg. “That reminds me of when I played in the sand at the beach”. These are called text-to-self connections and they help students engage with texts and understand what they are reading. They have also been learning to make connections to other familiar texts as they read. These are called text-to-text connections eg. “That reminds me of another book I read where the character had the same problem.” We have been reading books by the author/illustrator Bob Graham as they are often written from a child’s perspective and contain familiar settings and situations that children can relate to.

In Writing, students have been adding greater detail when describing objects and characters. This has included exploring types of adjectives and experimenting with these in different writing pieces. Students have collaborated to make ‘Word Clouds’ that display a range of adjectives relating to themes such as size, colour, shape and texture. Other activities have included constructing sentences that contain detailed clues about a ‘Mystery Object’. Students have been able to transfer and apply these skills in their recount writing, adding greater detail that helps the reader understand the experience they are writing about.

In Maths, students have been learning to count to and from a given number. They have been completing a range of open ended tasks suited to their level of number understanding. This week in maths we have been playing a warm up game called ‘calculator or not’. In this activity students must choose whether to use a ‘calculator or not’ to answer a mathematical problem given to them by their teacher. If students choose to use a calculator, they must complete the entire process on the calculator before answering. Students who do not choose to use a calculator can answer straight away. We have had great fun beating the calculator!