Foundation News

Welcome Back! The Countdown is on!

We welcome all our Foundation families to Term 4. Even though the children did not get to travel out of their suburb, or beyond their home, they all looked refreshed and started the first week of Term 4 online with a positive attitude, an abundance of energy and ready to learn. It's great to see the children follow our Zoom protocols with limited reminders.

The children regularly express how much they miss each other, so it is exciting to start counting down the days until we return onsite next Monday, the 18th of October. We will keep you updated via Skoolbag notifications in the coming days, about specific information relating to our return to school.

Until then, we thank parents in advance for supporting the children during Remote Learning over the past few months. Preparing resources, watching instructional videos, ensuring children attend scheduled Zoom meetings, supervising children during clinics, developing the children's independence, uploading tasks and making sure children listen to feedback are things that we have greatly appreciated. All of this support has contributed and ensured the children's academic skills continue to develop. Most importantly, keeping positive and holding hope we will get through this pandemic, are mindsets for which we are most grateful.

Learning In Foundation

Maths

This term, students in Foundation have started to learn about subtraction. Just like addition, a sequence for developing the subtraction concepts is followed. Here is a snapshot of the steps:

Subtraction is introduced through verbal action stories that involve takeaway. e.g.There were 6 birds in the cage. When the door was opened, 2 flew out. How many birds are in the cage now?
The children are guided in using materials to show the initial number, then remove or cover the amount that is taken away. Objects are set out vertically and the subtraction process using takeaway is verbalised.
Gradually, we introduce symbols to represent this process, matching - to the takeaway process through careful development such as:

4. We ensure the children can match

5. Emphasis is placed on the part/part/whole aspect of subtraction.

whole

- part

part

6. The initial subtraction concept is extended to include missing part .

e.g. Jasmine has 7 apples to make a tart. 12

How many more apples does she need? - 7

7. The initial subtraction concept is also extended to include comparison. , as well as alternative expressions that mean or imply subtract.

e.g. James has 5 apples. 14

Jasmine has 14 apples - 5

How many more apples does Jasmine have than James? 9

It is at this stage alternative expressions that mean or imply 'subtract' are used.

Children need to be led to analyse these situations to identify the whole and the parts and then use subtraction to find what is needed. When these skills are consolidated, children can then start to learn number facts.

Reading

This term, our new focus author is Margaret Wild.

In 2020 Margaret Wild received the Australia Council Award For Lifetime Achievement In Literature.

Margaret Wild is one of Australia’s most highly respected picture-book creators. She has published over seventy books for young people which have been translated, read and loved across the world.

Her work explores themes such as identity, death, homelessness, friendship and bullying - through nuanced characters and captivating stories.

Last week, Foundation students read "There's a Sea in my Bedroom" written by Margaret Wild.

Here is a snapshot of their interpretation of the book:

Writing

This term, Foundation students will be focussing on narrative writing (Purpose-to tell a story). They will be given opportunities to compose innovations on very familiar texts by changing the ending, the series of events, characters, or the setting. They will also be given opportunities to write their own stories that include an engaging beginning and a satisfying ending, some descriptive details to make the story interesting, and dialogue as appropriate, to add to the meaning of the story.

Here are 2 examples of narratives students in Foundation have written:

Religion

This term, students in Foundation have started to learn about our Patron Saint, St Raphael. They used adjectives to describe this archangel and drew a picture of what they think St Raphael looks like.

Here is a sample of a few of the children's pictures: