Primary Sub-School News

At Jacana School for Autism, we have a big focus on student engagement. That means that our staff work to implement activities that motivate our students to participate in learning. This can mean using students' interests, using fun 'hands on' activities, and using visuals to ensure our students understand the activity and can communicate while they are working.

This week, students from Room 4 made play dough. They followed instructions to select their ingredients, choose a colour for their play dough, and then enjoy the sensory experience of squishing and rolling their play dough. It was a really enjoyable activity for the students! To support student engagement, sometimes students like to choose a favourite game to learn about numbers. In Room 5 and across the Primary Sub School, students use visuals to communicate how they are feeling during 'Circle Time.' These all some of the ways staff have engaged students this week.

Swimming

Swimming in the Primary Sub School is taking place from the 29th May until 2nd June. The students will have a lesson every day for 1 week. For some students, it will be their first excursion, and we will prepare students through a social story. If your child has not been to the Broadmeadows Leisure Centre, I encourage you to take them there to help them familiarise themselves with the environment.  Please note, if you would like to be a parent helper, you can let your child's class teacher know. You must have a current Working With Children's Check to be a parent helper on the excursion. Many thanks to our parents who have already offered their help with swimming. Also, there has been a change to some of the swimming session times. Please refer to the note that was sent home in your child's diary today for the updated swimming times. If you have any questions about swimming, please ask your child's teacher.

Room 6

We have had so many fun learning experiences so far, we have settled well into a working routine in our Class.  Our experiences have included attending to independent tasks, engaging in literacy activities where we learned to read the images by matching the objects and images from the stories we read in the class. Enjoyed our cooking sessions and learning numeracy from shared experiences, by sharing the cookies we made equally among the peers in the class.  We also participated in lots of fun activities including going to Kinder Gym excursion on a weekly basis, the Easter Day celebrations and taking part in various activities during the Athletics Day.  Our Class enjoyed the farm incursion, where we got to enjoy spending time with animals patting, feeding and cuddling them.  Last but not least is our technology sessions, where we practise the skills learned in Literacy and Numeracy sessions. We look forward to continue to engage in more creative learning throughout the year.