Prep Community News

Dear Prep Families,

Can you believe we are already heading towards the end of the term! It has been amazing to see our Prep students continue their school learning with enthusiasm, confidence and a positive attitude. Students have also consistently shown they can demonstrate and engage in our daily routines and expectations.

Below is an overview of the learning that has been taking place in Prep over the past fortnight!

InitiaLit

In InitiaLit, we have learned more new sounds! Students learnt about the letters ‘z’ (zebra, zoo, zero), ‘v’ (van, vet, vegetable) and ‘x’ (fix, box, six) as well as new digraphs ‘zz’ (buzz, fizz, jazz) and ‘ch’ (chip, much, chum). We have also continued to practice reading and writing words with our digraphs 'sh’ and ‘ee’, along with double consonants' ll', 'ss', and 'ff'.

It’s been so great to see our students experiment with these new sounds and digraphs in their own writing!

We have also been hard at work learning new tricky words! Tricky words are words that we can’t always sound out using the sounds we have learnt, so we need to learn how to read and write them off by heart. Below are our new tricky words that we have covered:

At home, you can support your child by:

• Practicing reading and writing the new tricky words.
• Looking for words containing qu, ee, ch, and zz when reading together.
• Encouraging your child to read their decodable readers every night.

Storybook

During Storybook lessons, we have been enjoying the story Magic Beach written and illustrated by Alison Lester. We have been having meaningful conversations about this text and how it can connect to our own lives by discussing what our favourite things to do at the beach are and how we can use our imagination to make our beach trips more fun and exciting.

Our focus vocabulary has included:

Glee – Feeling great happiness or joy.

Dazzled – When something shines very brightly.

Plunging – Falling or diving down.

You can support your child by asking them to explain these words or use them in a sentence.

Writing

In Writing, students have continued to write informative texts about animals! We have been exploring informative texts by learning how authors share facts about a topic. As part of this learning, students have been writing simple factual sentences about giraffes and tigers, focusing on using capital letters, finger spaces, full stops and their growing phonics knowledge to spell unfamiliar words.

Maths

In Maths, students have been introduced to the concept of subtraction through ‘taking away’. We have explored different ways to take away, such as counting back and creating visual representations of this by drawing lines and crossing them out to find the total left over.

We have also continued to practice our fact fluency by solving as many simple addition problems as we can in two minutes. We have now included adding two into our daily fluency practice to further expand our addition skills.

You can support your child at home by practicing counting back by one to solve these subtraction problems:

• 5 - 1 =
• 7 - 1 =
• 4 - 1 =
• 10 - 1 =

Book Day

We had such a great time celebrating our annual Book Day! The students had so much fun dressing up as their favourite book characters and sharing their costumes with their classmates. There was plenty of excitement as the students admired each other’s costumes and talked about the stories and characters they love. It was wonderful to see the students proudly become their favourite characters and take part in such a special and memorable day!

Werribee Zoo

Our excursion to Werribee Zoo was such an exciting and memorable experience for all of our students! Everyone had so much fun exploring the zoo and seeing so many amazing and interesting animals up close. One of the highlights of the day was riding the safari bus, where the students were thrilled to learn about animals such as giraffes, rhinos, and zebras and see them roaming freely in their large, open habitats. There was plenty of excitement as the students spotted different animals and shared their favourite moments with their friends. It was wonderful to see so many happy faces as the students enjoyed a fun-filled day together and created lots of special memories!

General Reminders

Reading at Home

Reading regularly at home is one of the best ways to support your child's literacy development. Even 10–15 minutes each evening reading together, practicing decodable readers or talking about stories helps build confidence and fluency.

Please remember to send your child's reading satchel or red reading bag to school on their designated reading day so they can exchange their take-home readers and library books.

Labelling Belongings

Please ensure that all clothing, lunch boxes, drink bottles and personal belongings are clearly labeled with your child's name and class. This helps lost items quickly find their way back to their owners.

School Times

Students begin entering classrooms from 8:45 am to unpack and prepare for the day. Learning begins promptly at 8:55 am, so arriving on time helps students settle in and make the most of every learning opportunity. School finishes and students are dismissed at 3:10 pm.

Thank you for continuing to encourage your child's independence by allowing them to enter the classroom on their own each morning. If you need to pass on information to your child's teacher in the morning, please contact the school office and your message will be forwarded.

Thank you for your ongoing support. We are incredibly proud of the wonderful progress our prep students have made in Term 3 and look forward to another exciting fortnight of learning together.

PLC Prep