Foundation

Foundation, Term 2, May 2024

Literacy

In Foundation, students will continue to learn 2 new sounds per week until we they learnt the entire alphabet. We have now introduced 19 different letters/sounds. Having learnt so many sounds, students are spending lots of time identifying the beginning, middle and end sounds, as well as blending sounds together to read simple words. We call these words CVC words, which stands for consonant, vowel, consonant (example: c/a/t). 

We are so proud of how much our students' handwriting is improving as they practise daily on whiteboards. Students are taught how to write 2 new letters per week and focus on learning the correct letter formation of lowercase letters, as these are the letters that we use the most in our writing.  

Samples of this excellent learning can be found on your child’s Seesaw account. Please regularly log into Seesaw so that you can celebrate your child’s learning! 

Here are some examples below of how we are beginning to read and write simple words in the classroom.

Knowledge

For the remainder of this term, students will be learning about the Five Senses in our  Health Knowledge unit. Students will investigate a wide range of new words as they explore how each of the senses work through telling stories and engaging in fun hands-on activities. This is our first week learning about senses and we encourage you to talk to your children about what they have learnt so far. 

Numeracy

In our Numeracy sessions, we have been exploring the concept of addition. This involves understanding that when groups of numbers/collections are combined or joined together they make a bigger number/collection. 

Students have been listening to number stories and have used concrete materials like counters, Unifix and tens frames, to make and find the total. A particular favourite activity has been using the ‘Adding Machine’ to support the development of addition skills.

Students are learning that addition means finding the total of two or more sets of objects or numbers. At first, they count all objects in the two groups. For example, if a student has a group of 2 objects and another group of 3 objects, they will count each object in both groups to find the total amount. 

This approach helps students consolidate their understanding of number including more, less, bigger, smaller numbers, as well as numbers that come before and after a given number. We look forward to exploring these concepts further and seeing the connections students make with their growing understanding of number and place value.

Social and Emotional Learning

Each week in SEL we focus on a topic that we feel is needed by our students. This week began talking about our emotions. Students brainstormed many of the different emotions they feel and gave examples of when they felt each emotion. Different emotions were then drawn in their Resilience Project workbooks. We took lots of time talking about this topic and teaching students that it is normal to feel lots of different emotions, as it is not possible that we can not feel happy all the time. 

AUSLAN

The Foundation students have been adding to their signing repertoire this term by learning how to sign basic greetings and learning about the 3 culturally important things to do when you meet a Deaf person, which include;

• Eye contact (eg. 2 people looking at each other)
• Smiling (eg. face with a smile)
• Greeting Sign - How are you? (eg. people signing)