Foundation

Welcome back to school and the first newsletter of Term 2! We hope you all had a lovely and relaxing holiday. We have a very fun, busy and exciting term coming up. 

Important Dates

Tuesday 7th May - Mother’s Day Stall

Monday 20th May – Whole School Assembly

Tuesday 21st May - Royal Flying Doctors Incursion (more information to come)

Monday 27th May – F-2 Assembly

Wednesday 5th and 12th June - Firefighters Visit

Monday 10th June – King’s Birthday Public Holiday (no students at school)

Monday 17th June – Whole School Assembly

Term 2 Inquiry Topic – What’s My Story?

Our Inquiry topic for this term, ‘What’s My Story?’, is based on personal history. 

In this unit of work, we explore our personal and family history to look at what we all have in common and what makes us unique. 

One of the whole class activities early in the term uses family photos. By the end of next week, please send us (either via email or via a USB which we will return) the following photos:

1 Baby photo

1 Family Photo

1 Celebration (eg. birthday, Christmas, Diwali, Chinese New Year etc)

1 Personal choice (this may be of extended family, with pets, on holidays etc.) 

We will be using these photos in our lessons over the coming weeks.

Mother’s Day Stall

On Tuesday 7th of May, all Foundation classes will be going to the Mother’s Day stall. Students will have the opportunity to buy gifts for their mums/grandmas/aunties/special someone if you would like. If students are bringing in money, please put it in a small named zip lock bag. Please do not send in more than $10. We also encourage students to bring a bag to place their gifts into to take home. 

As the Mother’s Day Stall will be held in the library, Foundation students will not go to library on this Tuesday. 

Royal Flying Doctors Incursion

On Tuesday 21st May, we are so excited to welcome the Royal Flying Doctors and their plane into our school! This incursion is part of Foundation students learning about our Community Helpers and also occupations. We will email you when the notice/payment is available on Compass for you to complete.

Home Reading

Students have started taking home short decodable readers. These books are full of sound friendly words students can sound out and blend together. They also include some tricky common words - many of the books have these in red. These tricky words are for students to remember and not sound out. 

Students will continue to take the books home for 2 nights. The first night to read through the book and the second night to reread the book to build fluency. We also encourage you to ask the comprehension questions included at the back of the book to help students understand what they are reading and practice important reading skills.

Please remember to sign/tick the reader sheet so we know students are reading at home. If the sheet is not signed, students may take the same book home multiple times. 

What’s on in the Classroom?

Students will be starting their Reading Groups next week. These groups are mixed groups across the Foundation level. Students may move classrooms for the session and be taught by another Foundation teacher. 

Maths

We are:

- practising subitising (recognising the amount in a small group quickly)

- counting forwards and backwards from different starting points

- improving our number formation

- introducing addition strategies such as Count All, Count On, Friends of 10

- creating simple picture graphs

- using location words to describe where an object is

Here are some photos of us using balance scales to compare the mass of objects:

Literacy

- revising and learning new sounds

- learning common words

- using our sounds to read simple sentences

- reading Little Red Riding Hood and writing our own sentences to retell the start, middle and end of the story

Here are some photos from our writing - the beginning of Little Red Riding Hood.

We have been learning lots about tricky to read words. These words can be called Common Words, Red Words or even Heart Words. These words (eg. the, she, you, come, said) have sounds in the word that are unusual or that we have not learnt yet. Students need to remember these words in their hearts as we say we can’t Fred a Red. In many of the current take home books, these words are coloured red to let students know. Please do not have students sound these words out – tell them the word instead. 

Show and Tell Timetable