Argus-Xenica

Welcome to Term 2 

We're now half way through Term 2! We are incredibly proud of the Prep students and how they continue to approach learning with a positive attitude and learning disposition. As you will see throughout the newsletter, students are beginning to apply their learnings to begin reading and writing. We continue to develop our social skills and continue to improve the way we respond to one another. 

Phonics

In Phonics, students have been learning new digraphs such as ‘qu’,‘th’, ‘ck’, ‘wh’, ‘ll’, ‘ss’, ‘ff’, and ‘zz’. They’ve practised saying the sounds, writing the letters in the air and on whiteboards, and reading words like whip, duck, luck, with, bell, kiss, puff, and buzz. We also introduced new high-frequency words: ‘this’, ‘his’, ‘her’, ‘what’ and ‘said’. Students have sounded out each word, practised spelling them, and used them in simple sentences. These activities help build confidence in reading and support early writing skills.

Reading 

In Reading, students have been working on visualising while reading a story. Visualising has enabled students to create pictures in their mind and has helped them understand the story and solve tricky words. Students have also been practising critiquing different books by saying which part of the book was their favourite and explaining why. Our Preps have enjoyed looking at pictures in the book and inferring how the characters might be feeling from their expression on their face or their body language. 

Each week, our Preps have been focusing on different digraphs, a combination of two letters that represent one sound, such as qu, th, ck, wh, etc. Our students have also continued working on High Frequency Words. To consolidate their understanding of HFW, students have been searching for HFW in different texts while completing their independent reading. All students have received a pack of high frequency words in with their home readers. Please support your child's learning by practising these.

Writing

In Writing, the children have been learning about a recount. They've had fun sharing and writing about their weekend, as well as reading a book and using their understanding to write a recount about the important parts of the story. Every week, the students did a fun activity and excitedly wrote about it the following day. They also worked on adding more detail to their recount by answering the questions who, what, where, when and why. To further improve their ability to spell words, students have started to write sentences from dictation. They carefully listened to the sounds that make up each word and wrote a matching letter or digraph.

Maths

In Maths, students have been learning about 2-dimensional shapes and patterns. They learnt about many different shapes such as triangles, squares, rectangles and ovals. Students investigated and discovered many shapes that are in the classroom and also in the environment such as rulers, tables, clocks. The prep classes also played many shape games such as shape bingo which encouraged students to look at shapes attributes such as how many sides a shape has. During the pattern unit students sorted objects into size and shape. They used teddies, counters, unfix blocks, beads and linking chains to create repeating colour patterns. Students also used leaves, and musical equipment to create shape patterns. They had so much fun using hands on materials and were so engaged in their learning. Students consolidated their learning by creating shape robots and a snake using patterns. Well done on an amazing month of Maths Preps!

Inquiry 

In Inquiry, our prep students have been learning about the Five Sense (Touch, Smell, Sight, Taste and Hearing). The students have learnt the different ways our Five senses work and the body parts that are used for each sense. They explored the different ways to tell what something is for example, if you can’t see or touch something, how do you know what something is… You can use your sense of smell. The prep students had so much fun when they participated in different experiments for each sense.

Photos to come...

Social and Emotional Learning

In Social and Emotional Learning, we have been using a combination of The Resilience Project lessons and the Rights, Resilience and Respectful Relationships (RRRR) curriculum. Our Preps have been learning to express gratitude for things that their friends or families might do for us. We have challenged the Preps to think about what they can do for someone that might make someone happy. 

In our RRRR lessons, we have been learning about sharing and what this means and looks like in different cultures. We listened to a story called 'Sharing' by Aunty Fay Muir and how sharing is very important to Aboriginal Australians. 

Reminders 

• Library is now on Wednesdays for ALL Prep classes. 
• Home Readers need to be changed each day. Teachers will check yellow home reading diaries on a Friday.
• Please check compass to provide consent for the Five Senses Experiment 
• Please give consent and payment for our Animal Land Excursion which is now live on Compass.