Prep Community News

Dear Prep Families,

We are now approaching the halfway mark of our final term of the 2023 school year! Students and parents have now had the opportunity to express 2024 friend preferences which means, teachers are beginning to form the 2024 grade 1 classes. Teachers and students have also been very busy completing a variety of assessments in preparation for the end of year reports. Lastly, swimming has now come to an end, well done to all the prep students who attended and had such a blast in the pool!

The prep teachers and students would also like to send our best wishes and love to Mrs. Cooper who begins her maternity leave this week. Mrs. Cooper has been an integral part of the prep team and has provided so much support for both teachers and students. We wish her all the best on this exciting journey ahead and cannot wait to see some pictures of baby Cooper!

Some current areas covered follow:

Reading

In Reading, we have been reading a variety of mentor texts and having rich discussions about. We are now looking at the different purposes of texts. We have learnt that texts can be read for the purpose of entertaining (fiction books), but also for the purpose of gathering information (non-fiction books). We have been comparing the differences between these types of texts and learning to differentiate them. This helps us choose appropriate texts.

Writing

In Writing, we are finishing up our narrative writing unit. Students have come such a long way with writing stories that include all the important elements of a narrative story, such as, characters, settings, problems, actions and solutions. We will now begin writing recounts. In this unit, students will take part in a rich language experience, and then begin writing about the experience. A recount should include who, where, what happened, and a feeling. 

In our Phonics Writing lessons, we have continued to learn all about the ‘magic e’ rule where the letter e jumps over the consonant to help the vowel say its long vowel sound. We practice the rules as: a-e says a, e-e says e, i-e says i, o-e says o, u-e says u or oo. Some recent heart words we have learnt are: walk & because.

Maths

During maths, we have been learning all about capacity. This involves comparing how much different types of containers can hold. We have loved this hands-on unit, and being able to explore different types of measuring units. In one of our lessons, students had a chance to compare which containers held more/less sand in the sandpit!

Vocabulary / Morphology

Some of the new words we have learnt during our vocabulary lessons are: 

Nasty: someone who is bad/unkind

Startled: showing sudden surprise.

We have also learnt about the suffix -ed. Adding -ed to the end of a verb shows that it has already happened. -ed can make three different sounds including: /ed/ /d/ /t/. Some examples include waited, played, jumped. We now know about the suffixes: -s, -es, -less and -ed.

Friendly Reminders:

• No Hat, No Play! All students must have a TRPS hat at school every day. Please ensure that it is labelled with their name. 
• Animal Land Children’s Farm: This excursion will run over 2 dates (24/11 and 1/12). Please make the time to go onto Compass and check which date your child’s grade will attend. You will also need to provide consent and make the payment so that your child does not miss out on this fun and educational excursion.
• Home Reading: At TRPS, the homework expectation is that students read every single school night. We have some students who are approaching the 175 mark and are on their way to 200 nights of reading. This is incredible!