Prep

Dear Prep families,

Wow, Week Four of Term Two already! Time flies when you are in Prep. We have had a very busy fortnight of learning and celebrations. Student Led Three-Way Conferences were a success and students have enjoyed participating in Mother’s Day activities for their mums, grandmas or special person/s. We would like to welcome families to view our doorway and window displays,  during the week, to share the amazing work students have created to showcase their love for their special person. 

Student Led Three-Way Conferences

Teachers were overwhelmed by the wonderful conversations that were had on Tuesday 30 April with parents, carers and students.

It was a positive opportunity to shine the light on your child’s learning and for teachers to collaborate with families to support our Preps. Students are to be congratulated as they reflected on their work and shared what was involved, including their knowledge of the topic. They were all courageous as they took part in their first three-way conference! Well done Preps and thank you families for taking the time to come to your child’s place of learning to be part of this experience. 

Buddies

During the past fortnight, Preps were introduced to their Year 5/6 buddies. Saltwater is proud of their ongoing buddy program where each Prep class is paired with a Year Five or Six class. This allows the Year Five and Six students to showcase their leadership skills and act as mentors for the little Preps. This program enables our Preps to build relationships with their buddies throughout the year. Preps have enjoyed getting to know their buddies and love seeing them around school community.

Reading

In Reading, students continue to make and justify their predictions and practise a variety of reading strategies. Over the last two weeks, Preps recapped the differences between fiction and non-fiction texts and explored the features of fiction texts in detail. Students can now identify the purpose of fiction texts, which is reading for enjoyment. The students are learning to identify features of the text such as: characters, setting, problem and solution. Preps are becoming more familiar with the routine and expectations of guided reading groups, displaying their skills and understandings with their teachers. During this time, students are being risk-takers by taking on feedback given to decode unfamiliar words and attend to meaning. They are also building their reading stamina to independently read for longer periods of time.

Writing

In Writing, students continue to focus on correctly constructing a sentence that begins with a capital letter, has a finger space between each word and ends with a punctuation mark. Students are encouraged to use their key ring words when trying to spell familiar sight words and are also encouraged to stretch out unfamiliar words and listen to the sounds made before identifying the letter and writing it. 

Students have been practising forming letters correctly and have been introduced to using dotted thirds to practise the correct sizing and placement of the letters. Students have been exposed to the language of 'dirt, grass and sky' when learning to position letters correctly on the dotted thirds. 

Students were also introduced to 'Quick Writes' where they were shown an image and were asked to write something about the picture, keeping in mind what they know about constructing sentences correctly.

Mathematics

In Mathematics, students have explored the concept of patterns through hands on tasks using concrete materials to create patterns out of colours, shapes, numbers and letters. Students are learning to identify what a pattern is and discuss the part of a pattern that repeats. They have demonstrated their growing knowledge of patterns through the creation of various  AB, AAB, ABB and ABC patterns. Students were introduced to their first LED (Launch, Explore, Discuss) lesson where they were posed with a question and had to work in pairs or small groups to problem solve and provide reasoning for their thinking. This encouraged students to be communicators when interacting with their peers and working together to solve a task.

Prep Wellbeing

Over the last two weeks in Wellbeing, our Prep students have practised techniques for self-calming and have learnt self-talk techniques to understand and manage their own emotions.  They also identified and named problems and been able to recognise that problems are a normal part of life and that there are solutions. In addition, our Preps had the opportunity to identify the effects for others when people make decisions that are not fair or kind and  reflect on how they make decisions and what the effects are for other students . 

REMINDERS:

• Students are expected to bring their satchel to school EVERY DAY.
• Prep students use iPads in Term Two. Your child’s iPad will need to be configured by our IT team to enable them to use them at school.
• Snack and lunch times are 20 minutes long. Please encourage your child to eat their snack/lunch within a 20 minute period, as this will help them to follow school routine.
• Please remember to pack a spare change of clothes for your child. Sometimes, little children can have toileting accidents and spills at school.
• Lastly, a reminder about bringing in headphones if you have not already done so. We will be using them, along aside the iPads.

Kind regards, 

The Prep Team.