Foundation: Connect

Term 1 Done!

Dear Foundation Families,

Term 1 is done! A huge congratulations to every Foundation student at SEPS. Rather than  counting down to the holidays, we’re celebrating how much each child has grown and achieved.

It has been truly wonderful to see their confidence grow as they’ve settled into new routines, made new friends, and embraced school life. While there were moments of trepidation, we now see children who are bold, excited, and comfortable in their learning environment.

We hope you enjoy the break (and the pause from packing school lunches!). Take this time to rest, recharge, and enjoy those extra moments with your amazing children.

Wishing you a happy and relaxing holiday!

Learning 

Numeracy

Over the past fortnight, our Foundation students have been busy developing their numeracy skills through engaging hands-on activities. They have been learning to identify numbers that come before and after a given number, helping to build a strong understanding of number sequences. Students have also been introduced to tally marks—a fun and practical way to count objects. This is a great concept to reinforce at home by counting everyday items, such as books on a shelf, silver cars on the road, or spoons in the drawer!

In addition, students have been focusing on facts to 10, strengthening their number sense. They have explored measurement by comparing the weight and length of different objects and have been identifying 2D shapes in their environment. These foundational skills are essential for their mathematical development, and we encourage families to support learning at home through simple counting and measuring activities.

Literacy

Students have learnt and consolidated so many letters and sounds! It is evident in their reading that they are progressing and finding so much joy in being able to decode. We will finish off learning the remainder of the alphabet next term and then move onto digraphs. 

We have focused on new heart words 'a' and 'I'. The students found it fascinating that these are individual letters but also are words!

We are continuing to use our letter chart to help make informed letter/sound choices for our spelling. We are beginning to construct basic sentences using sentence stems. Eg. 'I can see the.....' or 'I went to the.....'. These sentence stems often include heart words to help their success rate at writing while also providing students a chance to sound out their own sounds in a word they have chosen to complete their sentence.

We have been enjoying our new book 'The Way Back Home' by Oliver Jeffers and have explored text to self connections, vocabulary such as 'spluttered' and responded to events in the story. We have also been identifying heart words in the text and students tallied up how many hearts words are used in books! They were astounded to learn that heart words are extremely frequent in sentences, and therefore learning to read and write them is so important and will help lead to success.

Science with Wilko and Safety Sue

Students in 0B with a Spiny Leaf Insect!

Easter Egg Hunt

The students loved participating in a craft with their buddies and were so excited for the Easter Egg Hunt together. Thank-you for your support and donations to make this a success. Their smiles were so wide and the laughter was pure joy!

Have a safe and happy holiday.

Warm regards,

Alex Whittle (0A), Rhiannon Harris-Tudor (0B), Megan Ferguson (0B- Wednesday) and Kate Clark (0C)

Foundation Team