Foundation News

Dear Foundation Parents/Guardians,

Welcome to Week 4 of Term 3!

It has been wonderful to see everyone settled back into school and enjoying learning, playing and spending time with their friends. Students have been reconnecting with their classmates and building their friendships as they settle back into our classroom routines. We are continuing to encourage everyone to use kind words, include others in their play and show kindness and care towards their friends. Please remind your children that being a kind and caring friend helps everyone feel happy, safe and included at school. 

100 Days Brighter! 🌟

On Wednesday of Week 3, we celebrated reaching 100 Days of School with our theme, 100 Days Brighter! It was a wonderful day filled with fun, laughter and lots of excitement. We enjoyed a colourful parade, danced the day away at our disco and took part in lots of special 100 Days activities in our classrooms. It was a fantastic way to celebrate how much we have learned and grown over our first 100 days of school!

During our English (phonics) lessons, students have continued to develop their confidence and skills as readers and writers. We have been consolidating previously taught sounds and practising correct letter formation and handwriting each day. More recently, students have been learning the sounds /qu/, /zz/, /ch/, /sh/, /th/ and /ng/, and applying their knowledge to read and build words such as quiz, buzz, chop, ship, thin and ring. Students have been practising hearing and identifying the sounds within words before blending them together to read the whole word. We have also introduced the new tricky words he, she and of, which students are learning to recognise and use in their reading and writing. Students have been practising writing dictated sentences, as well as creating their own sentences. We continue to encourage students to use their phonics knowledge to sound out unfamiliar words and have a go at spelling independently, supporting them to become confident and capable writers. 

During our Literature lessons, students have been learning about time connectives such as first, next and then and how these words help us sequence events in a story. We have been exploring the traditional tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears and practising retelling the events in the correct order using time connectives. Students have also been developing their vocabulary by learning the new words mischief, locks, permission and curious, discussing their meanings and how they are used in the story. 

In Mathematics, we have been learning about location and time. Students have been practising positional language such as next to, on top, under and beside to describe where objects are located, some of us made our own creations to use our positional language.. We have also been learning how to order events using words such as first, next and last, as well as developing our understanding of the days of the week and their order. 

In Humanities, we have been learning about looking after our Earth and the ways we can help care for our environment. We have explored different types of pollution, including noise, soil, water and air pollution, and discussed ways we can help reduce pollution in our everyday lives. We have also been learning about the importance of caring for our rubbish, using bins correctly, and looking after our water by making sure we do not waste it. 

Important reminders:

Classroom dismissal: Please collect your child from the classroom. Please also ensure that anyone you are arranging to pick up your child from school is added to the Emergency Contact List.

Promoting student independence: Please ensure that your child carries their own bag into school to develop their independence. This will be particularly important in practice for a school excursion happening in Term 4 where students are expected to carry their own bags. Please also ensure that you are encouraging your child to put on and take off their jacket independently. This is a self-help skill they should be working on as they become independent at school.

Lost property: As there has been a lot of lost property items including jackets, please ensure that all of your child’s belongings are named. This will help for the lost property item to be returned.

Home work requirements: Your child is to practise reading their reader each night after school. This reader is changed weekly. Please ensure that you record the title of the book in your child’s diary and include how many nights of reading as this will be marked against your child’s report. If this is not recorded anywhere in the student diary, reports will show that your child’s home reading ‘needs attention’ on student reports. Please note that you also have access to digital online readers on Little Learner’s Love Literacy.

Important dates:

Curriculum Day: Tuesday 18th of August. Students are not required on this day.

Thank you for your continued support in your child’s learning journey. We are so proud of the progress all Foundation students are making this term. 

Kind regards,

The Foundation Team.