Argus-Xenica

Welcome to Aitken Hill Primary School and our first term of the year!

We are impressed with the way our students have settled into the schedule of school. Including our standard introduction to early Reading, Writing, and Maths activities in class, we have also taken students on a school tour to help them familiarise with the school environment, as well as highlight essential areas they are required to know.

Lunchboxes

As a part of our school, we have an initiative called Brain Food, which includes fruit or vegetable snacks that children may eat in class. Ideally, the fruit or vegetable snack should be bite-sized and easily consumable, to enable your child to continue with their work. Examples include cut-up apples, strawberries, carrots, etc. Please send Brain Food in a small, separate container with your child’s name on it. To minimise litter in the schoolyard, we would like all children to have their morning tea and lunch in containers. It is also important to remember to make your child’s lunch as healthy as possible – please limit treats to one per day! A healthy lunch box will give your child the energy they require to concentrate throughout the long school day. We would love to see food such as cheese, yoghurt, sandwiches, fruit, and vegetables in your child’s lunchbox every day.

Reading

Throughout the course of this term, students listened and read through many different types of texts in order to explore their structures and patterns. Students investigated the purposes of a range of literary and non-literary texts.​​ This is an exciting time for your child. Learning to read and write are life skills that will help them succeed in all aspects of their education and beyond. Students begin to read by looking at the pictures and ‘telling the story’. Next, they use their knowledge of letter sounds and pictures to ‘read’ the words. They rely heavily on repeated patterns in the texts. Later they develop skills in sounding out words or recognising common high-frequency words. 

We have also started our phonics program and have been learning rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and oral blending and segmenting. These activities will help develop speaking and listening skills and tune into the sounds in words. Later this term we will focus on the letters and sounds: S, A, T, P, I, N, M, D, G, O, C, K, CK, E, U, R, H, B, F and L. 

Writing

In Writing this term, students will be learning how to hold a pencil correctly (fine-motor skills), recognising and writing letters, basic punctuation and formulating written words into sentences. During the first few weeks of this term, students are investigating letters and particularly the letters in their names so they can recognise and be able to write their names. Preps are also looking at strengthening their hand muscles and fine-motor skills through exploring different activities like threading beads, pasta, painting with cotton tips, doing up buttons and zips and using tweezers. 

Maths

Over the course of this term, students will be directed to participate in a variety of activities such as hands on, open-ended and authentic learning situations that allow them to learn and develop their Maths skills. They will be learning Numbers 0-9 and how to write them, recognise them and make models using these numbers. In measurement and geometry, the students will learn about Capacity of various containers, this will help them with basic skills necessary for the future. 

SEL (Social and Emotional Learning)

During this time, students will be encouraged to learn about 

different emotions and how to regulate them. They will learn to distinguish between these separate feelings and how to recognise them. They will also be taught how to behave in certain settings and the reasons for this. To build relationships and develop new social skills, the students are going to be paired with a year 3-6 student. Students will spend their lunch together to build social relationships and we will encourage and arrange a meeting in the near future.

Reminders

• Doors will be open at 8.40am every morning, encourage your child to come in on their own to put their bag away.
• From September through to the end of April, all students must wear a SunSmart hat when they are outside. 
• Please label all food containers, lunch boxes, drink bottles, hats and jumpers. If items are lost and they have your child’s name on them they will be quickly returned to you. 
• The Blue ‘Take Home Reader Bag’ is to put the students' ‘Take Home Books’ into. Please ensure the ‘Take Home Reader Bag’ comes to school every Friday. Students will change their books on this day and teachers will sign their reading journal.
• If your child has a contagious illness or is unwell, please ensure they are kept at home to recuperate. When they are well enough to attend school again, please update their absence on Compass or phone the school to advise the school of the reason for their absence. Please be considerate of current events and cooperate with the school guidelines. 
• Please remember to pack a spare change of clothes in your child’s school bag in case of any tear in their clothing.