Prep News

Learning Centre Three

It is hard to believe there is only a few more weeks of the term left. The students settled easily back into the routines following on from the long weekend. We have continued to practice singing the songs ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead’ and ‘We’re Off to See the Wizard’ in preparation for the upcoming school musical mid next term.

Phonics

We have continued to read the story Milo’s Birthday Surprise and have met more of Milo’s friends – Yasmin Yak, Roxy Rabbit and Eddie Elephant. This fortnight, we have learnt some new heart words which we are practicing every day. We have learnt what makes the words: ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘we’, ‘was’, ‘to’ and ‘do’ tricky. In the next coming weeks we will begin to read stage 3 books and practice reading these words in sentences. Each week, students continue to build their letter identification, reading, and writing skills by practising CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, reading decodable phrases and sentences, and working on correct letter formation. In our reading focus groups, students are working on strengthening their reading skills using decodable books that match their individual learning needs. 

The books your child has read in class are also available online - just scan the QR code inside their reading journal to access a digital version. This week, your child will continue to bring home their reading journal and a new decodable book in their book bag. We encourage you to read with your child each night and return the decodable book, reading diary and bag every Thursday. A new book will be sent home each Friday. We are keeping track of the amazing reading your child has been reading and want to say a big congratulations to the following students for completing 25 nights of reading!

Prep Blue: Chaneli, Shriyu, Ryan, Isla, Harry

Prep Orange: Raphael, Cindy, Hartegh, Dhaksh

Prep White: Atharav, Teo, Alisha

Literacy

Last week in literacy we read the story ‘The Butterfly Garden’, an Indigenous story learning about the life cycle of a butterfly. The students practiced skills of: predicting, making connections and sequencing events. This week, we started a vocabulary unit, reading the story ‘Pig the Grub’ and discussing all the different words in the book to describe a ‘grub’. The students then related it back to themselves and times they might have been dirty or seen someone else dirty like Pig in the book. We have been continuing to develop the students' writing abilities. Focusing on using capital letters at the beginning of sentences, finger spaces between words, and full stops at the end of sentences.

Maths

In maths, we finished our unit on 2D shapes. The students used pattern blocks and pre-cut shapes to create their own image, sorted common food items into their shape as well as sorting shapes based on their features.

This week, we began our unit on counting and place value focusing on counting forwards and backwards from 11-20 and 20-11. We used numicons and playdough to practise our counting skills then used task cards to count collections.

Religion

Over the past two weeks, we have been learning about celebrations. The students made a booklet discussing the following:

• What the celebration was
• Who was there
• What they do
• What food and drink they have
• What they wear
• How the celebration makes them feel

The students then shared their booklet with members of the class before it was sent home to celebrate their amazing efforts with their families.

Inquiry

In Inquiry last week, we linked our learning in Literacy and Inquiry. We continued to read through the story of ‘The Butterfly Garden’ and the students created puppets. With these puppets, the students then retold the story first with a partner and then as a whole class.

This week, we have started to plan for an art project which will be a type of Media Art. The students will be making this over the next couple of weeks. The students used their ipads to plan out an underwater scene that they will begin to create next week.

Thank you for your continued support.

Prep Team: Dasanthi, Emma, Gillian, Jamie, Natasha, Rachael, Sarena, Teagan and Tina