Prep/1 Mainstream

Welcome back to the last term of 2026! It seems incredible that students are almost at the end of the year. They have learned so much over the last three terms and we will continue to develop knowledge and skills across the curriculum.

During discovery learning this term, students will explore forces and movement. We discussed the forces of push and pull then went to the park to explore the playground. We looked at how push and pull are used during play. We will continue to develop our understanding of forces through investigation over the next few weeks.

Literacy

In Reading, students will continue to focus on phonics, including sounding out words, reading fluency and spelling words. Students in Foundation are now investigating long vowel patterns and have explored ai (snail trail) and ay (play all day). They are beginning to articulate that ai is usually found in the middle of a word while ay is usually at the end of a work. For example, paint and clay. Year One students are continuing to work their way through stage 7.2, investigating ‘er’ sounds like ir (dirty shirt), ur (bursting balloons) and er (river monster cake).

In Writing, students will revise writing non fiction texts and have explored the different features of fiction and nonfiction texts. Students will be collecting information, grouping it into similar topics and writing sentences about the topic. Students will continue to focus on the their secretarial skills:

• Writing the sounds they hear in each word
• Starting a sentence with a capital letter
• Putting a finger space between each word
• Ending a sentence with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark. 
• Forming letters correctly

Maths

In Mathematics, students have explored using place value to solve addition and subtraction problems. The focus has been on developing their understanding of tens and one in teen numbers and beyond.

We encourage families to continue practising maths at home. Here are some simple games and activities that you might like to try:

Game 1: Addition or Subtraction Snap!

This is an easy and fun game to play with a partner. Remove the picture cards from your deck. Ace is worth 1.

1. Divide your cards into two piles face down. One for your partner and one for you.
2. Say “Ready, set, go!” Both partners place a card from their own pile down in the middle. The first person to add the cards together keeps the set.
3. Repeat until all cards are gone. The person with the most cards at the end is the winner! 

Challenge: Turn it into Subtraction Snap by taking away the smallest number from the largest number to find the difference!

Game 2: Tens or Hundred Facts Memory!

This is an easy and fun game to play on your own or with a partner. Remove the picture cards from your card deck. Ace is worth 1.

1. Spread all of your cards out and place them face down.
2. Turn over any two cards at a time and try to find as many sets of ten as you can! Eg. 9 and 1, 8 and 2, 7 and 3, etc. 

Challenge: Pretend each card is a multiple of ten (eg. 9 = 90). How many hundreds facts can you find? 

See if you can record ALL of the number sentences for your tens and hundreds facts!