Prep-2 Sector 

PREP

Hello families and friends! 

Here is an update on what has been happening in the Prep: 

100 Days of School!

On Tuesday 28 July, we celebrated our 100th day of school and learning!

We started the day with a special assembly and parade. Thank you to all the families and friends that helped with costumes and also with our 100 day projects!

Reading

One of our routines in the morning is “Partner Reading”. We are given a short text to read. We read the text many times, so that we can develop our fluency. We call these our “Fluency Texts”. 

In pairs, students take turns reading aloud, building reading speed, and fixing mistakes together.

Library

We visit the Brookside College library every two weeks. We have learned about the way in which books are organised. We love to browse and select books that we are interested in, to take home and share with our families.

Phonics

We have been learning about digraphs in our Phonics sessions. This week we focused on “th”, “wh” and “ck”.

We practised segmenting and blending words that begin or end with these sounds.

The teacher dictates words and sentences and the students have a go at writing what they hear:

Mathematics

We are learning to collect data for simple questions. Data is information. We collected data about which pet is preferred: cats or dogs? Students represented the data in the form of a pictograph. Students were required to count carefully to represent information accurately.

SMP – Sensory Motor Program

Every Monday afternoon, our year 6 friends guide and support us as we rotate through a series of physical activities. We are practising our balancing, throwing, jumping, and catching skills. It is so much fun and it is a disco too, with music playing to help energise our mind and body.

We are so proud of our Prep students– they have worked hard and made many achievements.

The Prep Team

Year 1

What a fantastic start to Term 3! Our Year 1 students have been enthusiastically engaging in a range of exciting learning experiences across the curriculum.

In Mathematics, students are developing their understanding of addition and subtraction by learning a variety of strategies to solve problems confidently. They are also building their mathematical reasoning by explaining how they reached their answers and sharing their thinking with others.

In Reading and Writing, we have been exploring the wonderful books of Alison Lester. Students are learning how authors use repetition to make stories engaging and memorable. They are using these ideas to inspire their own writing by expanding simple sentences, adding descriptive details and using their imaginations to create exciting stories.

In Humanities, our students have become community detectives as they investigate the natural and constructed features of our local area. We are looking forward to our community walk around Caroline Springs, where students will identify and explore the different features they have been learning about in class and make real-world connections to their learning.

It has been a wonderful term so far, and we are excited to continue our learning adventures together!

'You can if you think you can'

The Year 1 Teachers

Year 2

It's been another busy and productive start to Term 3 in Grade 2, with students continuing to build their knowledge and skills across all learning areas. Students have settled well into their new classes this term, and we're proud of the enthusiasm, resilience and curiosity they bring to their learning each day.

English

Students have been strengthening their spelling skills by exploring common patterns and applying them to unfamiliar words, showing growing confidence and accuracy in their weekly dictation sentences. They've also been learning about independent and dependent clauses, and how these work together to create more detailed writing.

As part of our Text Study, students have begun Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl. They are analysing character traits and actions, exploring the literary device of anthropomorphism, and examining the themes of hope and persistence. Students are using evidence from the text to justify their thinking, and the unit will conclude with them explaining why Mr Fox is considered "fantastic."

Mathematics

Students have been developing efficient mental and written strategies for addition and subtraction, applying these to solve problems, explain their thinking, and check the reasonableness of their answers. They are also learning to use number combinations in equations to reach a target number, and to recall addition facts that make 20, along with related subtraction facts.

In addition, students are learning to use and follow directional language, including:

• giving and following the directions 'quarter turn left' and 'quarter turn right'
• giving and following the directions 'half turn left' and 'half turn right'
• giving and following the directions 'three-quarter turn left' and 'three-quarter turn right'

Humanities

Students have explored the purpose and features of maps, learning to identify the BOLTS features (Border, Orientation, Legend, Title, Scale) and using positional language such as north, south, near and far to describe locations.

Health

Students have been learning about protective behaviours and help-seeking strategies, including recognising safe and unsafe situations, identifying trusted adults, and staying safe online. They've also reflected on how characters in familiar texts make safe, responsible choices.

Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to sharing more of our students' learning throughout the term.

Yr 2 Team