Grade Prep/1/2

The Junior Class have had a great two weeks, full of learning and fun. We have been enjoying singing 'The Very Cranky Bear' when the opportunity arises - your child probably knows it by heart now!

In English we have been studying two main texts: 'The boy who tried to shrink his name' and 'Two Mates'. Each of these picture story books have offered learning about kindess, friendship, resilience and have shown diverese characters, experiences and lives. We have learnt about main characters, characters, settings, adjectives, and understanding hidden information in texts. Students have been focused on writing their own sentences, with increasing independence, and using 'and' or 'but' to extend their ideas. 

In Maths, we have focused on place value. Students have been playing a variety of games to help increase their fact fluency; you might like them to teach you these at home! We have also been building numbers with our MAB blocks to build students understanding of Hundreds / Tens / Ones and the use of zero as a placeholder. This is an important base skill for all areas of mathematics, and can be tricky for students to grasp. 

• Preps are learning to accurately count collections to 20 - practising careful counting of objects, and identifying numerals in our environment are great things to do with your prep at home! 
• Year 1s are exploring place value and are making sure they don't get confused with teen numbers. For example, 14 vs 40. 'teen' means one ten, so 14 is one ten and four ones, where 40 is four tens. 
• Year 2s are expliring partitioning numbers in the hundreds and are exploring how they can be regrouped as hundreds, tens and ones. They are building numbers with NAB and trading to represent the same value in multiple ways. This is an important skill before we move into vertical addition and subtractions. 

We have been creating our own Zones of Regulation Ready to Learn Plans where students identify strategies that might help them get ready to learn if they are feeling sad / mad/ tired / silly / frustrated etc. Theses are laminated and displayed in our classroom for them to use as needed. This is one way that we support students with their emotional and social learning and resilience. 

We are looking forward to the learning the second half of term brings!