Foundation

Week 5 already! It is amazing how fast this year is going, with lots of learning and activities keeping everyone very busy. Social skills are the primary focus in our classroom at the moment, with speaking nicely to everyone a high priority. We might not always agree with our peers, but it is still important to always show respect and listen to the thoughts and opinions of others.

We have also been talking a lot about the 'common good'- doing things that benefit everyone, not just ourselves. Things like picking up rubbish when it's not ours, talking quietly in the classroom so everyone can learn and sharing the classroom resources fairly have all been examples that the students have thought of to illustrate this Catholic Principle. They are so proud of themselves, and quick to share their efforts with teachers and peers.

Why Does It Matters in Our School?

We want everyone to be helpful.

We want everyone to share.

We want everyone in our school to work together to make the world better.

Literacy

It is mind-blowing just how much a Foundation student learns in the first 12 months of school! From beginning in January knowing very few letters and sounds, we now have a class that can read simple CVC (consonant/vowel/consonant words eg: pat, sit) and write simple sentences independently. And we still have half a year to go! The new sounds are being introduced in rapid succession in the Initialit program now- you can expect a new character, sound and gesture every 3 days on average from this point onwards. Once we have mastered all the single sounds, we then move onto digraphs- when 2 letters make one sound eg: sh, th,ch.

"Tricky" words have been introduced over the past few weeks, with a lot more to come. These are the words we need to learn by sight because we cannot sound them out. The tree in our classroom gets a new leaf every time we have a new word. At the moment the tree looks very straggly and bare, but by the end of the year, the tree will be covered in leaves! We spend some time each day revising these words, and they are also reviewed on the all-important front cover of the take home readers.

Progress monitoring is built into the program, allowing me to keep a close check on any area that students are having trouble with, or need another lesson on. So far, we have completed 4 assessments, and the results are very strong.

Handwriting remains a work in progress. I am going to introduce another book that we can use for practise on the days we don't use the official handwriting book. Capital letters are slowly being eradicated from everywhere except the start of sentences and names and places. We are trying hard to stop writing words with a combination of upper and lower case letters eg cAt, PoPPy, and I still have the daily conversation/debate about trying to form letters 'my' way. It's actually not even my way, it's the Victorian school way, but it is still a hard argument to win against a confident 5 or 6 year old...🤣

Numeracy

A couple of new games to start Math sessions have been warmly received by the students, both can be found on the Love Maths website. "Fishing for 10s" consolidates number pairs that make 10 and "Number Snake" is all about sequential ordering from 0-10. All you need is a pack of cards and a killer competitive attitude!

Our Maths unit for the past 5 weeks has been Part-Whole, working on the number parts that combine to make a specific whole number eg: 5 and 5, 9 and 1, 4 and 6 all make 10.

We have used the rekenreks to strengthen understandings, which have the added bonus of beads that make a great clicky sound that all the students seem to love, and the teachers don't love as much...

Next we move onto 2D shapes which will be a nice change from number work, although we will continually revise numbers to 10, and then 20, for the remainder of the year.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

We have been investigating the unit "Our Catholic Church" and have discovered so many interesting things about St John's Church. The highlight was without a doubt the trip over to the church to have a look around with Father DJ. Students had the chance to walk around the Church and ask questions about anything they were interested in. It was an informative session and the students had many excellent questions to ask.

Next, we move onto the unit "Finding God in all things", which will be another lovely topic to delve into.

Readers

Just another reminder about the importance of hearing your child read at home. We have learned many new sounds this year which are practised in the decodable readers. The more students practise, the more automatic this knowledge becomes. Automaticity takes most of the effort out of reading until it becomes an activity for enjoyment, rather than a challenge to be endured. This is where we are aiming to get to, and one way we get there is through regular practise. The readers take about 10 minutes to complete and should become part of your daily routine if possible. Of course, there will always be the occasional night when the readers cannot be completed, and that's fine and understandable. But whenever possible, read! You will be amazed how quickly reading skills develop with regular practise.

A big thank you to those parents who have already established this- it is obvious which students are reading regularly at home.

ON-GOING REMINDERS

St John's is a "No Hat, No Play" school, which means everyone is wearing their hats every day. High ponytails and hair buns can cause difficulty for some students in trying to get their hat to actually sit on their head properly. Just something to ponder when creating hairstyles in the morning.
Everything needs to be labelled. And this mantra will be repeated on a regular basis throughout the year. You will get sick of hearing it, we will get sick of saying it, but please make sure your child's belongings can be easily returned to them should they accidentally be misplaced.
Zooper Doopers are $1, Cake Raffle tickets are 50c. Both momentous events happen each Friday.
Lunch Orders are every Wednesday.
Library visits take place on a Friday. If last week's borrowed book is not returned, a new one cannot be borrowed.

6. Birthday invitations- Foundation is traditionally the year of Birthday Parties. We are happy to hand out invitations at school if everyone is invited, but if you choose to only invite some friends to your child's party (and we completely understand this approach) we would prefer that the invitations were shared another way. Whilst life does have the occasional disappointment, not being invited to a party is a pretty big one when you are 5 or 6 years old and we would rather the school not be the place of the upset.

If you have any questions or queries about anything, please contact us. We have Staff Meetings after school on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so these times are unavailable, but can make any other time work.

sredfern@sjeuroa.catholic.edu.au

phone: 57952937

Thank you,

Sally and Lisa