Treehouse

What’s been happening in the Treehouse in Term 3?

At the beginning of Term 3 remote learning began again and the Treehouse children received their Treehouse packs, consisting of six booklets at first, and then a postal delivery of three more to get them through to the end of the term. 

The booklets contained three main areas of learning - reading, phonics and handwriting to help build upon and consolidate literacy skills. Skills included letter, sound and word knowledge that help to build fluency, reading strategies that help to gain meaning from print, and learning how to write the English alphabet practising the Victorian Modern Cursive Script.

The children read the weekly story and completed follow up activities. They read about different types of boxes, went fishing with Grandpa, had a day out shopping, watched Mrs. Wishy-washy scrub mud off the farm animals, saw Little Chimp asleep in the tree tops, and sang along with a family of little tigers getting ready for bed, just to name a few.

The follow up activities included cutting up words, sentences and stories to re-build them, Magic word memory games and word searches, writing in the missing words of a story and unjumbling sentences and rearranging them into the correct order. To complement the program, the children also used the Wushka online reading program daily to develop and improve their reading.

Weekly telephone calls with families provided the opportunity to have a chat about their child’s strengths and interests, and discuss areas that could be improved upon and focussed on for the week.

Most parents found that remote learning required a lot of effort for them and their children, but at the same time, they found that it gave them a very good insight into their child’s learning and the school curriculum. Some parents even commented that they would miss being engaged with their children’s learning at home. The children would enjoy chatting to me and reading the weekly story in the booklet to me.

At the end of the first remote learning in Term 2, reading assessments showed that the Treehouse children had progressed well. They had enjoyed using the Wushka online digital reading program and this was continued on for Term 3. I do hope to see similar good progress at the end of this latest remote learning.

For the last few weeks of Term 3 Miss Maddison created a terrific virtual classroom to teach the Treehouse program on Wednesday mornings. The children thoroughly enjoyed these lessons, they were fun and very engaging. Well done Ms Maddison! 

I am looking forward to returning to school and working with the Treehouse children in the Treehouse, hopefully in Term 4.

Happy reading to you all,

Mrs. Vawdrey