Foundation

Communicating with the Foundation Team

We look forward to partnering with you in 2022, and welcome your input:

Holly Peters Holly.Peters@education.vic.gov.au

Lisa Dam Lisa.Dam@education.vic.gov.au

ENGLISH

InitiaLit

Over the past couple of weeks the Foundation students have been busy learning new letter sounds and their matching characters. So far they have learned four letter sets; msta, pifr, codh and engl with the final letter set kubj currently being taught. Nearly all the letters introduced have an action that goes along with the sound. This action helps the children to remember the sound. Ask them for a demonstration!

InitiaLit is taught in a three lesson cycle:

1: Introducing the new sound - meeting the new letter character and sound

2: Getting ready for reading and spelling using the new letter sound

3: Text reading and writing and introduction of new tricky words.

Through our InitiaLit lessons we have been focusing on blending three and four letter sounds to read words. Students use a variety of actions such as words stretching and counting the sounds using their fingers which helps them isolate the letter sounds in words.

We are continuing to learn new tricky words and regularly revise the tricky words already learned. Tricky Words should be practiced until they are automatically recognised as they cannot necessarily be sounded out like other words. Each new tricky word learned is added to our tricky word garden for the students to refer to and use when they complete writing tasks. The tricky words are also located at the back of the Reading Diaries to help your child practice at home. We have also been learning the purpose of capital letters, when they are used and that they sometimes look different to lower case letters but still make the same phonetic sound. This supports the children subsequently using them when writing sentences and names of people and things.

During our literacy sessions, the children participate in small group activities and independent work which aligns with our InitiaLit lessons and has a focus on the letters taught. These include activities such as using the InitiaLit sounds and words books, decodable readers, trick word memory games, word and sentence grab bags and letter sound based activities to consolidate their newly learned letter sound skills.

We have been exploring the purpose and structure of Information Texts (non fiction).

Students have been discussing how Information Texts differ from picture story books and that they contain only facts.

Writing

We are continuing to practice our handwriting skills using our dotted thirds books and the students are producing some beautiful writing. They have been diligently practicing each new letter learnt, making sure they use the correct starting points and formation.

Students have been attempting to apply their knowledge of sounds and letters and are beginning to include some tricky words when completing their writing tasks.

We have been learning about the purpose of recount writing and the important information that should be included in this genre of writing. On Monday the students have started completing recount writing by writing about something familiar to them - their weekend! They have been trying their best to sound out the letter sounds to write unknown words and have been trying their best and giving writing a go! We are very proud of their efforts.

Swimming

Wow, what an amazing week we had at swimming! The children were absolute superstars and all had a great time. We were very proud of each and every one of them as they displayed our school values of respect, responsibility and resilience! I’m sure they were absolutely exhausted!

SORRY DAY AND RECONCILIATION WEEK

Last Thursday 26th May was National Sorry Day and this week is Reconciliation week which happens after Sorry Day. These events are a time to come together and celebrate and enjoy or make connections with all Australians, whether they are first nations or from any other background.

The students participated in a few fun activities which highlighted the importance of saying sorry. They were asked such questions as: