Prep 

Reading

What an amazing start to term 3!

We have been practising our 42 Jolly Phonics letter sounds and started our new reading groups! Reading groups this term are reading Wushka on iPads, practising 2 tricky words of the week, word work activities, reading to self and a comprehension activity. 

Each week we are focusing on a comprehension strategy - Week 1 was predicting and learning how to make a smart guess about what the story might be about based on the front cover of the book. Week 2 was Searching for Information and working out who the characters are, what they’re doing in the story and what the setting of the book is. 

You may have noticed a new list stuck into your child’s Book of List this term, we have started Oxford Word lists! Be sure to practise your list each night so when they are tested in class they can move onto the next one. 

Writing

We have started Term 3 learning all about informative writing! Preps have enjoyed inquiring into the features of lions and aeroplanes the past 2 weeks. They have explored the importance of an appropriate title, photographs, correct labelling and factual sentences. Our little writers made use of the sentence stems ‘Lion’s/ Aeroplane’s have…’ and ‘Lion’s/ Aeroplane’s can…’ to write detailed facts about the specific topics. 

They are continuously working hard to uplevel their writing and produce high quality work inclusive of correct punctuation. To remember how to correctly structure sentences we have been singing our sentence song - “1. Start with a capital letter, 2. Do the words make sense? 3. Space it out, space it out! 4. And don’t forget to punctuate!”. We are so proud of how far they’ve come and are very excited to see what they can achieve this term!

Maths

In Maths, we have revised our teen numbers and learnt the number 20 by using different manipulatives and making a caterpillar number line. Students then used their number knowledge to 20 to add collections of items together. Students have used the words ‘and’ and ‘is’ to describe how we add two groups together, for example, 4 and 3 is 7. Students practised saying their addition sentence to partners and using different classroom resources, such as dice, counters and threading beads.

This week, Preps were introduced to the symbols + and = when practising their addition. Students have loved using the symbols and terminology such as plus and equals to add. Some students have even been practising their addition during Developmental Play time and have come into school sharing new addition sentences. Amazing learning Preps!

Integrated

In Integrated, we have introduced our Ready to Learn scale. Students move their face on this scale throughout each day to reflect on their emotional state and consider how prepared they are to learn. The Ready to Learn scale has three different levels:

1. I’m not ready to learn yet.
2. I am almost ready to learn.
3. I am ready to learn.

We have also been learning about the difference between needs and wants. Students learnt that needs are things we have to have to live and be healthy e.g. food, shelter and clothes. Whereas wants are things that we would like to have but we can live without e.g. a fancy bike, ice cream and Pokémon cards.