F-4 Community News
What a busy start to the year it has been for all of our students across the F-4 Community. It has been great to wander through the F-4 classes and see many students engaged in a variety of learning tasks with big smiles on their faces. In addition to this, it has been wonderful to have our Foundation Teddy Bear Picnic, Year 1 Stay Back and Year 2 Stay Back Disco events take place after school hours over the past three weeks. These events provide wonderful opportunities for our students to interact in a fun and engaging way with their peers and teachers in an environment other than the classroom setting.
At the end of each term, the F-4 Community hosts an assembly to share learning that has taken place across the term. This term, the assembly will take place on Tuesday 4th April at 9.10am. We would like to invite all parents and caregivers to join us in our celebration of learning. We can’t wait to see you there!
If you haven’t already done so, please read the SOLAR article in the newsletter for overall background information around the Science of Reading. Within the F-4 news, we will provide regular tips to families on how to support early reading development at home.
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic Awareness is the ability to focus on and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in words. It is one of the best early predictors for reading success, therefore it is important that all children develop their phonemic awareness in the early years.
“The most common source of reading difficulties is poor phonemic awareness.” ~Dr. David Kilpatrick.
At St Augustine’s College, phonemic awareness is explicitly, systematically and cumulatively taught within structured literacy using Heggerty in Foundation to Year 2.
If you would like to know more about phonemic awareness and how you can help your child develop their phonemic awareness in everyday life, please visit https://heggerty.org/parents/. There is a simple short video explaining what phonemic awareness is and how it impacts reading and writing. There are also suggestions of phonemic awareness activities as you scroll through the page or click on the ‘Learn More’ button next to the video for further suggestions.
Erin Emmett and Penny Jenner
F-4 Community Leaders
Years 1 and 2
In all of the 1/2 rooms we are remembering the 5 L's of learning:
- Eyes are Looking
- Ears are Listening
- Lips are closed
- Hands are in your lap
- Legs are still and quiet
We have been working hard to demonstrate the 5L's during Literacy where we are revising our phonemic awareness, decoding sentences, high frequency and irregular words, handwriting and forming sentences. We have enjoyed learning about the seasons and how we have day and night - there have even been some student suns and planet Earth’s orbiting around the room.
It has been an exciting time in our area with both the Year 1 and Year 2 stay backs happening.
The Years 1s enjoyed some fun games and activities outside including sack races and egg and spoon races. They feasted on party pies, sausage rolls and fruit.
The Year 2s enjoyed some afternoon tea consisting of tiny teddies and fruit before getting their groove on at the disco. They enjoyed playing bobs and statues and McDonald's tiggy before their tasty dinner of pizza and hot chips.
As well as the fun and excitement of our stay backs, we have been doing lots of learning too!
In maths we have continued to learn about numbers and their place value.
The Year 2 students have enjoyed ordering numbers on their iPad and having a go at some problem solving by following a series of clues to find a secret number.
The Year 1 students used a range of different materials to represent numbers in different ways as you can see from the photos below.
