Foundation
Communicating with the Foundation Team
We look forward to partnering with you in 2020, and welcome your input:
Holly Peters (Class FA) Holly.Peters@education.vic.gov.au
Lisa Dam (Class FB) Lisa.Dam@education.vic.gov.au
WELCOME TO TERM 4!
Welcome to the final term of the year for our Foundation students! It has been so exciting and rewarding to see all the students return to the classroom for onsite learning and they have settled back into the routines of school with great enthusiasm. We were thrilled to have the students back in the classroom and loved seeing their smiling faces.
We want to thank everyone for their cooperation during pickups and drop-offs. We know it is a bit tricky when you have other children in other levels and classrooms so we really appreciate your patience and understanding.
We have had an amazing first week back, decorating our Welcome Back wall, having a Teddy Bear’s picnic and writing letters to our Buddies.
AN OVERVIEW OF OUR LEARNING
INQUIRY
Our topic for Inquiry in Term 4 is Science. Students will investigate how they are Scientists by nature and how people use Science in their daily lives. They will participate in a variety of guided investigations, including making observations using the senses, to explore and answer questions. They will predict, question and observe Science through a range of fun and engaging experiments and explore physical and chemical changes.
ENGLISH
In English this term, we will be continuing to follow the InitiaLit Program. Each week the students will also be involved in a variety of reading and writing activities through our English sessions, which will focus on the weekly digraphs and tricky words from the program. The children will be learning new tricky words and will be eagerly adding them to our tricky word tree. They will be focusing on reading strategies such as making connections with texts, making predictions, self-correcting when reading and using their learnt skills to decode unknown words.
For further information regarding the InitiaLit Program, you can visit the following website:
https://multilit.com/parents/.
In Writing, students will be continuing to develop their handwriting skills by using the correct starting points and formation of letters. The focus for Term 4 will be on the structure and purpose of procedural writing and students will continue to strengthen their ability writing recounts. They will build upon their word recognition and use their knowledge of letter sounds and digraphs to write more complex sentences. They will also begin to incorporate more tricky words accurately in their writing. Throughout the term, students will develop their knowledge and understanding of punctuation and make attempts to use it correctly in their sentences.
In Speaking and Listening, this term, we will be continuing our Show and Tell with a different focus each week.
MATHS
In Maths during Term 4 we will be continuing to develop our number sense by connecting number names, numerals and quantities and improve our place value knowledge by partitioning numbers. Students will continue to strengthen their ability when working with addition and subtraction and represent financial situations involving money. They will compare and measure the length and perimeter of different objects and organise answers to yes/no questions into simple data displays. Students will be learning to use different materials to compare and measure the capacity and mass of objects and explore the concept of odd and even numbers.
TAKE HOME READERS
This week we will be sending home decodable readers in the students green wallets.
Please note that in order to do this in a Covid-safe way the structure of take home readers has changed.
Students will be given readers to take home on Monday. They will then be expected to bring those readers back each Friday. Returning the readers on a Friday will give the school’s contract cleaners an opportunity to sanitise the books, ready for safe distribution on the following Monday. Students will not have the readers over the weekend. Please read with your child nightly, making a note in their student diary.
If you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact us.
100 DAYS OF SCHOOL CELEBRATIONS!
This year has been a very interrupted year and has impacted on our ability to count the days we have been at school/learning! As we are back to onsite learning, we have decided to celebrate our 100 Days Of Learning in Term 4, Week 6 on Friday 13th November. This decision was made based on our ability to all be together as a cohort to celebrate this occasion at school. This is a fantastic day of celebrations and involves a variety of activities based around the number 100. The students are very excited about celebrating our 100th day of school.
To help celebrate the occasion, we encourage all students to come to school in “100” themed attire. We encourage you to be creative with your dress-up. Some ideas to prompt your thinking are:
- dressing as a 100 year-old person
- dressing as a cricket player who has scored a century, or similar
- dressing as a student, occupation or person from 100 years ago
- dressing up to represent something which may come in hundreds
- wearing the number 100 on you, such as a t-shirt with tally marks or similar
- searching ideas online for “100 days of school dress-ups”.
A themed dress-up is encouraged, but not compulsory and students who would prefer to wear their school uniform may do so.
A detailed notice regarding the 100 days learning activities will be posted on Compass and a notice will be sent home soon.
UPCOMING FOUNDATION PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE AND ASSESSMENT DAYS
Due to the disruptive nature of this year, we are very fortunate to have both a Professional Practice Day and an additional Assessment Day. These days will provide us with the valuable information of your child’s progression to help us develop our teaching and learning program. The dates for these days are as follows:
- Monday 16th of November
- Monday 23rd of November
Mrs Lang and Mr Scicluna will be in our classrooms on these days and will be following our usual program.