Foundation

Foundation June Newsletter 2024

Literacy

Foundation students will continue to learn 2 new sounds each week until they have learnt the entire alphabet. We have now introduced 22 different letters and sounds. This week the students were introduced to the letter and the sound that q and x make.

W are continuing to focus on segmenting and blending CVC (consonant- vowel- consonant) words. The skill of segmenting is sounding out each sound in the word and blending is when we put the sounds together to read the whole word. For example, when we segment the word 'mat' we say the sounds m/a/t. We then blend the sounds to read the whole word ‘mat’. In order for segmenting and blending to be successful, having strong sound knowledge is very important. Identifying and knowing what each letter sound makes is the first step before we can successfully segment and blend! 

Student work showing how we are continuing to segment and blend in our Literacy sessions with Super Spelling and Let’s Spell

Students have been engaging in the Story Champs program all year, which explicitly teaches how to retell a story using the story elements. This week the students demonstrated their knowledge and drew the elements of a retell:  character, problem, feeling, rising action, and ending in a story.

Foundation students have started using their new Writing books, focusing on handwriting and sentence structure. They are explicitly taught to distinguish between words and sentences. Through dictation practice, we have started writing sentences by breaking them down into individual words, counting the number of words in a sentence, and recording each word using letter sound knowledge. Students concentrate on starting their sentences with a capital letter, placing finger spaces between words, and ending with a full stop.

Knowledge

For the remainder of this term students will be learning about the 5 senses in our Health knowledge unit. In Health, students have been exploring their senses of hearing and smell. They have investigated what a carnival is and, through think-pair-share activities and whole class discussions, they have discussed the sounds they can hear at a carnival and in their local environment. Students have labelled the parts of an ear. They have also explored how they use their noses to identify different scents and how to take care of their noses. They drew pictures of items in our environment that create smells and those that do not.

Numeracy

In Numeracy, students are learning about the numbers that come before and after a given number. We are emphasising the vocabulary of 'BEFORE' and 'AFTER' to ensure students understand both the concept and the word meanings. Number lines and number charts have been used to support student learning as an excellent visual aid for identifying these numbers. Students have been learning to use ordinal numbers to identify their positions in a race, from 1st to 10th. They went outside to have a race and identified the positions they place they finished.

SEL (Social and Emotional Learning)

In our SEL learning, our focus from the Resilience Project has been on Gratitude. Students have explored the concept of gratitude and recognised how they can incorporate it into their daily lives. They also identified people, places, and things for which they are grateful. The responses included family members, friends, siblings, their home, school, and personal belongings. Our goal is for this understanding to extend beyond the school environment, allowing each child to share their insights with their families at home.

AUSLAN

Foundation students are furthering their AUSLAN knowledge by learning signs related to ‘Around the House’. During these sessions, we ensure our voices are ‘off’ and we rely solely on our signing hands to learn new signs each week. We hope some of your children will come home and teach you what they have learned in AUSLAN.