Foundation (Prep)

I hope everyone enjoyed the beautiful weather we had over the holidays and feels rested after the break. I can tell the students are refreshed and ready to focus on the next steps in their learning.

This term our Inquiry unit will be 'Keeping Ourselves Safe'. We will discuss road, fire, water, cyber and personal safety. We have already started talking about the emergency services and who can help us in our community. This week we made cute police cars after our discussions.

Literacy

This term we will be completing a number of author studies. Over the past two weeks we have been introduced to Aaron Blabey and Jackie French. We watched a video about Aaron Blabey and looked closely at a range of his books. We have read Pig the Star from his Pig the Pug series, Thelma the Unicorn and the first edition of The Bad Guys series. It was lovely to see how much the class enjoyed his books. There was disappointment each time I had to stop and bookmark our page and great enthusiasm when they knew it was time to read some more. This week we focused on Jackie French. We enjoyed Diary of a Wombat, Emily and the Big Bad Bunyip, Josephine Wants to Dance and A Wombat Named Bosco.

The letters we have focused on over the last two weeks have been Xx and Qq. The students brainstormed words which contained the 'x' and 'q' sounds and have made xylophones and quilts to record their work.

Numeracy

During week 1, we focused on place value and ordering numbers. We practised making numbers using blocks, so we could clearly see how many bundles of ten and how many ones made up our two-digit numbers. Some students who felt comfortable were challenged to work with three and four-digit numbers. We also enjoyed a place value bingo game which helped us look for numbers in both pictures and numerals.

During week 2, the students were introduced to the early concept of division which we refer to as 'Shared Between'. We have touched on odd and even numbers, sharing a number to make it fair and the same for each group. It is not expected for students to learn division in Foundation, however, it is important to understand the concept of sharing an equal number. The children will revisit this topic in Grade 1.

Buddies

The Preps were excited to reconnect with their buddies after the holidays. We were fortunate to have an ICT session with the Grade 6s. Our buddies taught us how to use the shift key to type a capital letter, use the space bar and find full stops and exclamation marks to write a sentence. Some students had time to search for an image to go with their writing and the senior students showed us how to insert it into our document. It was a lot of information to take in but we hope to spend more time together to practise some of these publishing skills.

We have a lot to look forward to this term including a teddy bears picnic, an excursion to Edendale Farm, our swimming program, Christmas carols and more.

I hope you enjoy your weekend and I'll see you next week.

Mrs Callaway