Junior school news
News from Prep
InquiRE - Preps have been focusing on what it means to be a part of God’s family and making personal connections with their own family. Students are continuing to explore the concept of sustainability and different ways they can be proactive and take action to support the school environment.
English - Students have been learning about the sounds of long and short vowels and CVC words. (consonant, vowel, consonant). They have set personal goals to support and encourage their independent writing and reading this term.
Maths - Prep students are consolidating their knowledge of number, by learning about the strategy of counting on when solving addition problems. They also enjoyed representing and counting different collections and comparing the difference.
New from Year 1/2
Literacy
Over the past two weeks, Year 1/2's have been focusing on integrating our InquiRE and SEL topics into our literacy lessons. The students have read about and discussed themes such as caring for our planet, wants vs needs, and resilience.
Reading and writing foci were also intertwined throughout each lesson with students having a platform from which they can draw on prior knowledge, develop new vocabulary, make connections and continue to build on their skills of prediction and inferencing. Students continue to be supported in their development of phonological awareness skills and a heavy focus remains on the explicit teaching of phonics rules and syllables. These rules are practised in their independent writing as we continue look at information report writing and learn about some of the animals we will visit at the zoo.
Maths
Year 1/2 students have been focusing on place value, addition and subtraction over the past two weeks. They can identify one more/one less, ten more/ten less than a given two digit or three digit number. They also practised using different strategies to solve addition and subtraction problems using a bar model, a number line or a drawing to work out a number problem. Year 1/2's discussed the idea that subtraction means takeaway, as a missing part and as a comparison before making the connection between addition and subtraction.
InquiRE
Year 1/2's continued to learn about the 3 R's over the past fortnight. Students learned about ways to reduce the amount of packaging we accumulate in school and at home and identified way we can help to reduce our waste. They also looked at the lifespan of various materials such as glass, plastic, metal and food scaps and the impact these waste products can have on our environment.
SEL
SEL remains a prominent focus in all 1/2 classrooms every week. The students are learning to recognise situations that can cause fear and identify positive coping strategies they can use. We also had the opportunity to practise winning and losing and the importance of self-umpiring through a number of short games. Students are encouraged to play for enjoyment without consideration of an outcome such as winning or who is best to worst.
Kew traffic school
Last Friday as part of Road Safety Awareness Week Year 1/2 classes were invited to Kew Traffic School to learn about being a safe pedestrian. The students learned about the
the concept of ‘Stop, Look, Listen, Think’. They also learned about the different types of crossings and the signs that correspond with pedestrian crossings. They practised crossing the road with the help of a crossing supervisor and identified safe and unsafe situations as a pedestrian.
