Foundation

100 DAYS OF FOUNDATION

What a wonderful time we all had celebrating the first 100 days of school life! From the first moment until the last, students were excited and happy to be the centre of attention at St John's. The dress up costumes were excellent, the activities lots of fun and the hot chips were delicious. It is mind-blowing how quickly 12 generous parcels of chips can be devoured by a class of Foundation students and their buddies! 

 

 

Book Week 2025

An incursion to start proceedings, a visit to the Town Library to see Librarian Cathy and a fantastic Book Week Parade to conclude the week were just some of the activities on offer during the annual Book Week celebrations.

With a plethora of short-listed books at the centre of the festivities, there was no chance for students to be less than enthusiastic about the week. Lots of literacy tasks, oral language and discussions were completed. Students may or may not agree with the final winners in each category, but Book Week itself was definitely the winner at St John's. 

We had a lovely time at our Book Week performance 'Treasure Hunt' this was an interactive performance, and it was enjoyed by all. After this we were lucky enough to welcome our parents and special people back into our classroom where we were able to do different activities. 

One of the activities was a competition - most words made from the title of 'The Garden of Broken Things'.

The winners:

Ramsden - Georgia Burls

Redfern - Emmett Simmons

Come and collect your prize from Mrs Redfern and Mrs Ramsden.

Congratulations to everyone who had a go, you all did a very good job.

 

Literacy

Digraph, digraphs, digraphs.

When 2 letters combine to make one sound, we have ourselves a digraph. And they are currently all the rage in Foundation. Think sh, ch, oo, th, wh, ck  - the list is endless and the students are becoming very adept at identifying, and using them. This is when writing starts to get very interesting, with some students having multiple options for the sounds they hear.  Words like click can be written as click, clic or clik on any given day. We are mainly focusing on writing a letter for every sound that is heard, with accurate spelling not as important at this stage as phonetic spelling.  Simple reminders like "when I see a q, I always need a u" and "we never have 'ck' at the start of a word" are helping students navigate the complex English language.

The other BIG focus in both rooms is handwriting-forming letters correctly, sitting them on the correct lines and making sure there are spaces between the words. This is a real challenge for many students and one that is being addressed daily through explicit modelling and opportunities to practise.

If you would be interested in following up handwriting at home, we are more than happy to provide the dotted thirds exercise book to practise in. There is of course no obligation to 

do this but we are happy to provide the tools if you would like to provide a little extra

support in this area. Just let us know and we will send a book home.

MATHS

We have covered Addition, then Subtraction, and have now moved onto Measurement. The use of stories to demonstrate each process was very evident in the Ochre program eg: I had 4 fish. I bought 5 more. How many fish do I have altogether? 

Thom had 11 cows. Five wandered away. How many are left in the paddock now?

We have used blocks, counters and fingers to work out the answers and are trying to use the 'counting on' strategy to streamline our thinking processes. There is no need to count the fingers on one hand- we KNOW there are 5 so can start counting from this point rather than one.

Tall, short and long are the beginning concepts for our Measurement unit, with students given multiple opportunities to use the correct terminology when measuring classroom, and playground, items. We are also going to use 'hefting' to estimate the Mass of different items and once the weather gets a bit warmer, we will investigate the characteristics of capacity. 

Religion

We have just finished the unit  "Our Bible", and will begin our new unit "Let's Celebrate Creation" which will tie in beautifully with our Inquiry unit. Students will come to appreciate the gift that is creation and identify ways in which we can care and look after this special gift we have been given.

Students are becoming more adept at sharing their thoughts and opinions articulately and have mastered the skill of attentively listening to others- although may still need reminders to use these skills.

 

THE RESILIENCE PROJECT

Students will explore feeling in and out-of-balance. Through physical activities and stories, students will explore what balance looks and feels like and unpack the choices they have when different emotions arise. They will investigate different strategies to use in different situations through role play and discussion.

 

We are learning to:

Build an awareness of feeling in balance and out-of-balance.

 

Students will...

  • recognise when their body is in or out-of-balance.
  • recognise some things that make them feel in and out-of-balance.
  • list some ways to reset.
  • identify people who can help when they feel out-of-balance. 

 

INQUIRY

Students identify what characterises a living thing. They are explicitly taught what a living thing is and apply this understanding to sort familiar living and non-living things.  Living things are things that are alive. People, animals and plants are living things.

Living things need a few things to stay alive. These essential things are air, water, and food. Both animals and plants need water. Our students have made their own community and planted their own seed to grow grass in their front yards - seed is a living thing that make use of water, sunlight and food, to say alive. 

 

Responsible Pet Ownership for Children

The Responsible Pet Ownership primary school program is aimed at 5 to 12-year-olds and has been delivered to over 1 million Victorian primary school children and today we were lucky enough to have Abbie and Daisy come to our school: we learnt all about the way we treat dogs through role plays, song and interaction with both Abbie and Daisy. It was a great incursion enjoyed by all. 

The program includes:

  • a dog visit
  • multimedia tools
  • role play
  • song and story time

The program focuses on teaching students about dog safety:

  • when dogs should be left alone
  • things we should not do to dogs
  • how can you tell if a dog is happy, frightened or angry
  • a safe way to approach and greet a dog
  • what to do if approached by an unknown or aggressive dog

 

 

ON-GOING REMINDERS

  1. St John's is a "No Hat, No Play" school, which means everyone is wearing their hats every day. High ponytails and hair buns can cause difficulty for some students in trying to get their hat to actually sit on their head properly. Just something to ponder when creating hairstyles in the morning.
  2. Everything needs to be labelled. And this mantra will be repeated on a regular basis throughout the year. You will get sick of hearing it, we will get sick of saying it, but please make sure your child's belongings can be easily returned to them should they accidentally be misplaced.
  3. Zooper Doopers are $1, Cake Raffle tickets are 50c. Both momentous events happen each Friday. 
  4.  Lunch Orders are every Wednesday.
  5. Library visits take place on a Friday. If last week's borrowed book is not returned, a new one cannot be borrowed. 

6. Birthday invitations- Foundation is traditionally the year of Birthday Parties. We are happy to hand out invitations at school if everyone is invited (just classroom cohort, not necessarily all of Foundation) But if you choose to only invite some friends to your child's party (and we completely understand this approach) we would prefer that the invitations were shared another way. Whilst life does have the occasional disappointment, not being invited to a party is a pretty big one when you are 5 or 6 years old and we would rather the school not be the place of the upset.  

 

If you have any questions or queries about anything, please contact us. We have Staff Meetings after school on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so these times are unavailable, but can make any other time work.

 

sredfern@sjeuroa.catholic.edu.au

tramsden@sjeuroa.catholic.edu.au

phone: 57952937

 

Thank you,

Sally, Thom and Damien