Foundation

Arriving on Time

A gentle reminder to our lovely families to please ensure that your children arrive to school by 8:30 AM so that they can be admitted into the classroom by the start time of 8:35.

Our Foundation cohort engages in Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) time for the first 20 minutes of the morning. This is a time for them to engage in cooperative social play and settle into the classroom to both prepare for a busy day of learning ahead. 

Arriving to school on time allows for children to have smoother transitions into the school day, and minimises interruptions or disruptions during learning. 

By 8:55 AM, children are expected to pack up their morning activities and come to sit on the mat for our morning circle, where we take the roll and explain the day's schedule.

Children are encouraged to remain at home if unwell, but it is extremely important for their cognitive and emotional development to attend school regularly, as their first year of formal schooling is a strong indicator for their future academic success. 

If your child is experiencing difficulty transitioning into the classroom in the morning, we will be there to support and encourage them. With consistency, they will become increasingly more resilient.

Reading

In prep, we are focusing on blending familiar letter sounds and using our knowledge to sound out words. The children have been working hard on improving their blending and segmenting skills to identify individual letter sounds and read words out loud. We have been challenging the children by saying a simple word out loud, and inviting them to scribe it on their whiteboards. 

We are learning how to write simple sentences using the heart words I, M/my and T/the, with a focus on finger spacing between words and using the correct punctuation. 

We are reading the Pig the Pug series of books and looking at how narratives have a beginning, middle and an end. We are learning to be able to talk about what happens first (meeting the characters), in the middle (the problem), and in the end (the resolution).

We also had an author visit on Tuesday, where Foundation and 1-2 students came together to enjoy a reading outdoors in the play area. We love having different people come in and read to us, it is always exciting to expose the children to rich literature and listen to varied stories being told.

Writing

We have been working on letter formation and making sure we are writing neatly and carefully with guidance. The foundation students have been working on writing simple sentences, such as "I pat my cat".

We have also been working on scribing our ideas and illustrating them with pictures. We are helping the children to use their knowledge of letter sounds and blending to try and write words.

Numeracy

In Prep we have been exploring place value and explicitly teaching the children how to count up to 20 using one-to-one correspondence (touching an object and counting it before moving on to the next). 

We have been looking at the numbers 10-20, and have been exploring different ways of showing the number of the day, such as using tens frames, dice and bear counters.

Housekeeping/Reminders

The children attended the Mad About Science incursion on Monday, where they had a great time doing experiments together. They would have arrived home with a little bag of flavoured sugar powder that they made. This is completely edible, and the ingredients are listed on the plastic bag.

Please make sure your children return their blue book bags by Friday, so that they can be provided with new books for the next week.

School Values Certificates/Assembly

Congratulations to Joud Chor from Foundation B, and Sari A from Foundation A in receiving a school value certificate this week!