Saltwater College Newsletter

Prep

Dear Prep families,

 

The Prep Teaching Team are incredibly proud of our courageous students for embracing their first term of schooling. We are excited to share with you the wonderful learning that has taken place in Week Eight and Week Nine.  

 

Reading

In Reading, students have continued to build their understanding of the decoding strategies acquiring new knowledge with the reading strategies of: ‘skip the word’ and ‘flip the vowel’.    

When readers are unable to decode an unfamiliar word, they can choose to ‘skip’ the unknown word by reading the rest of the sentence and then thinking about a word that could make sense in the sentence, incorporating text and picture cues to assist them to reread the sentence. When the reader goes back to the unfamiliar word, the reader can also use the strategy of ‘getting your mouth ready to say the first sound’ in the word.  

For example, when reading the sentence, ‘The horse ran out of the barn’, if the reader does not know the word ‘ran’ they can skip the word but read the rest of the sentence. After looking at the picture clues and observing that the horse is running out of the barn, they can reread the sentence and get their mouth ready to make the /r/ sound, in the word ran.  

When reading, the reader might also use the ‘flip the vowel’ strategy to solve unfamiliar words. The students are  beginning to understand that vowels make more than one sound. An example of this is the letter, ‘a’ which makes a short sound, /a/ as in ‘apple’, or a long sound, /a/ as in ‘acorn’. When a word is read that does not sound right, the vowel sound can be flipped.  

Families are encouraged to engage in their child’s learning. You may like to watch this video on vowel sounds.  Please note that the video presents a differing vowel sound for 'Ii'.

 

 

Writing

In Writing, students have continued engaging in language experiences to support their success in learning new sight words. 

 

The sight words taught in Term One can be found on your child’s keyring. We encourage children to regularly refer to their keyring, both at school and at home, when writing to assist with the spelling of familiar sight words. 

 

This term, students have explicitly learnt the following sight words:  

I 

am 

like 

to 

he 

she 

we 

the 

go 

on 

is 

in 

at 

my 

up 

it 

 

 

Teachers have noticed an improvement in the writing stamina of the students when engaging with the written text type of ‘recount writing’. The purpose of ‘recount writing’ is to write about an event that has happened. Students use the 5 Ws (when, who, where, what and why) to help generate ideas. Some writers are beginning to apply their knowledge of shape when drawing pictures, while other students are being courageous by including high frequency words in their sentences. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maths

In Mathematics, students have explored numbers before and after a given number. Using hands on materials such as: dice, unifix blocks, counters and number lines, students were able to count forwards to determine the number that came after the rolled number and were able to count backwards to determine the number that came before the rolled number.  

Our young learners have worked with a partner to use their communication and thinking skills to justify which number of a collection of two numbers was bigger or smaller. Prep teachers were delighted to see students actively collaborate with their partner to communicate their thinking and justify their answers.  

 

Inquiry 

During the past fortnight, we started to explore our second Unit of Inquiry under the transdisciplinary theme of ‘Who We Are’. This unit focuses on individual interests, likes and dislikes. Students will inquire into how they are different to their peers and others in the community. They will begin to understand emotions and develop strategies to manage these emotions. 

 

Students tuned into this unit by participating in a provocation task where they had to communicate what that could see, what they thought and what they wondered about, after viewing a short clip featuring characters from Pixar’s Animation Studios, ‘Inside Out’.  

The central idea for this unit, ‘Similarities and differences build relationships’, was also unpacked with the students. Students actively communicated their understanding of key terms within the central idea and developed an understanding of what they will be inquiring into next term.  

 

 

Essential Agreements 

Now that students have had the opportunity to develop their understanding and interpretation of the attributes of the learner profile, each class was able to work together to create their class Essential Agreement. Essential Agreements are a whole-class vision and an important part of an IB (International Baccalaureate) classroom. The attributes of the profile are the habits of the mind that allow students to act in meaningful ways (Davy, 2005). By 19 April, a whole-school document will be shared with the wider-community to celebrate and inform families of the Essential Agreements co-created by each class and their teacher – stay tuned!  

 

Wellbeing

During the last two weeks, students have continued learning about emotions with a strong focus on naming emotions, expressing emotions through facial and body expressions  

and practising recognising other people’s emotions. In addition to this, they've had the opportunity to recognise what sorts of sounds are associated with different emotions and through fun activities they have been able to recognise the kinds of experiences that may trigger particular emotions. Our Prep students have also begun to learn about their personal strengths by identifying examples of the ways in which individual strengths are used in collaborative play and describing characteristics of good team behaviour. Our students have enjoyed listening to stories and identifying emotions and strengths displayed in these stories. 

 

REMINDERS:

  • Term break from 29th March to 14th April. 
  • Students return to school on Monday 15th April and are encouraged to bring along their favourite teddy for our Teddy Bear Picnic.
  • Artefacts for our new Unit of Inquiry are to be brought to school by the end of Week One, Term Two. 
  • Students are expected to bring their satchel to school EVERY DAY.
  • Hats are to be worn when outside from August to April. Please ensure to put sunscreen on your child before arriving at school.
  • Prep students will begin using iPads in Term Two. Your child’s iPad will need to be configured by our IT team to enable them to use them at school.
  • Snack and lunch times are 20 minutes long. Please encourage your child to eat their snack/lunch within a 20 minute period, as this will help them to follow school routine.
  • Please remember to pack a spare change of clothes for your child. Sometimes, little children can have toileting accidents and spills at school.
  • If you would like your child to practise our school song. This is the Youtube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua5RnSttwyY 
  • Lastly, a reminder about bringing in headphones if you have not already done so. We will be using them in Term Two, along aside the iPads.

Have a lovely term break. 

 

Kind regards, 

The Prep Team.