Prep Community News
Dear Prep Families,
Welcome back to school! We hope you had a great break! We are all very excited for a busy Term 3. It has been great to see our students come back to school with a readiness and eagerness to get right back into their learning! Students have done a great job at getting back to following the routines of our school day.
Below is a snapshot of some of the learning that has been taking place in Prep this past fortnight:
InitiaLit:
In InitiaLit, we have been learning the sounds /b/, /j/ and /w/. Students have been practicing saying these sounds, identifying them in words, and matching the sounds to their corresponding letters.
At home, you can support your child by encouraging them to listen for the /b/, /j/ and /w/ sounds in everyday words. You might like to ask them for words that begin with the sound /b/ (e.g., bike, big, banana, baby), /j/ (e.g., jump, jam, juice, joke) and /w/ (e.g., worm, wink, wig, wash).
We have also been developing our oral blending skills, where students listen to individual sounds and blend them together to make a word. With their growing confidence, we have been orally blending words with four sounds (for example: /j/ /u/ /m/ /p → jump and /d/ /r/ /o/ /p/ → drop). As they strengthen their abilities, students are using these skills to read words with four sounds containing the sounds they have learned.
Click the link below to practice all the sounds we have learned so far in Prep.
We have also been learning some tricky words! These words are tricky because we cannot sound them out; we just have to know them by heart.
The tricky words we have learned are:
Click this link to practice all of the tricky words we have learned so far in Prep:
You can practice at home by showing your child these tricky words and asking them to read them to you. You can also ask your child to read the new tricky words in sentences:
Storybook:
During our Storybook lessons, we have been reading the text Jeremy written by Chris Faille. Our focus words/phrase from this text are spiky, wears himself out, and healthy.
To support your child at home, you can ask them to tell you the meaning of our new words/phrase, spiky, wears himself out, and healthy. You can also ask them to put these words into a sentence.
Writing:
In Writing, we have continued to learn about writing simple sentences. In addition to using capital letters, finger spaces and full stops, we have been practicing using our fingerspelling skills to write words that we don’t know how to spell yet.
Using a picture prompt, our preps wrote a sentence as a class and practiced fingerspelling words to identify the sounds they hear and write each word. Using the sounds they learnt, we wrote the sentences: The man-made cookies. He was upset.
Maths:
In Maths, students have been using their counting on skills to add 1 and 2 to numbers. You can help your child at home by giving them problems such as the ones below:
Students have also been identifying the halfway point on a line and identifying if an object is less than halfway, more than halfway or halfway along the line.
General Reminders:
On July 28th, we will be celebrating the 100th day of school! Parents are welcome to join us in the morning from 8:55 - 9:55am to help your child create a special crown. Students are invited to dress up as a 100-year-old person or to wear their favourite party clothes. We will be making and eating fairy bread which contains wheat, soy, butter, and sprinkles. If you do not wish for your child to take part in the making/eating of the fairy bread, please notify your child’s class teacher by Thursday 23rd of July.
Reading regularly at home is a wonderful way to support your child’s learning and help them grow as confident readers. Even spending a few minutes each evening sharing a book, practicing decodable readers, or talking about stories can make a big difference to your child's reading development.
Each student has a designated reading satchel day, which is displayed on their classroom door. On this day, please ensure your child brings their reading satchel or red reading bag to school so they can exchange their books and safely transport library and take-home readers between school and home.
As we begin a new term, we kindly ask families to ensure that all belongings brought to school are labelled with your child’s name. This includes uniform items, drink bottles, lunch boxes, and any other personal items. Having names on belongings makes it much easier for lost items to find their way back to their owners.
With the cooler weather now here, hats are no longer required during outdoor play. Students are still welcome to bring and wear a hat if they choose.
A reminder that students begin entering classrooms from 8:45 am to unpack and prepare for the day. Learning commences promptly at 8:55 am, so arriving on time helps students settle in and make a positive start to their learning. The school day concludes at 3:10 pm.
Thank you for continuing to support your child’s independence by encouraging them to enter the pod and classroom on their own each morning. If you need to contact your child’s teacher, please do so via the school office, and your message will be forwarded accordingly.
We are looking forward to another amazing term in Prep and we cannot wait to see the continued growth our students make!
Kind regards,
PLC Prep