Foundation Learning Community News

Wow! What a wonderful start we have had to our Foundation year. We are settling into our classroom and following routines like school professionals. The Prep teachers have been amazed by how few tears there have been and how engaged and ready for learning the cohort is. A big thank you to families who have supported the Preps to ensure a smooth transition to school life. 

This Friday is our first Whole School Assembly and we have been working hard to learn our school song and practise the National Anthem. We hope to see you there!

Literacy:

We have been learning about what a word is, and what syllables are in our InitiaLit sessions and working on the mat routine for the explicit section of our lessons. Very soon we will be meeting our first characters which are linked to the sounds in our alphabet. Following these sessions we are doing lots of fine motor activities to strengthen the small muscles in our hands to support our writing and scissor work.

The storybook, 'How to Catch a Star," by Oliver Jeffers, has been the focus of our reading sessions. We have learnt some new vocabulary (wished and carefully), found out some facts about real life stars, and completed our own craft. 

This Friday we will begin our home reading program. To begin with the children will select a fiction and nonfiction book to read with their families. They are not expected to be able to read these independently, rather enjoy them with a more skilled reader. Once we have learnt some sets of sounds we will send home decodable readers.

Maths:

After completing our pattern unit we are now entering a unit dedicated to the measurement of time. In Foundation, this includes when certain events occur (morning, lunchtime, night-time), the days of the week, and ordering events in our day. We have been playing games and learning songs to reinforce the order of the days and are busily learning actions to a new song to show you at our Foundation Assembly.

Inquiry:

Our Big Question for Inquiry in Term One is, 'Who are we and who makes up our classroom community?' We have met key staff at our school, had a school tour and made a 'Our School Community' book. 

Learning about our fellow classmates is a great way to make friends and discover new things. We have begun to collect Wonderings about how we are the same and different. 'Wonderings' are questions that we have about a topic and things we would like to know more about. We have 'Wondered' about what different foods our class has for dinner, celebrations that we participate in, and even what sort of pets our friends have!

To support our learning we will have an 'Around the World Lunch' in week 6, and a World Dance incursion in week 9. We will let you know more about these events through Compass shortly.