What's Happening in the Junior School

 Prep

What’s Happening in Prep in June 

The Preps have had a wonderful Term 2 so far, filled with exciting learning experiences and special celebrations. We visited the Beaumaris Library on two occasions, where students enjoyed exploring books, listening to stories and learning about how a library works. The children were enthusiastic and engaged during both visits and loved having the opportunity to discover new texts and spaces within the library.  

We also celebrated Half Day, marking 50 days of school, with a range of fun activities throughout the day. Students enjoyed taking part in counting games, creative tasks and classroom celebrations that recognised how much they have learned and achieved so far this year. 

Another highlight of the term was participating in a Hip Hop Dance incursion. The students had a fantastic time learning new dance moves, building their confidence and expressing themselves through movement and music. It was wonderful to see everyone joining in with enthusiasm and energy.  

The Prep students also participated in their very first Cross-Country event. They showed great enthusiasm, determination and resilience as they ran alongside their classmates and cheered each other on. It was wonderful to see the students challenge themselves, celebrate their achievements and enjoy being part of such a special school event. 

Wellbeing 

• We are learning to be resilient when things feel tricky or challenging
• We are learning to be independent and complete tasks by ourselves
• We are learning to be responsible for our own belongings and classroom materials 

• We are learning to use a growth mindset by trying our best and not giving up when learning something new

   

Literacy 

• Reviewing short vowel sounds a, i, u, e and o 
• Retelling the main events of the story in order 
• Add ‘when’ into our sentences  

• Identifying and using nouns, verbs and adjectives in sentences 

   

Maths 

• Reading and writing numerals to 20  
• Representing numbers to 20 with materials  
• Matching numerals and collections to 20  
• Identifying 'one more' for numbers to 20  
• Identifying 'one less' for numbers to 20  
• Comparing and ordering collections to 20  
• Numbers to 10 on a number track  
• Numbers to 20 on a number track  
• Comparing and ordering numerals to 20 

Knowledge Unit 

Focus: Science and Design and Technology 

Big question: How might we reuse materials to make products and sounds? 

• What is a product? 
• What are products made from? 
• What sounds do different materials make? 
• What materials can be recycled and reused? 

Specialist 

Please find below a timetable of when your child/rens class will attend specialist.  

Homework 

Each week, your child/ren will bring home a blue reading pouch (satchel). Inside, you will find; 

• Three decodable readers 
• One picture storybook labelled Classroom Library.  
• A green “Decoding Detective/ Word Wizard” workbook 
• Sound pack cards.  

These resources are designed to support your child’s reading practice at home. 

Please keep all reading materials stored in the reading pouch. Reading pouches should be returned to school each Friday so students can swap their books for the following week, and additional learning materials can be added. 

Please note that at this early stage of the year, students are not expected to independently decode every word in their reading texts. At this point, they may focus on identifying individual sounds and recognising the “heart words” that have been explicitly taught in class (you can find these words within the Word Wizard section of the green workbook) 

Thank you for supporting your child’s reading journey at home! 

Reminders 

• Prep swimming program - Tuesday 9th June until Friday 19th June. Please see event on compass for further details  
• Please bring in any recycled materials you have at home for our Science and Design and Technology unit  
• Curriculum day – Friday 5th June   
• Public holiday – Monday 8th June  
• Last day of Term 2 – Friday 26th June, 2:30pm finish

Year 1

What’s Happening in Year 1 in June 

Wellbeing

During the last four weeks, the Year 1’s have spent their weekly Wellbeing lesson with the Year 5 students. The Year 5 students have run a series of workshops focused on four key themes: Art and Digitech, Sustainability, Sport and Being an Upstander. The Year 5s have embraced this opportunity by showing kindness and modelling inclusion. The younger students have learnt new skills and made cross year level friendships. In June we will return to engaging with the Zones of Regulation program and focus on building our resilience skills. 

Literacy

The Year 1 students will be working through the UFLI structured, synthetic phonics program. During this time, they will focus on developing their phonics knowledge, decoding skills, and confidence as early readers. Last month, the focus has been on the superhero e spelling pattern which signals that the short vowel sound changes to a long vowel sound for example cub to cube or hop to hope. During the month of June, children will engage enthusiastically with new sounds and patterns including Gentle Cindy, exceptions to the vce pattern and adding common suffixes to words such as – es, ed and ing. They will begin applying these skills to their reading and writing. We will continue with our fluency reading, focusing on reading with accuracy, reading rates, and using expression when reading. Students continue working on practising our short letters in handwriting, focusing on correctly forming the letters e, o, s, u and v in both uppercase and lowercase.

Language and Literature

The Year 1 students will engage with the text Family by Aunty Fay Muir & Sue Lawson. We will explore the theme of family, which students are also learning about in our Knowledge Unit. 

Our learning goals for this unit are:

• Making connections to the story’s theme and illustrations
• Identifying the passage of time within the story
• Growing our understanding of Aboriginal families
• Learning how to show respect by caring for Country

Maths

In Mathematics, students continued to participate in hands-on learning experiences to explore and investigate measurement concepts. They rotated through a variety of measurement-based learning stations focused on mass and capacity, using informal language to demonstrate their understanding, such as “holds more than,” “is heavier than,” “is equal in mass,” and “has a smaller mass.” Students have also been strengthening their understanding of addition and subtraction. They explored number bonds to identify pairs that make a given number, solved a range of addition and subtraction problems, and began using more efficient and mature strategies to support their mathematical thinking.

Knowledge Unit

In our History Unit, Changes in Daily Life, students have had a chance to share their interviews they conducted with someone special from a different generation. We have had so much fun learning about the differences our grandparents and parents had in their childhood’s and comparing them to our own experiences. Our focus will now move into preparation for our Rippon Lea Estate excursion in Week 8. Students will explore the history of period property built in the 1860s for the wealthy Sargood family. They will learn how the family’s wealth influenced their lifestyle and compare this with the experiences of the workers who also lived and worked within the mansion. Through this learning, students will develop an understanding of how people from different social groups lived in the past. Students will have a chance to reflect on how life in the late 1800s compares to their own in the present. To finish the term, students will look at comparing past toys, technology and school life to the present-day equivalents.

Specialist Timetables

1BM: 

• Tuesday: Performing Arts and Japanese
• Wednesday: PE and Art

1C:

• Tuesday: Performing Arts and Japanese
• Wednesday: PE and Art

1M:

• Monday: Performing Arts
• Tuesday: PE and Art
• Wednesday: Japanese

1MC:

• Monday: Performing Arts
• Tuesday: PE and Art

• Wednesday: Japanese

   

Reminders:

Fruit Snack

Every morning at 9.55am students will have a fruit snack. You child must have their fruit/veggie snack in a separate smaller container to their lunch.

Take Home Reading

Please make sure you child brings their reading pouch with their three readers on Thursdays. Students should be reading every night for 15-20 minutes. It is important for students to read their take home readers multiple times to build fluency. Students will also take home a book from the classroom library. This will be a rich literature text and can be read by you to your child. 

Rippon Lea Estate Excursion

Please make sure you have consented and paid for the Year 1 excursion to Rippon Lea Estate in Week 8. 1C and 1M will be visiting on Thursday 11th June and 1BM and 1MC will be visiting on Friday 12th June.

Year 2

What’s Happening in Year 2 in June 

The Year 2s enjoyed our excursion to Cranbourne Botanical Gardens. In our guided session, we heard the First Nations’ creation story of Port Phillip Bay and learnt how First Nations People connect to Country. 

The Year 2s had a go at using ochre to draw symbols and stamp their signature. They then used clapsticks to engage in some singing and dancing. We finished the day with a nature ‘seek and find’ and even spotted an endangered bandicoot! 

Over the next month, the Year 2 students will be learning to: 

Wellbeing 

• The Year 5 Upstander Leaders will be running wellbeing workshops on identifying emotions, problem solving, and being a good friend

• We will continue with our ‘Kindness Challenge’. We are aiming to complete a random act of kindness each day

   

Phonics 

• Reading and spelling words with graphemes: ew, ie, ue 
• Reading and spelling words with graphemes: au, aw, augh 
• Reading and spelling words with graphemes: oi, oy 

• Vowel Team review 

   

Literacy 

• Reading and answering comprehension questions about our mentor text ‘Looking After Country with Fire’ 
• Writing descriptive sentences using precise adjectives 
• Beginning sentences with subordinating conjunctions 
• Unscrambling sentences 
• Writing our own Acknowledgement of Country 

Maths 

• Identifying suitable formal units to measure length 
• Measure, compare and estimate the length of objects using formal units 
• Identifying suitable informal units of measurement for mass and capacity 
• Compare and order the mass of objects on balance scales, using informal units. 
• Compare and order the capacity of containers using informal units 
• Estimating capacity and mass 

• Solve measurement problems 

   

Knowledge Unit 

This term, the Year 2 students are learning Geography. We are exploring two topics: Where are we in the World? And How do First Nations People connect to Country and Place?  

This month we will be: 

• Identifying the difference between a ‘Welcome to Country’ and ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ 
• Identifying ways First Nations people care and respect the lands and waterways 
• Identifying ways First Nations people use natural resources 

• Writing our own Acknowledgement of Country 

   

Homework  

Your child will continue to swap their take-home books each Thursday. They will bring home three decodable texts. We strongly encourage students to reread these texts multiple times across the week as this is an important way novice readers develop automaticity and reading fluency.  

Reminders: 

• Curriculum Day – Friday 05th June 
• King’s Birthday Public Holiday – Monday 08th June