Classroom News - Kindergarten

English

Meet our latest friends! Fifi Flamingo, Rosie Rabbit and Ollie Otter have all recently joined our sound gang. We have been very excited to use these sounds in our reading and writing. As always, Kindergarten have been able to identify bundles of words that begin with our new sounds, and recently we have been thinking of words that have these sounds in the middle or end of the word. Especially now we have introduced Ollie Otter. There are so many words with the sound /o/ in the middle. I wonder how many words you and your child can think of?

This week we are sending home a new Home Reading Diary! In this diary there are places for you to record the books you have read with your child. Every week we will try to send home some work that we have been doing in class so that you can see what we have been learning. This will be sent home with the home reading diary/folder. We have enjoyed seeing all the amazing literature families have been exposing their children to. 

Big Write

This last fortnight Kindergarten have started to do their weekly Big Write. Big Writes are very exciting writing sessions where we ask students to talk with their families prior to completing the task. Every Wednesday we will send home “talk homework”, either in your child’s bag or home reader folder. This note will describe the topic we will be writing about the following day. All we ask is for you to have a conversation with your child about what they could write. You don’t need to write anything down, just planting the seed of ideas. These conversations can happen during dinner with many people involved, or even on the way to or from school. 

Each week our Big Write will have a focus of either Vocabulary, Connectives, Openers or Punctuation (VCOP), sometimes even having a focus of multiple of these. When doing the talk homework, you may suggest some topics for your child to write about and some elements of VCOP to up-level their writing. 

On the Big Write day, our class will do some VCOP warm ups to get their minds ready for some amazing writing and have a big talk about our writing ideas. If a family was unable to do their Talk Homework, children are still able to talk to someone at school about their thoughts, and also hear many other thoughts in the classroom. 

During the Big Write, the lights are dimmed, calm music is played, and sometimes there is a calming scent in the room. These changes make the Big Write sessions very special and exciting. The teacher and the Educational Assistants roam the classroom and help the students as it is not an assessment, but instead a positive experience to grow a love of writing. 

We have found through past years and already this year that after doing the talk homework, students are eager to come in and do their Big Write. The use of Talk Homework has really assisted with students’ confidence and risk taking in their writing, which is an incredible thing to see. 

We look forward to hearing the terrific ideas discussed in Talk Homework during this week's Big Write. Thank you for your ongoing support in your child’s learning!

Maths

To wrap up our Addition unit, we read the story, One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab. This is a book about adding to 10 using feet! We had so much fun sorting different animals’ feet to make 10. To further assist your child with their addition you may like to do some similar activities by finding what numbers add up to 10. 

Last week we started our Subtraction unit. We have been thinking about the wording of subtraction stories and how we can tell if the story is taking away or adding. We were able to make up our own very sweet subtraction stories that we acted out for the class. We have had lots of fun using games to help with our subtraction, even hiding some of our blocks to have our partner using their counting back strategies to work out how many were missing! It is always helpful to use hands on materials to help visualise the subtraction problems. At home to practice subtraction, students could use their pencils, toys or even forks! It is important for subtraction that we are able to count backwards. To help your child you may like to help them count back from 20. 

Religion

For Religion we have been studying the Easter story. We have been focusing on the parts where Jesus rises. We consider how that makes us feel, as well as how people may have felt at the time and what they may have said. We have also acted out our favourite parts, or most interesting part of the story.

Geography

In Geography we have concluded learning about how to care for places by focusing on how we can care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sacred places. We have some wonderful people in our class that are pioneers for protecting sacred sites and their ideas predict the impact they will have in the future to care for our places.

This week we have started to learn about maps in Geography. We have been learning about how to find places on a map and also making our own! We even designed our own water park and drew a map to help people get around it. I wish my next holiday could be to some of these water parks, they are totally awesome!

In the coming weeks, students will be drawing maps of familiar places. In particular, their street. In leading up to this task we would love for parents to have a walk around their street and notice all the different things on the street that may be included on a map. If you  are unable to go for a walk, even just noting the sites while in the car will help your child remember important details of their street.

PDHPE

Catching and throwing is a tricky skill to master, but gosh we have some fun practicing! In PE we have been learning about how to catch and throw bean bags to a friend, and also aiming the bean bag to land on a particular spot.

In PDH we have been continuing to unpack the Living Well, Learning Well program. Last week we unpacked how we can be learners at school and what behaviours help us and others do this.

Music

We are incredibly lucky to have Mrs McNeall to help us with our music and choir. We always have the best time learning new songs and rhythms. Kindergarten always come back from time with Mrs McNeall singing a new catchy song with actions  included!