Hello,

Positive Morning Starts

Thank you very much to the parents who are getting their Prep child to school before the music to provide them with a calm and positive start to the school day.

If your child is getting to school after the music has played, we ask that you aim to arrive earlier to allow your child to have time to do some physical activity and connect with their friends before school starts. This helps our Preps to settle well into their learning.

We thank you for your support with this.

Word Study

Prep students have been continuing to learn letters/sounds. Last week we focused on 'Jj' and 'Ww'. The letter 'j' makes one sound, 'j' for jet. The letter 'w' makes one sound, 'w' for 'wig'. Next week we will be focusing on the letters 'Zz' and 'Xx'. Both 'z' and 'x' make one sound e.g zoo and box. We will then have introduced all the single letter codes to the students. A big 'yay' to the Preps for doing so well with their learning.

Reading

For reading comprehension, we will be introducing a focus on making connections between the students' experiences and the text. We will read literature in which characters will share similar experiences to that of the students. This will allow for a deeper understanding of the text.

On Wednesday 19th May, students will participate in the National Simultaneous Storytime. We will be reading the text, 'Give me some Space!' by Phillip Bunting, which explores the themes of hope, wonder and perspectives

Writing

We will continue our focus on the difference between a sentence and a fragment. A sentence contains a complete idea, starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop. A fragment is a group of words that does not contain a complete idea. For example, 'on the rat'. We will be using rich literature such as 'Wombat Stew' and 'Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day' to reinforce this learning.

Numeracy

The Preps Number work is focused on the numbers from 11-20. We are encouraging them to ensure that they are pronouncing the ends of the 'teen' words clearly. It is important that they are sure of the difference between 'fourteen' and 'forty'. You can support your child by reinforcing this at home if they are counting or talking about numbers. The skills we are looking for are the ability to visually recognise these numbers, write them using the correct formation, make a collection of a given number and compare and order the numbers.

Our Measurement focus is on length. Vocabulary will again be a big part of this unit. Words will include 'long/short', 'longer/shorter' and 'longest/shortest'. The Preps will be encourage to use 'tall/taller/tallest' when measuring the height of an object. The Preps will be exposed to 'centimetres', 'metres' and 'kilometres' but will be doing their measuring using informal units. For example, 'the book is as long as 5 blocks'.

Unit of Inquiry

As part of our unit of inquiry we have been exploring questions and statements. We brainstormed the difference between the two and the children came up with the criteria that it was a question if it had a question mark and was asking something and it is a statement if it has a full stop and is telling something. We practised our skills by either dancing if they identified a question or sitting down if it was a statement. This was in preparation for formulating questions to ask our St Johns First Aid visitors this week. The children formulated questions and statements to identify different community helpers and had the opportunity to formulate 5 why questions about nurses.

During our St John’s First Aid visit the children will be learning some basic safety and first aid from a qualified nurse. They will be role playing scenarios that could happen at home and practising their name and address for use in an emergency. After the visit the children will be focusing on the learner profile attribute of being reflective and consider what they learnt from the visit and if it has given rise to any additional questions that we may need to investigate further.

We are still eager to hear from any parents who would like to come in and share a short presentation about their role as a community member. We realise the idea of speaking to all preps at once may be daunting, we are happy to have individual visits to classrooms as well. Please reach out to your classroom teacher to arrange.

The Prep team

0A - Kathryn Morrison

kathryn.morrison@education.vic.gov.au

0B - Isabella Maresca

isabella.maresca@education.vic.gov.au

0C - Deb Barden

deborah.barden@education.vic.gov.au

0D - Danielle Palombi

danielle.palombi@education.vic.gov.au

0E - Julie Daniel

julie.daniel@education.vic.gov.au

ToD (Teacher of the Deaf) - Krystle Horadam

krystle.horadam@education.vic.gov.au

Prep Fortnightly Snapshot

Issue 6 · 16 May 2021

In this issue