Prep News

From Julia, Prep teacher

Word Study

Preps have been working on everything from blending and segmenting single letter sounds to trigraphs. Their knowledge of how to manipulate the English language so that they can read, spell, write, and understand it has grown so much from when we first began. Not only that, but students are able to apply the rules of English and metalanguage that they have been learning to their Reading and Writing activities to further deepen their understanding.

Topic-specific vocabulary

Students have focussed on topic-specific vocabulary this term and deepening and expanding upon their ideas, as well as further experimentation or refinement of their use of punctuation. We’ve learnt the importance of being able to reread writing - if we can’t read it, it doesn’t have meaning! As such, we want to give students a huge congratulation in their efforts to edit and reread their writing, making sure that their letters match their sounds, and their writing is legible with finger spaces.

Addition and subtraction

Not only have students been able to use manipulatives to model adding and subtracting numbers, but students can then translate this into a number sentence! We have learned that in an equation, both sides of it must be equal like a balancing scale (just like those we used in measurement this term)! Students have also been able to experiment with their place value knowledge to break down numbers and count up/down when problem solving - very advanced stuff!

Geography

The students showed such amazing responsibility and represented NMPS incredibly well as they walked through the North Melbourne community to then reflect on and then model ways to improve it. Students had a lot of great ideas like a swimming pool at school, a local cinema, and a bridge to connect our new campus to Royal Park!

All that, and that's not even including graphing and interpreting data, sorting and classifying objects, making connections to texts, retelling stories, measuring and comparing lengths and weights, and learning to post on Seesaw!