What's Happening in the Junior School

Prep

What’s Happening in Prep in February

The Preps have done such a wonderful job settling into school life over their first few days. They have come into the classroom with curiosity and enthusiasm, learned new routines, and begun building friendships with confidence and smiles. We have been so proud of the way they have listened, tried their best, and embraced new experiences each day. It has been a joy to see how quickly they have felt comfortable and happy at school, and we are very excited for the learning and growth that lies ahead.

What will be happening over the next fortnight

Wellbeing

• Getting to know the class and school

• Establishing classroom expectations and routines

   

Literacy

• Introducing our Literacy routines
• Learning how to make different sounds
• Learning to write by exploring different types of lines on our whiteboards
• Learning to write the letters of our name
• Learning to recognise and write the phonemes; a,s,t,m,p

• Learning about the concept of a sentence

   

Maths

• Introducing 100 days of school 
• Reading and writing the numbers 0-10
• Recognising, copying and continuing 2-part and 3-part patterns 
• Ordering parts of the day
• Identifying days of the week

• Sequencing two and three events in a story

   

Knowledge Unit

Focus: History – Our families

Big question: How are families similar and different across the world. 

• Connecting to our family when at school
• Who is in our family?

• Exploring different types of homes people live in around the world

   

Specialist

Please find below a timetable of when your child/rens class will attend specialist. In coming weeks, students will be creating their own timetable to bring home. 

Homework

Over the coming weeks, your child will begin bringing home a take-home reading pouch for nightly reading. This pouch will include books and resources to support your child’s reading at home. Further details about the processes and how to use these materials will be provided inside the reading pouch. 

Reminders

• Family photo for our family wall in the Prep hallway
• If you haven’t done so already, please send your child along with their Art Smock. These stay at school for the year 
• Wednesdays are rest days unless your child is booked in for their one-on-one assessment with their classroom teacher. Please check your allocated date/time on Compass. 
• Parent teacher interviews - Monday 9th & Tuesday 10th February - Please book via compass 
• Whole school photo - Monday 9th February
• Family fun night Tuesday 17th February 

Year 1

What’s Happening in Year 1 in February 

Welcome to Year 1! The students have made a very positive start to the year and are already settling well into classroom routines. It has been lovely getting to know them and seeing their enthusiasm for learning. 

Wellbeing 

Our focus for Wellbeing will be on The Zones of Regulation. We will identify lots of different emotions and what zones they fit into. We will look particularly closely at all the emotions that are in ‘The Green Zone’, as these are the emotions that we might be feeling when we are ready for learning, or ‘Good to Go’. Our next step will have us creating Zones of Regulation Toolkits, so we have some strategies to try when we are feeling emotions that are not ones in ‘The Green Zone’. We understand that our toolkits will be individual and might look different to others in our class. We have created Classroom Expectations and Rules and have worked hard on identifying what ‘expected’ behaviours and ‘unexpected’ behaviours in the classroom might look like, sound like and feel like.  

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. The children will engage enthusiastically with new sounds and patterns and will begin applying these skills to their reading and writing. We will start our fluency reading, where we focus on reading with accuracy, reading rates, and using expression when we are reading. Students will begin practising tall letters in handwriting, focusing on correctly forming the letters L and T in both uppercase and lowercase. 

Language and Literature 

Year 1 students will be exploring the text The Imagineer by Christopher Cheng and Lucia Masciullo. We will be learning about narrative structure by identifying what happens at the beginning, middle and end of a story. We will discuss how illustrations help to tell the story. Students will be introduced to language features such as alliteration, time connectives and conjunctions. Students will identify descriptive vocabulary in the text, such as massive and minuscule.  

Maths 

To start the year in Maths, Year 1 students will be building strong foundations in number and data. They will practise counting and skip counting, develop their understanding of place value, and use tools such as tens frames to represent numbers clearly. Students will also learn how to collect, record and interpret data using tally marks and simple graphs. Through hands-on activities, discussions and games, children will develop confidence with numbers and learn to explain their mathematical thinking. 

Knowledge Unit 

The Knowledge Unit for Term 1 in Year 1 has a Design and Technology focus. Our big question for the unit of work is ‘How might we support plants and animals to survive and thrive?’ We will investigate human needs and wants and how farming plays a part in meeting these needs. Look out for details about our excursion to Myuna Farm later in the term! 

Take Home Reading 

Take home readers will come home weekly. The day for changing readers for Year 1 is Thursday. The students will bring home three take home reading books each week. Please make sure you child brings their reading pouch with their three readers on Thursdays. The take home readers will provide students with a chance to practice reading connected text at their level. We encourage students to read each reader at least twice during the week. Look out for further communication about when this will begin. 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.  

Specialist Timetables 

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.  

Reminders 

• Playing Cards. Students will be bringing a pack of playing cards home today (Tuesday, 3rd February). These cards will be used throughout the year for a variety of Maths activities. We ask that you please label each individual card and return the full pack to school in a snap-lock bag as soon as possible. 

• Sun Protection. Your child must wear their hat every day. They are to stay at school in your child’s tub. Classroom sunscreen is provided, however, if they require a specific sunscreen it needs to be packed in their bag daily.  

• Swimming Helpers. Our swimming program will be in Week 4 and 5 and we are seeking parent helpers to assist with supervision. If you are available and willing to help, please sign up using the links below. To volunteer at Beaumaris Primary School, you must complete a Volunteer Induction each new year and provide an up to date Working with Children Check. 

  The Volunteer Induction is available on Compass.  

  1BM and IMC Volunteers: Sign Up 

  1C and 1M Volunteers: Sign Up 

Year 2

What’s Happening in Year 2 in February 

What a fabulous start we have had to 2026! It has been delightful spending the last week getting to know all of the students and hearing about the exciting adventures of the holiday break. This week we have been enjoying some team building activities such as the lego challenge and the team cup stacking challenge! The students have been working hard to create some beautiful artworks for our classrooms. We have loved getting to know each other through playing our class ‘Guess Who’ game each day. 

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

Wellbeing 

• Review the zones of regulations and identifying the body clues for each zone. Students will learn about ‘expected’ and ‘unexpected’ behaviours and begin to think about self-regulation tools. 

   

Phonics 

• Review previously learnt graphemes 
• Practise using the Floss spelling rule  

• Complete a digraph review. 

   

Literacy 

• Recognise and write different sentence types and their key features.  
• Write noun phrases which include an article, noun and adjective 
• Improve our reading fluency by reading passages and learning new vocabulary. 
• Read and answer comprehension questions about our mentor text ‘Under the Southern Cross’ 

Maths 

• Revise place value by identifying, writing and making two- and three-digit numbers.  

• Compare and order numbers, using concrete materials and number lines. 

   

Knowledge Unit 

This term, the Year 2 students will be learning about Earth Sciences. We will be exploring the big question: Where is earth within the solar system and how do changes in the Sun, Moon and stars affect our daily lives? 

 Over the next month, students will be exploring the following lines of inquiry: 

• Is Earth alone in space? 
• What is the solar system? 
• What are the planets in our solar system? 

Homework  

In Week 2, your child will begin bringing home their reading satchel. It will contain 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. Students who have mastered the code, will bring home a short chapter book which they can read across the week. 

In addition, each student will bring home one quality text (fiction or non-fiction) from their classroom library each week. As novice readers, they will not necessarily be able to read these books independently. However, they will benefit a great deal from hearing these texts read out loud by an expert (you!). 

Reminders: 

• A friendly reminder that, if possible, could fruit snack please be packed in a separate small container. This helps us ‘grab and go’ our snack during learning time. 
• This year, we are encouraging students to transport their library and take-home books in a Beaumaris Primary School Reading satchel (see image below). If you already have one at home, please send it into school as soon as possible. If not, they are available for purchase from the office ($12). Alternatively, we will send books home in a clear plastic pouch. 
• Each student requires their own pair of headphones and an art smock; if your child does not have a pair at school, could you please send in a labelled pair/art smock. 
• Below is this term’s timetable for each specialist class. 
• Year 2 Swimming will commence in Week 4 and 5 (Monday 16/02 - Thursday 26/02). Please see further information and parent volunteer sign-up sheets in a separate Compass message.