Foundation (Prep)

Term 3

As the winter chill begins to lift and the days grow longer, we have officially reached the end of Term 3. This has been a vibrant, fast-paced, and incredibly productive ten weeks at our school. We want to take this opportunity to thank our hardworking students, and our wonderfully supportive school community for making this term such a success.

From the classroom to the sporting fields, our students have consistently demonstrated our school values. Some of our major milestones this term included our Book Week Celebrations. It was fantastic to see the creativity on display during our annual costume parade. Reading remains at the heart of our learning, and the enthusiasm this year was contagious! We also acknowledge our Sporting Achievements. Congratulations to all our students who participated in the athletics carnival. Your teamwork and sportsmanship made us proud.

We wish all of our families a safe, restful, and happy spring school holiday break. Enjoy the sunshine, recharge your batteries, and we look forward to seeing everyone back refreshed for the final stretch of the school year!

Father's Day

We hope all of our ACPS dads and grandpas had a terrific Father's Day. It was wonderful to see so many families join us for our school breakfast. The preps had a great time creating special cards for you and especially going shopping to buy gifts at our Father's Day stall. Thank you to the parents in our school community that volunteer their time to make these special events possible.

Swimming

We have been so proud of the way the prep students have handled their first school swimming program. Participating in this program exposes the children to so many valuable lessons. Not only are students practising their swimming skills, they are also learning to balance focusing on their teacher, their peers and their personal safety in the water. On top of all this the children are taking the bus daily and managing their personal belongings. No wonder they are so tired! Well done preps, you've had an awesome first year of school swimming!

Books to Life: "Being Indy" Performance Inspires Our Preps!

The magic of storytelling leapt off the page and onto the stage at ACPS when the fantastic Books to Life theatre group visited our school! They treated our Prep-6 students to a spectacular live performance of the acclaimed picture book, Being Indy. Set in illustrator Estee Sarsfield’s bold and surprising world of playgrounds, big hair, and defiant colour, and brought to life through author Zoe Gaetjens’ insightful and heartfelt text, the show was an absolute delight. It took our students on a powerful journey exploring what it truly means to navigate the pressures of trying to fit in and discovering the immense worth of simply being yourself. It provided a wonderful, gentle foundation for our social-emotional learning, encouraging our youngest students to embrace their originality of thought, celebrate their peers, and always march to the beat of their own drum!

English

This term we continued to practice our single and double letter sounds and articulating them correctly particularly when writing them during shared and independent writing lessons. We've used all our learned sounds to read and spell words and to create simple sentences which formed our amazing short stories.

Some students are consolidating their understanding of blending sounds to make words with three and four sounds (chop, queen, vet, box, yes, etc), while others are working at writing a series of complete sentences. Students who are ready, are being introduced to different types of punctuation such as question marks and exclamation marks. They are identifying these types of punctuation in books and attempting to use them when writing independently.

Students are practising their tricky words daily and are encouraged to refer to them on our word trees in the classrooms when writing. The children have been developing their writing skills using simple narrative and recount genre structures. They have been planning and writing about familiar events and topics of choice every week. These opportunities for writing are increasing the automatic recall of these high frequency words.

Mathematics

Our students have been turned into mini-geographers this term as they dive into the exciting world of mapping and directional language! Learning how to navigate and describe spaces is a huge milestone in early childhood development. This term, our learners have been building their spatial awareness by learning to use important position words. To bring these concepts to life, the classrooms were transformed into interactive learning zones. Some of our favourite activities included: Treasure Hunts where students followed step-by-step oral directions to hunt down "hidden treasure" hidden around the classroom as well as making Pirate Treasure maps. They also enjoyed the Green Giant visualisation drawing task. Our clever Prep students continued to put their communication and listening skills to the test with a fantastic, hands-on team challenge! Students paired up for a special "blind communication" art task. Working in teams of two, one student acted as the "Director" and the other as the "Creator." The Director had a hidden picture template and had to use precise directional language to tell their partner exactly where to place each piece.

We heard amazing instructions echoing around the classrooms, such as:

"Put the blue circle above the green teddy."
"Place the yellow stick on the left side of the whiteboard."
"Move that triangle under the rectangle."

This activity required incredible focus. The "Directors" had to think carefully about the exact words needed to guide their partner, while the "Creators" practiced active listening and following step-by-step instructions without peeking! The teamwork on display was absolutely outstanding, and the students loved seeing how close their final material creations matched the original. It was a wonderful way to prove that clear communication can help us achieve great things together! The Preps also used one of their favourite picture story book: ‘Rosie’s Walk’ by Pat Hutchins, to complete a map showing Rosie’s famous journey around the farmyard.