Foundation Unit

During our Reading lessons, we have been exploring the differences between fiction and non-fiction text. Students have practiced identifying non-fiction texts by looking for key features, such as labelled diagrams, table of contents, photographs, and fun facts. We have discussed what makes a story a fictional text and have touched on the concept of realistic fiction as well.

In our writing lessons, students have been using non-fiction mentor texts to learn facts about insects and plants. We have been extracting key words from the text to use in our writing and ensuring that our sentence is factual and makes sense. We have also been focusing on using a capital letter to begin our sentence, lowercase letters within the sentence, and a full stop at the end.

Our Maths lessons have been all about teen numbers. Students are beginning to recognise that teen numbers are composed of ten and however many more and have been investigating how to create collections of teen numbers by using towers and bundles of ten. This is an early introduction to place value and assists with the skill of ‘counting on’ instead of ‘counting all’. We have practiced holding the number ten in our mind and then counting on to the chosen teen number. Students are also exploring how to write teen numbers correctly, as it is common for students to write the number they hear first. For example, when writing ‘16’, students may write the ‘6’ first (61) as this is the first sound they hear.

In two weeks (May 21st) students will be visited by ‘Wild Action’ for their first incursion at WPS. Students will be able to learn about a variety of animals, such as echidnas, wombats, owls, snakes, lizards, and many more, alongside a trained professional.   

Foundation Teachers

Libby Cannon (PLC), Bree Smith (PBS)