What's Happening in the Junior School

Prep

What’s Happening in Prep: Weeks 7 and 8

The past two weeks in Prep have been jam packed with lots of learning. We are very impressed with how quickly the Prep students have picked up reading routines at school and at home. We have also been building our Zones of Regulation toolkits to understand what strategies can help us move closer to the green zone. In our Knowledge Unit, we have been playing teamwork games to practise our communication and collaborative skills. Teamwork makes the dream work!

Wellbeing

Developing a growth mindset
Understanding the size of problems and how we can independently solve them

Literacy

Recognising the short vowel sound /u/ up and consonant sounds /k/ cat, /b/ boy and /g/ goat
Continue becoming ‘Independent Readers’ by pointing to the words as we read them
Recognising and writing CVC words using learnt sounds
Creating short texts to explore the idea of resilience

Maths

Comparing collections to 0-10
Adding ‘one more’ and ‘one less’ to a collection up to 10

Knowledge Unit

Big Question: How might we reuse and recycle products?

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

Why do people work as a team?
What is a product?
Why do we reuse and recycle products?
How do materials change?

Homework

Students take home three decodable readers in their reading pouch each week as well as their green Decoding Detective book. Please continue to read these with your child. Reading pouches are returned on Mondays to be changed over and checked by their teacher.

Reminders

If possible, we'd love donations of recycled household materials such as cardboard boxes, paper towel/wrapping paper rolls, soft drink bottles, bottle tops, container lids etc (please be mindful of allergies within classes – please no egg cartons or boxes that once stored nuts).
Easter Assembly – Friday 4th April 9.10am
Prep Easter Bonnet Parade – Friday 4th April 9.45am

Year 1

What’s Happening in Year 1 – Term 1 Weeks 7 and 8

Wellbeing

Students will be working on:

Zones of Regulation
Learning about how our behaviour affects the people around us

Literacy

Students will be working on:

Digraphs: /ch/ /th/ and /sh/
Expanding simple sentences
Narrative writing
Making predictions before, during and after reading.

Maths

Students will be working on:

Reading and ordering two-digit numbers
Making two-digit numbers with concrete materials such as bundling sticks and MAB
Comparing two-digit numbers by discussing which number is bigger or smaller
Partitioning one- and two-digit numbers into tens and ones in different ways, using physical materials

Knowledge Unit

In our Knowledge Unit on Farm to Family, students explore how plants and animals provides us with resources for the production of materials (fibres) for clothing and shelter. They will identify a variety of plants and animals and the products they provide.

Homework

Take Home Readers

Each week, your child will take three decodables home. 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. In addition, students are bringing home one quality text 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!). It is very important these are returned with their take home decodable books on Mondays, as the books are swapped amongst their classmates. They will only get a new quality text if they have returned the previous week’s quality text.

Mathletics

Your child now has their Mathletics code pasted into their Homework Diaries. Activities have been set by the classroom teachers.

Reminders

Fruit and veggie break snack: Please ensure that students are bringing their fruit and veggie snack in a container separate to their lunch box. This supports students in transitioning during fruit and veggie break time in the classroom.
Our swimming program continues this week.
Myuna Farm excursion is coming up on Thursday 27th March.

Year 2

What’s Happening in Year 2 in Weeks 7 and 8

The Year 2 students are enjoying the swimming program and have been doing a fantastic job of being responsible for their belongs. They have been getting ready promptly and independently.

Our recent ‘house points’ focus has been on resilience. Students have been working on identifying the size of a problem and demonstrating expected and unexpected behaviours.

They have been really engaged when learning about the planets and were excited to hear about the planets aligning!

The students have been learning all about telling the time. If you get an opportunity, please ask your child to ‘tell you the time’ at different stages of the day. They should be able to identify o'clock, half-past, quarter to and quarter past.

Over the next fortnight, the Year 2 students will be learning:

Wellbeing

Describe strategies to regulate from the yellow zone to the green zone.
Describe strategies to regulate from red zone to green zone.

Phonics

Revising the suffixes _s, _es and _ed
Reviewing closed/open syllables
Reviewing closed/closed syllables
Looking at present tense verbs adding the suffix -ing

Literacy

Learning how to add detail and extend sentences using the 5 W’s (who, what, when, where and why)
Using newly learnt vocabulary in conversation
Using conjunctions in writing to connect two ideas
Writing individual star constellation stories
Reading the indigenous book: The Story of Baidam the Shark and using indigenous symbols to retell parts of the story

Maths

This fortnight students will be learning about- o-clock/half past/ quarter to and quarter past
Learning to use a calendar to locate a given date and identify which day of the week it is on
We are learning to use a calendar to identify how many days, weeks and months from one given date to another

Knowledge Unit

This term, the Year 2 students will be looking at 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?

Students have been leaning about shadows and how they are formed. They have been monitoring how their own shadow moves throughout the day, depending on the position of the sun. Students will be learning about star constellations and reading indigenous stories.

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