Learning Community 1

Prep Guy

Over the past two weeks we have been busy learning about letters of the alphabet and their most common sounds. So far we have learnt about the letters s, a, t, p, i, n, m and d. We have used our knowledge of the sounds these letters make, to say and write words such as at, as, in, sat, sap, pin, tap, mat and man as some examples. We have been learning how to write a personal recount about our weekend, drawing pictures to get our thoughts organised. We have been labeling our pictures and then writing about our weekend.  Ask your child about their 'magic writing'.

In Maths we have been learning about numerals to 6, words to match such as 1=one and moving one item away from ourselves when counting a group of items so we don't recount the same items. We have also been learning about days of the week. See if your child can remember the days of the week song to The Adam's Family tune! We count forwards and backwards to 20 every day and look at the weather and our seasons. We had some fun looking at calendars from last year and the year before noticing that February usually has 28 days. We learnt about leap years and how long it actually takes the Earth to orbit the sun. We then did some fun activities about this year being a leap year.

We LOVED our Science Incursion on Thursday, learning so many cool things. Ask your child about their favourite part of this incursion. THANK YOU to Ms Lewis for organising this.

A reminder to all families to apply for a working with children's check in time for our special Mother's Day, Father's Day and Grandparent's Days. If you do not have a current working with children's check unfortunately the Department Of Education says you can not come into our classrooms, so please show the office your check as soon as possible. 

A reminder also to ensure you have signed and returned the Children's voices workshops for that I sent home two weeks ago, so your child's Art work and words can be used in the publishing of an upcoming book.

Prep Guy Students Of The Week

Congratulations to Savannah who was chosen as our Student achiever. Savannah shows all of our school values all of the time. She is responsible and does the right thing, she is respectful and treats people the way she would like to be treated and she is resilient, bouncing back from tricky learning activities. Go Sav!

Congratulations also to Xavier who was chosen as our student achiever. Xavier is our quiet achiever. He always tries his personal best. He is kind, caring and a wonderful friend to his classmates. Amazing qualities.

Congratulations to Savannah and Xavier; we are all super duper proud of you both.

Gardening Cooking Club

This week in Gardening Cooking Club we watered our sunflower seeds, pulled out some weeds and picked a lot of tomatoes to make bruschetta next week. Gardening Cooking Club runs every Tuesday lunch time and is open to all grades. 

1 Wigg

This fortnight we have been settled into our classroom routine and implementing classroom expectations to support our learning. In reading, we have explored Fictional text features such as characters, problems and settings within a story. We have revised and learnt phonemes such as short and long /a/ and /e/ sounds. In writing students have been revising the features of a personal recount and retelling what we have read and experiences we have encountered. 

In Maths, we have explored the concept of place value. We have learnt the value of a digit in terms of it's position in a number and making these numbers using MAB blocks. In addition, we have also explored time duration of events and seasons in a year.

1W Student Achievers:

Tommy: For settling into classroom routines. It has been a pleasure seeing Tommy begin to work with others.

Denver: For showing great resilience within his writing and all learning tasks.

1/2 Stoll

Curriculum:

We have had a very busy fortnight in our classroom. We have well and truly settled into our routine together and have been working hard focusing on our learning. In reading we have explored fiction text features, such as identifying the characters and setting within a story. We have also explored sounds and phonemes, such as the short and long e sounds and revised the sounds for s, a, t, p, i and n. In writing we have developed our knowledge of recount writing, particularly when focusing on writing about our weekends. We have also explored retell writing through reading and sharing stories and using the beginning, middle and end to retell the events of the story in our own words. In maths we have continued to explore number and place value, we have done this by furthering our understanding of ones, tens and hundreds. We have also been strengthening our knowledge of time durations, particularly surrounding the days of the week, months in the year and calendars.

Student Achievers:

Our student achiever last week was Jack S. 

Jack, you are a fantastic role model in our classroom. You are respectful, responsible and resilient all of the time and you can always be counted on to make good choices and decisions. You are such a special member of our classroom Jack.

Our Student Achiever this week is Piper.

Piper, you are such a bright and bubbly friend. You choose to show kindness and respect to others all of the time, which is truly beautiful to see. You can always be counted on to make good choices and decisions. You are so loved in our classroom Piper.

A note from Miss Stoll:

Hello,

If you haven't booked an appointment to meet up for a chat about your child settling into their new classroom in a couple of weeks and would like to, please do. Alternatively, if you would like to meet up or schedule a time to talk about any concerns or questions about your child's learning at any other time, please don't hesitate to do so. 

I have had lots of questions about reading circles. We are reading with our peers however we are doing what we call 'Buddy Reading'. Essentially, this is similar to reading circles however students are in pairs or groups of three from their reading group and level. 

We start each day with our morning circle, which covers many different things from greetings, our Acknowledgement to Country, emotion check ins and exploring time, like the days of the week, dates, seasons and a monthly calendar. We also discuss affirmations and set positive intentions for the day whilst also discussing and noting the values and expectations we wish to focus on for a particular day or across the week. Our morning circle also includes announcements and singing, dancing and signing our favourite song to start the day. If you wish to listen to and learn some Auslan with your child, please YouTube "I'm Going to Make This an Awesome Day ASL Version Jack Hartman". If you're wondering why your child has been singing "I'm gonna make this an awesome day" at home, then this is why.

After our morning circle, we then move into Buddy Reading. We are still learning about the expectations for Buddy Reading and are learning how to follow all of the steps respectfully and responsibly and have been doing an amazing job with this. If you wish to listen or help the class during this or any time, please know you are welcome. All volunteers require a working with children check and this needs to be documented by administration prior to entering our classrooms. We have all really settled in well to our class and I can't wait to see what we continue to achieve together.

Thank-you,

Kate.

Here are some photos of students during Buddy Reading, we have created a 'How to Buddy Read' book with these images.