Prep Community News
Dear Prep Families,
Welcome back to school! We hope you have had a wonderful term break! The Prep Team is very excited for Term 2; we are going to be busy! Thank you so much for your support in our new morning drop-off routines! Allowing the Prep students to enter the pods on their own is a huge step toward their independence, and it has been so great to see students unpack their bags and join their morning routines on their own!
English
In our Reading lessons, we have been learning the sounds /f/, /r/ & /o/ as well as practicing how to identify words that begin with these sounds.
We have also been practicing oral blending, where students listen to individual sounds and blend them together to make a word (for example: /c/ /a/ /t/ → cat). These skills help to build your child’s ability to read and write. Speaking of reading, we have started reading our first words! This involves us saying the sounds we see in words and blending them together to say the whole word. Some words we have been reading are /r/ /i/ /p/ - rip, /p/ /o/ /t/ - pot, and /f/ /i/ /t/ - fit.
You can support your child at home by practicing the /f/, /r/, and /o/ sounds and thinking of words that begin with this sound, such as flamingo, fan, or fruit, rabbit, rose or red, otter, octopus, or ostrich. You can also practice oral blending by slowly saying the sounds in a word and asking your child to blend them together quickly.
Click this link to practice all of the sounds we have learned so far in Prep (0:00 -1:42)
In our Storybook lessons, we have been reading a new story! Our new story is called ‘Possum Goes to School’, written by Melanie Carter and illustrated by Nicola Orma. Our focus words from this text are rattle, crumble, and pant.
Through our Storybook lessons, we learn essential reading skills such as predicting, summarising, and answering questions about the text. We then make connections between the text, ourselves, and the world around us.
To support your child’s vocabulary development, you can ask them for the definition of each word or to use it in a sentence! Another fun activity is to act out the word. Ask your child to act out the following scenarios:
- Show me how you would look if you were a person rattling some maracas.
- Let’s pretend we were eating a cookie, and it began to crumble all over the floor.
- Show me how you would look if you had been running for a while and began to pant.
In our Writing lessons, we have continued learning about sentence structure. We have been practicing expanding sentences by adding extra detail such as ‘who’ and ‘where’. This means that our sentences can be interesting and fun to read! We are building these skills orally to help students understand how sentences work before writing them independently.
We have also continued to work on our Story Champs stories to support students’ understanding of the character, problem, character’s feeling, action, and solution. It has been great to see the confidence the students are gaining in their storytelling and their ability to sequence the events from the story.
Maths
In Maths, we have been learning to compare collections! This involves looking at two collections and identifying if they are the same, which one has more, and which one has less. As an extra step to show our counting knowledge, we have also been identifying how many there are in each collection.
To support your child at home, you can show them these collections and ask them which colour has more and which colour has less:
We have also been looking into 2D shapes and how to sort them. We have been exploring the different numbers of sides each shape has, as well as their sizes and colours. We have learned how to group and sort 2D shapes in many different ways. You can see how amazing your child is at sorting 2D shapes by asking them to identify how these shapes below have been sorted!
General Reminders
At Tarneit Rise, we encourage students to read every night to practice their reading skills and develop a lifelong love of books. Regular reading at home helps build confidence, fluency, and comprehension. Each child has been allocated a specific reading satchel day, which is displayed on the door of your child’s classroom. On this day, please ensure your child brings their reading satchel or red bag so they can change their books and safely transport library books between home and school.
Please make sure that all items your child brings to school are clearly labeled with their name and class (e.g., PA). This includes hats, jumpers, drink bottles, lunch boxes, and uniform items. Labeling helps us return lost items quickly.
As it is now Term 2, children are no longer required to wear hats outside during play times. However, you are still more than welcome to send your child to school with their hat if you would like them to continue wearing it outside.
The first bell rings at 8:45 am, which is when students begin entering the classroom to get ready for the day. Please ensure that your child is at school and ready to learn every day at this time. Learning begins promptly at 8:55 am, and the school day finishes at 3:10 pm.
Our Prep students have been doing such an amazing job at walking into the pod independently in the mornings and building their confidence and independence. We kindly ask families to continue supporting this by allowing students to walk into the pod and classroom on their own each morning. If you need to speak to your child’s classroom teacher, please email the school, and this email will be forwarded to the teacher.
We can’t wait to see what else our students accomplish throughout the rest of Term 2!
If you have any further questions, please contact your child’s classroom teacher for support.
Kind regards,
PLC Prep