Prep

Welcome back to Term 3! We hope everyone had a wonderful, relaxing holiday and enjoyed spending time with family and friends. It has been fantastic to see our Prep students return to school with smiling faces, excited to learn and reconnect with their classmates.

Reading 

This week in Reading, our Prep students have been learning about the consonant digraph 'ck', discovering that the two letters c and k work together to make the /k/ sound at the end of words such as duck, sock and rock. Students have been practising reading and spelling words containing 'ck' by listening for sounds, blending them together to read words, and segmenting them to spell.

We have also continued developing our phonics knowledge by reviewing previously learnt letter–sound correspondences, identifying short vowel sounds, and building confidence when reading simple words and sentences. Students have enjoyed reading decodable texts, playing word-building games, and completing hands-on literacy activities to strengthen their reading skills.

Our tricky words this week have included have, of, here and with. Students have been practising recognising these words automatically and using them when reading and writing simple sentences.

Writing

This week in Writing, we have continued developing our letter formation skills and have begun introducing capital letters alongside our lowercase letters. During our literacy rotations, students have been strengthening their knowledge of letters and sounds through engaging activities such as ‘Fishing for Letters,’ initial sound games and single-letter spinners. These hands-on experiences help build confidence in recognising, forming and correctly identifying letters.

We have also continued practising writing CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. Students have been focusing on identifying and writing the middle vowel sound in words, as well as consolidating their knowledge of tricky words through fun activities such as ‘Roll and Write’ and ‘Flip It, Write It’ using picture prompts. These activities support students to apply their phonics knowledge when reading and writing simple words.

We are excited to begin our sentence writing journey using Colourful Semantics. This week, students have started learning how to label pictures by identifying 'Who' is in the picture. This important first step helps students understand the structure of a sentence and lays the foundation for writing complete, meaningful sentences in the coming weeks.

Integrated

This week in Integrated Studies, we began our exciting new unit, Special Places and How We Care for Them. We started by creating a KWL chart, which helps us organise our learning by thinking about what we Know, what we Want to know, and what we have Learnt throughout the unit. Students enjoyed sharing the different places they have visited and recalling special places that are meaningful to them. We then read Alison Lester's Imagine, using the beautiful illustrations and settings as inspiration to identify and name as many different places as we could think of. This has been a wonderful way to spark curiosity and build our understanding as we begin exploring why places are special and how we can care for them. 

Respectful Relationships

This week in Respectful Relationships, we explored different ways to help ourselves feel calm and practise self-control. Students learnt how to use both their bodies and their words to make positive choices, and discussed strategies such as taking deep breaths and pausing when they feel upset or frustrated. We also enjoyed playing The Melting Tiger, a fun movement game that helped us understand that we are in control of our bodies, our actions and the choices we make.