Prep /1 Mainstream

Students have continued to settle in well and are becoming more confident with the routines and rhythms of the day. Our classroom expectations have been supporting this with a focus on ‘keeping ourselves and each other safe’ being our focus for the past two weeks. This includes how we can move around the school safely, by walking through the corridors and in our classrooms. This also includes how we can safely pack up our bags in a busy corridor at the end of the school day. We encourage families to check in about this at home to reinforce what we are learning in class.

Through stories, play, and other classroom activities, students learn about each of the values we are exploring. This includes:

1. Raise our hand if we want to say something
2. Listening when it is someone else’s turn to speak
3. Following the teacher’s instructions straight away, and being in the right place at the right time
4. Keeping our hands and feet to ourselves
5. Keeping ourselves and each other safe
6. Being brave and having a go

Literacy

In Reading, we have settled into our daily phonics routine. In Foundation, the focus is on learning the sounds of the letters of the alphabet. We have been working through the stage 1 sounds which includes a character for each sound. The stage 1 sounds are m - Milo Monkey, S - Sally Snake, f - Felix Frog, a - Ally Alligator, p - Peter Penguin, t - Tim Turtle, c - Cooper Caterpillar and i - izzy insect. Foundation students will soon be bringing home their take home reading folders to practise reading at home. In Year 1, the focus has been revising stage 5 and 6 including plural s and es, ck - black duck and sh - shed shop. Year one students can still practise their reading at home.

In Writing, students are continuing to practise retelling events from their personal world and from stories they have listened to. For Foundation students, the focus is on participating in discussion and teacher modelling of recounts. They are also being encouraged to identify familiar sounds in words and record these sounds in their writing. For Year One students, the focus is on writing sentences using finger spaces, capital letters and full stops, and correct letter formation. 

Maths

Students are continuing to build confidence counting collections from 0-10 and beyond. This includes the many different ways collections can be seen and counted. Through engaging games and activities, we’ve had the opportunity to practise our teamwork skills. Students have also been practising number formation using whiteboards. This is something that can also be practised at home. 

Counting is an important foundational skill for maths learning, as is understanding one-to-one correspondence. It is not enough to know the number names, students also need to know that each number represents a collection. We encourage families to practise counting skills at home to support students feeling comfortable working with collections to 20 (Foundation) and 120 (Year 1). Dice throwing games are an excellent way to do this. 

Over the next few weeks students will learn about ‘counting on’ and ‘counting back’ before moving into understanding that 2-digit numbers are made up of tens and ones.

Here are some photos of our students and their work: