Prep Bulletin
A Snapshot into Writing
Learning Experience Overview:
In Prep, we are exploring our Big Idea “When I experience emotions, I feel and react in ways that affect myself and others around me.” Over the course of the term, students unpack the Big Idea through various learning experiences, such as in our Writing.
In Prep, writing is about much more than getting letters and words “correct.” It is not expected that spelling and structure are perfect straight away. Instead, we support children to move from copying and memorising, towards independently recording their ideas by transferring sounds to letters.
At this stage, many children are using early phonetic spelling and beginning to write simple sentences. This might not always look correct, but it shows students’ thinking, ability to listen for sounds, and represent them with letters.
Our focus in Prep is on helping children express their ideas, build confidence, and understand that their writing has meaning. Good writers are risk takers. They are not afraid to make mistakes, but instead they use them as opportunities to learn and grow.
Learning Experience:
Fluency
At the beginning of the lesson, we completed a short activity focused on creating sentences. The teacher displayed a range of words on the board, and students used these words to verbally construct a sentence. This activity helps strengthen vocabulary, sentence structure, and expressing ideas aloud.
Whole
Learning Intention: To identify what makes up a sentence.
As a class, we looked at a ‘feelings’ picture prompt to help us generate ideas. Students discussed what they could see and suggested possible reasons for the boy’s emotions before helping to create the sentence, “The boy is sad because he lost his toy.” We practiced saying the sentence verbally to help us plan our ideas before writing. We used the anchor chart to check that our sentence made sense, included a capital letter at the start, finger spaces between words, and a full stop at the end.
Small
Students had a go at writing a sentence using a different picture prompt to generate their own ideas. When writing, we encourage students to follow the ‘6 Steps to Writing Sentences’ to help them hear and write words independently:
Students were prompted to check their own work for capital letters, finger spaces, and full stops to ensure their sentences were clear and made sense.
Enabling: Students write the beginning sound of each word in the sentence.
Explore: Students write the beginning and end sound of each word in the sentence.
Extending: Students write the beginning, middle and end sounds in the word and extend their sentence to add detail.
Student Work Examples:
In this learning experience, students are working towards:
- Learning how to create and write simple sentences using picture prompts.
- Verbalising a sentence to help plan ideas before writing.
- Applying their knowledge of letters and sounds to help write words.
- Using capital letters, finger spaces, and full stops correctly.
- Adding more detail to a sentence.
What you can do now to continue the learning at home from this experience:
- Encourage your child to verbalise their ideas before they write.
- Practice sounding out words together and building your child’s confidence with letters and sounds.
- Support your child to have a go at writing simple words and sentences independently.
- Praise your child’s attempts at writing, focusing on the sounds they hear, rather than spelling perfection.
Warm Regards,
Prep Team