Foundation

Arriving on Time

A gentle reminder to our lovely families to please ensure that your children arrive to school by 8:30 AM so that they can be admitted into the classroom by the start time of 8:35.

Our Foundation cohort engages in Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) time for the first 20 minutes of the morning. This is a time for them to engage in cooperative social play and settle into the classroom to both prepare for a busy day of learning ahead. 

Arriving to school on time allows for children to have smoother transitions into the school day, and minimises interruptions or disruptions during learning. 

By 8:55 AM, children are expected to pack up their morning activities and come to sit on the mat for our morning circle, where we take the roll and explain the day's schedule.

Children are encouraged to remain at home if unwell, but it is extremely important for their cognitive and emotional development to attend school regularly, as their first year of formal schooling is a strong indicator for their future academic success. 

If your child is experiencing difficulty transitioning into the classroom in the morning, we will be there to support and encourage them. With consistency, they will become increasingly more resilient.

Reading

In prep, we are focusing on blending familiar letter sounds and using our knowledge to sound out words. The children have been working hard on improving their blending and segmenting skills to identify individual letter sounds and read words out loud. 

This week, we have been reading the book The Rainbow Fish, which is a lovely story about sharing and friendship. The children have been able to tell us how Rainbow Fish feels, and how he solves his problem in the story. We have also been exploring nouns, adjectives and verbs.

We are working hard to continue our phonics, which is helping us read our classroom reader books. 

Writing

This term, we are starting to carefully write using our new dotted thirds workbooks. We have been practicing letter formation, and remembering to put a space between words when we are writing a sentence.

We are continuing to work on starting our sentences with a capital letter, sounding out unknown words, and putting a full stop at the end of our sentences.

The children have been increasingly working on thinking about and writing their own sentences with a sentence starter or prompt.

Numeracy

This week, we have been doing a review on place value and recognizing our numerals from 0-20. We have been using interactive games to support their learning, and talking about ones and tens. 

We will be starting our work on subtraction soon, using a number of visual resources to support the idea of taking away.

Housekeeping/Reminders

Please make sure your children return their blue book bags by Friday, so that they can be provided with new books for the next week.

In addition to this, please be mindful that your child will return home with decodable reader texts that they have been working on that week. As part of their home learning, please do encourage your child to read these books with you, and practice their letter sounds and blending to comprehend the text.

Prep has had a large number of jackets, jumpers and other clothing items turn up missing. Please remember to label all of your children's uniform items, as this will help us to return it to the child and family!