Prep / 1 Mainstream 

Celebrating Learning

What we have been up to: 

PBL (play-based learning):

We have been posing questions and challenges to students as a provocation to further engage and extend our maths unit on measuring with informal units in a real world setting. 

Maths:

In number this week, we have been connecting number names, numerals and quantities. 

Both F/1 classes had a great experience at the World of Maths incursion last week. Students engaged with different games, puzzles and problems which were designed to encourage reasoning, problem solving and collaboration.

Reading:

We are getting really accurate in being able to tell when a character and a setting are introduced in a story read aloud. We have introduced the “problem” card this week and have been identifying different problems that pop up in narratives. We have introduced these story grammar elements with a flash card and an action to help students recognise different elements of a narrative text.

In our reading groups over the past two weeks, we have been focussing on the following sounds:

Juliette and Jess:

• /f/ as in frog
• /a/ as in ant
• /p/ as in penguin
• /t/ as in turtle

Matt was reviewing:

• /ck/ as in sick
•  Words with double consonants at the end of words (shell, stress, fluff)

Steph was learning:

• /ay/ as in stay
• /ai/ as in snail

Writing/ speaking and listening:

Students have continued discussing events that have happened on their weekends. Foundation students have been learning about recording events visually and explaining their drawing to their teacher. As we have now learnt about a few different sounds/ letters, students are being encouraged to map sounds in their drawing. We’ve been prompting them with questions like

• What starts with the /s/ sound in your drawing?
• What sound does “Pop” start with?

Year 1 students have been reviewing how to expand a simple sentence. We know that a simple sentence needs to include at least two information fragments”- a “who/ what” and a “what happened”. Adding information such as “where?” and “when?” can help our reader gain more information from our writing. E.g.: Yesterday, I went swimming at the Northcote pool. This work reminds our year 1s to write in complete sentences so that their writing continues to develop.

What’s to come in the next two weeks:

• Please make sure your child is coming to school with a broad brimmed hat every day. 
• On Friday, we are sending home a “TPS Deadly ICT Agreement” for families to sign. This is to encourage our youngest students to be aware of ICT safety. Please have a discussion with your child about ICT safety, sign the back of the form and send it back to your child’s teacher. We require these 
• We will continue to use our story grammar flashcards and actions when reading a story. We will start to introduce our next elements, “feeling” (how does the main character feel about the problem they are facing) and “plan” (what plan do they make to solve the problem).
• We will introduce the concept of measuring mass in maths and PBL.

Juliette and Jess