What's Happening in the Junior School

Prep

What’s Happening in Prep in Weeks 1 and 2

 

We hope everyone had a well-deserved holiday and enjoyed Easter with their families. It has been lovely hearing about what the Prep’s got up to over the break. We are looking forward to another fun-filled term filled with lots of rich learning opportunities. 

 

Wellbeing

  • Revisiting the ‘size of the problem’ (hill, mountain and volcano) and our Zones of Regulation toolkits
  • Practising our school values

Literacy

  • Practising CVC, CCVC, CVCC words
  • Adding /s/ to the end of a word to change its meaning. S can make a /z/ at the end of words 
  • Recognising consonant r blends
  • Learning the consonant /l/ lamp
  • Identifying nouns and verbs in a sentence

Maths

  • Practising number formation
  • Representing numbers to 10
  • Partitioning numbers to 5

Knowledge Unit

Big Question: How are we part of a community?

 

Over the next fortnight, students will be exploring the following lines of inquiry:

  • What is a community? 
  • Who and what is in the community? 
  • What communities do I belong to?

Homework 

Students take home three decodable readers in their reading pouch each week as well as their green Decoding Detective book and Sound Pack. Please continue to read these with your child. The Preps love showing you how they can recognise and recall all learnt letters and sounds. Reading pouches are returned on Mondays to be changed over and checked by their teacher. 

 

Reminders

  • Curriculum Day (no students) - Thursday 25th April
  • Anzac Day Public Holiday – Friday 26th April

     

Year 1

What’s Happening in Year 1 in Weeks 1 and 2

 

Wellbeing 

Students will be revisiting our school values of Respect, Responsibility, Resilience and Relationships. They will be exploring and demonstrating how to show the BPS school values both inside the classroom and in the school yard. In Year 1 we will also be creating individualised toolkits to support students in moving into the green zone ‘ready to learn’. 

 

Literacy 

Students will be working on:  

  • Phonics: Reading longer words with consonant digraphs (ck, sh, th, ch, wh, ph, ng, nk) 
  • As our phonics lessons teach new digraphs and diphthongs, sound pack cards will be added to the students’ reading pouches for practice at home
  • Handwriting: Correctly forming tall letters i.e. Ll, Tt
  • Writing sentences and correctly using capital letters, punctuation and finger spacing
  • Recount writing using the five Ws: Who, What, Where, When and Why
  • Reading Fluency: Reading with accuracy and appropriate rate.

Maths 

Students will be working on: 

  • Skip counting by 2s, 5s and 10s 
  • Compare and order events based on duration of time 
  • Sequencing events over a day 
  • Matching events and activities to time and deciding whether they would take closer to an hour, a day, a week, a month or a year. 

Knowledge Unit 

This term students will be learning about history. To begin the term they will be exploring the significance that ANZAC Day has as part of history. Students will also begin to explore how things have changed over time. As part of the history unit there will be a specific focus on family history. One of the tasks we will be doing is interviewing a family member or special friend (preferably a grandparent) about their life and experiences. Please keep an eye out for more information that was sent as a Compass post today. 

 

Take Home Readers 

Each week, your child will take three decodables home. We strongly encourage students to reread these texts multiple times across the week as this is an important way novice readers develop automaticity and reading fluency. In addition, students are bringing home one quality text from their classroom library each week. As novice readers, they will not necessarily be able to read these books independently. However, they will benefit a great deal from hearing these texts read out loud by an expert (you!).  

 

As our phonics lessons teach new digraphs and diphthongs, sound pack cards will be added to the students’ reading pouches for practice. Keep practicing the sound pack cards the students already have.  

 

Mathletics 

Your child now has their Mathletics code pasted into their Homework Diaries. Activities have been set by the classroom teachers. Mathletics tasks will be set each Wednesday by your classroom teacher. Each week we will continue to set maths tasks for students to work through at their own pace, if desired. Completing these tasks is optional.  

 

Reminders 

  • Fruit and veggie break snack: Please ensure that students are bringing their fruit and veggie snack in a container separate to their lunch box. This supports students in transitioning during fruit and veggie break time in the classroom.  
  • Students are to bring in their reading pouch every Monday to swap their take home readers and classroom library book.  

 

Year 2

What’s Happening in Year 2 in Weeks 1 and 2

 

Welcome to Term 2! We hope that everyone had a restful and enjoyable break. We are looking forward to another fantastic term in Year 2 with some exciting events to look forward to such as Japanese Day and a Year 2 excursion! 

 

Over the next fortnight, the Year 2 students will be learning: 

 

Wellbeing 

  • Reviewing the zones of regulations and identifying the body clues for each zone. Students will learn about ‘expected’ and ‘unexpected’ behaviours and begin to think about self-regulation tools. 

Phonics 

  • R controlled vowels: ar, or & ore 
  • /er/ spellings: er, ir, ur, w+or 

Literacy 

  • Different sentence types and their key features.  
  • Revising what nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs are. 
  • Improve reading fluency by reading passages and learning new vocabulary. 
  • Building background knowledge to better understand our new mentor text ‘Ella and the Ocean’. 
  • Answering comprehension questions about background knowledge texts. 

Maths 

  • Revising place value by identifying, writing and making two- and three-digit numbers.  
  • Comparing and ordering numbers. 
  • Locate and identify four-digit numbers on a number line. 
  • Round three-digit numbers to the nearest 10 and 100. 

Knowledge Unit 

This term, the Year 2 students will be engaging in Geography. We will be exploring the big question:  

How do Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people connect to Country and Place? 

 

Over the next fortnight, students will be exploring the following lines of inquiry: 

  • What locations are special to us and why?
  • What is our geographical place in the word?
  • How are places identified and named?

Homework

  • Please continue to read the take home reading books each week, aiming for 15 – 20 minutes each evening. Changing readers will continue occur on a Friday. 
  • Please enjoy sharing a new Classroom Library text each Friday. This book is for enjoyment and can be read by parents/carers.  
  • Optional: Mathletics logins have been placed in the front cover of reading diaries. Students may work through these tasks at their own pace, if desired.  

Reminders: 

  • A friendly reminder that, if possible, could fruit snack please be packed in a separate small container.  
  • Hats are required to continue being worn when outside.