Learning Community 1

Prep - Mrs Guy

Welcome back to school everyone. I hope you had a lovely Easter break with family and friends. 

Over the past three weeks Prep Guy have been very busy learning new ideas every day. 

In Reading we continued our learning around the letters of the alphabet and their most common sounds, running these sounds together to make words. We have also learnt about more than one letter making sounds such as sh, ch, th and wh. We are learning how to work out unknown words by using our decoding strategies, which were sent home and we are learning comprehension strategies, so as to ensure we are understnding what we are reading. We have looked at fiction texts and their characteristics, retelling stories using pictures and labels. We have learnt about what makes a non fiction text and how we can learn information from these texts. We have had a lot of fun learning how to use Reading Eggs at home and school. Logins were sent home for you to use also. 

In Writing/ Spelling we have worked on how to correctly form our letters in the sky, grass and dirt. For example the letter h is sky and grass, the letter g is grass and dirt and the letter a is grass only. We have contined reading and spelling the most common words which are sent home each fortnight. We have been working on writing sentences with uppercase letters to begin, spaces between our words and ending punctuation. Students have also been working on editing their sentences. 

In Maths we have continued our work on numbers to 20 and how to make these numbers using ten frames, tally marks, on number lines, as words, numerals and amounts. We have worked on ordering numbers to 20 and we have been working on the tasks assigned to us in Mathletics. If you would like to work on any maths tasks with your child, their log in details are in their reading diary.

In Integrated studies we learnt about Earth Day and how we can all do little things such as conserving water, turning lights off and using reusable containers to help our Earth. 

We also learnt about ANZAC Day and looked at our local cenotaph in Bunyip. Students made ANZAC biscuits and learnt about the different colours of poppies. 

Well done to everyone who competed in our cross country run, showing huge amounts of resilience and trying your personal best. It was so lovely to hear students encouraging each other.

We had the Responsible Pet Program visit and we learnt how to act when a dog approaches you. See if your child remembers the song to remind them what to do. 

We loved having Jo from Bunnings to help us make a Mother's Day present. A reminder that our special Mother's Day morning tea is on the 9th of May. Please show the office your current Working With Children's Check before coming in to our classroom at 9.00am. The students are so excited to spoil you!

Prep Guy Student Achievers:

Well done to Evie, Jaxon and Savannah for the past three weeks. Students in Prep Guy vote for who they think has shown our school values of respect, responsibility and resilience. That student then gets to take Lucky; our class teddy home for a week of fun adventures. They sit on a special chair and table with friends of their choosing and get to do all the special jobs at school such as line leader, delivering notes and choosing our Read and Feed stories each day.

Evie was voted in as she is a wonderful role model, showing our school value of responsibility.

Jaxon was voted in for showing resilience at school, never giving up and trying his personal best. 

Savannah was voted in this week. Students said she shows huge amounts of respect, playing with her friends and treating them with kindness. 

Well done Evie, Jaxon and Savannah; we are super duper proud of you. 

Gardening Cooking Club

Over the past three weeks we have been collecting the last of the cherry tomatoes and eating them. We pulled out all the old, dead plants and planted a range of Winter vegies including wombok, beetroot, onions, leaks, silverbeet and peas. Gardening Cooking Club gets together every Tuesday lunch time and is open to everyone.

1 - Mr Wigg

What a fantastic start to Term 2! We have come back into learning and continuing on with our structures and routine with ease. Over the last three weeks we have continued revising our letter sounds and have begun learning digraphs such as the soft and hard /th/ sounds, /ng/ sounds, /sh/ and /qu/ letter sounds. When reading we have visualised what we have read using our senses, predicting what will happen in the text and also asking questions before, during and after our reading.

We have continued our narrative focus in writing and have been extending our students by encouraging them to include more descriptive language to describe the setting, characters and their actions. Students have also been using a variety of boundary punctuation such as exclamation marks. 

During Maths, students have revised our place value knowledge and used this to support the addition skills. In our addition units, students have been focusing on trusting the count and counting on from the bigger number. This was supported by students using number lines which can be seen below.

It was great to see all students try their personal best and show great resilience. I, like all staff, am incredibly proud of our students! 

Also, just a friendly reminder that, when possible, to please fill out student reading journals. these will be checked each week along with new spelling lists once students have achieved spelling and reading all their previous words. If you need a new copy of the lists, please pop in or send a note and I will send a new list back.

Student Achievers

Darcy M - For showing great Respect when working with others. It was pleasing to see him support his peers.

Boni J - For showing great Resilience and Responsibility when writing. I am proud of her effort to sound out words and have a go at tricky sounds.

Kind Regards

John Wigg

1/2 - Miss Stoll ♡

Curriculum

We have had a very busy three weeks and have well and truly jumped right back into our routine and learning! Over the last three weeks in reading we have explored more fiction comprehension strategies, these include predicting, visualsing and asking and answering questions. We have also continued to explore our sound knowledge by reviewing some tricky sounds and beginning our exploration of digraphs, such as th, sh, qu, g making the j sound, c making the s sound and many others. We have explored narrative and imaginative writing over the beginning of the term. We have specifically been focusing on compound sentences, different types of boundary punctuation, our handwriting and how to structure different parts of our narratives, such as the orientation, complication and resolution. During the first three weeks of term in maths we revised our place value knowledge and have begun looking at addition, we have also explored addition in relation to money and data collection. We will continue to explore addition with a money and data collection focus and will also apply this to subtraction in the coming weeks. In integrated studies we have explored our place in our local community and special places of significance, particularly relating this to Anzac Day and our understanding of our local cenotaph and war memorial. We also completed our Cross Country event at the beginning of the term, and all students that participated, thoroughly enjoyed themselves. It was so incredible to see all students supporting one another, some chose to walk with their peers or others encouraged their peers to jog with them. We  then all cheered  other students from different age levels to support them to finish their run. All participants got points for their houses so well done! 

Student Achievers

Congratulations to our student achievers for the term so far... During week one Karsyn was our student achiever, during week 2 George was our student achiever and during week 3 Hayley was our student achiever. I am so proud of all of you, watching your confidence grow in our classroom is truly a joy to see. Keep making good choices and focusing on your learning super stars! ♡

Our classroom

Last week we learnt about and celebrated Anzac Day. We explored different poppy colours and their significance and we also made our own Anzac Day wristband with poppies coloured red, purple, white and black. Students deep dived into a soldiers life, we looked at images and read information about Gallipoli. By doing this, we were able to visualise what life may have been like at Anzac Cove. Students and I agreed that the living conditions for our soldiers would not have been comfortable or pleasant, this further prompted students to understand the significance of our soldiers bravery and selflessness during world wars and peace keeping operations. We learnt about the significance of Anzac biscuits and then made these together. We had so much fun delegating and negotiating roles for our cooking lesson. Students took turns using various utensils to measure and combine the wet and dry ingredients. We then took turns rolling balls to place on the oven trays and waited patiently for our biscuits to cook. We all enjoyed an Anzac biscuit with our lunch and each student took two home to share with their families. We all loved cooking so much! I am looking forward to cooking more with the class in the future.

A note from Miss Stoll

Hello parents and families,

I hope you are all well. I would like to remind all parents and guardians to ensure they are filling out your child's reading diary each night that you read with your child. You may initial or sign your name, these nights are counted towards your child's reading nights and they receive awards at different milestones. Awards start at 25 reading nights and then are given as your child reaches the next 25 night increment (50 nights, 75, nights, 100 nights and so on). Congratulations to Cooper and Luke; you have both achieved 75 reading nights and are well on your way to getting your 100 nights certificate. You are our reading night leaders! Keep up the amazing work! ♡ 

Last week I sent home student's Reading Eggs logins, if you ever need a new copy in the future please reach out and I can send a new copy home with your child. We will be spending time on the laptops or in the computer room each week to engage with Reading Eggs. Engaging with Reading Eggs at home is not a requirement, however, students are more then welcome to if they or you desire. I receive a Reading Eggs report every Sunday and I adore seeing who has been utilising Reading Eggs and seeing how many minutes students are tallying up! Our class has even discussed having Reading Eggs minutes certificates which is something we might look into this term!

If you would like to discuss your child's learning or development at any time, please email the school so as to get a hold of me, or alternatively come see me at drop off or pick up to organise a time to meet. I will be contacting parents over the coming weeks to organise Student Support Group meetings or to discuss any report grades or comments if necessary prior to reports being sent out later this term. If you have any questions or concerns then you are kindly and warmly invited to discuss these with me at a time that suits, feel free to reach out to the school via email or phone.

Thank-you, Kate Stoll.