What's Happening in the Junior School

Prep

What’s Happening in Prep in Weeks 5 and 6

The Preps have had an exciting couple of weeks celebrating 50 Days of School, Japanese Day and our first ever dance incursion. As part of our Knowledge Unit, we have been learning about communities. We were lucky enough to go on our first excursion to the local Beaumaris Library, too! The Prep teachers have been so impressed with how responsible and respectful everyone has been throughout these exciting events.

Wellbeing

Identifying the size of the problem and expected ways to react/overcome them

Literacy

Learning the consonants /x/ box, /qu/ queen, /v/ van and /z/ zip
Identifying and using nouns and verbs in sentences

Maths

Identifying ‘how many more’ to make numbers 5 to 10
Making number pairs to 10

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 are the different places in the community?

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

Beaumaris Library Visit – Wednesday 21st May
Great Book Swap – Thursday 29th May
Morning Melodies – Monday mornings from 8.45am-8.55am in the Performing Arts classroom for Prep-Year 3 students

Year 1

What’s Happening in Year 1 in Weeks 5 and 6

Wellbeing

In wellbeing students will be recognising and identifying their own and their peers emotions and discuss appropriate emotional responses. Students will also be looking at emotional triggers and strategies to support them.

Literacy

Students will be working on:

Phonics: Reviewing ‘Superhero e’ at the end of words to change the short vowel sound to a long sound. Using the soft sounds of c and g after an e.
As our phonics lessons teach new digraphs and diphthongs, sound pack cards will be added to the students’ reading pouches for practice at home
Reading Fluency: Reading with accuracy and appropriate rate
Handwriting: Correctly forming tall letters i.e. Bb and Kk
Writing sentences and correctly using capital letters, punctuation and finger spacing
Weekend recount writing
Narrative writing and looking at the story elements of characters, setting, and plot

Maths

Students will be working on:

Addition
Subtraction
Measurement: length, mass and capacity

Knowledge Unit

The Year 1 students are excited to visit Rippon Lea Estate on Thursday 22nd May. We will be focusing on how life has changed over time for families. We are particularly interested in how roles have changed for parents and children, what games were played, how they communicated and 19th century life. Students are required to come to school dressed in 19th century-style clothing that is still easy to move in. Costume examples include; servants or young ladies or gentleman. Costume ideas may include: suspenders, dress shirts, aprons, bonnets, flat caps, skirts, long pants. Please keep in mind that half of the activities will take place outside so practical shoes are a must. Following the excursion students will be reflecting on the experience and making links towards their family interviews. Students will be participating in a social story prior to the excursion to support them in preparing for the day. Students will also be exploring their favourite toys, discovering what they are made from and their special features and comparing them to old fashioned toys.

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 Diary. Mathletics tasks will be set each Wednesday by your child's 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.

We have been really excited to see students completing Mathletics tasks at home. These help to consolidate their understandings from the classroom.

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. It is really important students are completing their 20 minutes of nightly reading to support their reading progress. New readers are only sent home until the previous week’s books have been returned.

Year 2

What’s Happening in Year 2 in Weeks 5 and 6

The Year 2 students had a fantastic time on Japanese Day, immersing themselves in traditional games, art and music, and learning more about Japanese culture. They also enjoyed the excursion to the Cranbourne Botanic Gardens—where they participated in a program called ‘Shared Country’, and they explored and reflected on the connections between land, culture and community.

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

Wellbeing

Reviewing the zones of regulations

identifying strategies that can be used to regulate from red to green zone
Identify impulse control strategy ‘stop, opt, go’

Phonics

Reviewing ie & igh
Reviewing vowel teams