Foundation Spotlight

A Very Busy Term

The Foundation students have had a great start back to their second term of school. They have done an amazing job of settling back into their routines and have been ready to learn!

This term has been a busy busy term. The Foundation students have been learning all about how to keep their bodies healthy and safe. We started the term with our ‘Talking the Talk’ lessons where they learnt about their body bubbles, safety network and knowing and labelling their body parts. This has been an important prerequisite for starting swimming lessons. 

We have had the firefighters visits to learn about fire safety, and have also had an incursion with RACV Safety Squad to learn how to be road safe.

• “I liked seeing the inside of the fire truck.” ~ Hugo W, FC
• “My favourite part was spraying the hose.” ~ Eliza, FC
• “My favourite part was when I got to spray the water hose” ~ Sadie, FA 

With swimming starting in week six, the students have now perfected the art of lining up, getting on and off the bus and walking safely when out in the community. We are so impressed with how they have been trying to independently get themselves dried, dressed and packed. We are over half way through our lessons now!

Below you will find some quotes from the students about the swim program:

• “I liked going in the deep end at swimming.” ~ Aoife, FC
• “I like going swimming because it’s warm”. ~ Ayla, FA
• “When I go in the pool with my friends” ~ Evie S, FA

The Foundation students should be proud of how they’ve continued to develop their literacy skills, channelling ‘Resilient Rex’ to have a go at reading and writing on their own. They have learnt all the characters from the Little Learners characters and should be so proud of this huge achievement. It has been incredible to watch them build their confidence with independent reading. 

As well as learning new characters, the students have been working hard on developing their fluency, heart word recognition, and matching sounds to letters to spell new words. 

Below you will find some of the students' favourite parts of reading:

• “I like partner reading the best and I love learning to read.” ~ Viola, FC
• “I love writing sentences, I even write them at home.” ~ August, FC
• “I like learning and doing our reading sheets.” ~ Ayla, FC
• “I love doing our (sound) mazes.” ~ Isla, FC
• “I love writing on the whiteboards” ~ Toby, FA 
• “I love learning a new sound” ~ Quillan, FA 

This term in writing the students have been learning about nouns and verbs. We have been working on writing complete sentences with a capital letter and full stop, including a ‘who’ and a ‘do’ word. We have recently been learning to expand our sentences by adding when or where to make our sentences interesting!

Learning to read and write is a big job and ‘Learner Lily’ would be proud.

Our Foundation students have had a fantastic term in Mathematics and should be very proud of all they have achieved! We have been developing our understanding of numbers by learning how to partition our "boss numbers" to 10 into two or three smaller parts. 

We have also been working on reading, ordering and comparing numbers to 20, as well as identifying and counting collections of objects to 20. 

More recently, we have begun exploring time. Students have been learning about the order in which events happen throughout the day and discussing activities that might occur in the morning, afternoon, evening and night. It has been wonderful to see their growing understanding of sequencing and daily routines.

We are incredibly proud of the effort, persistence and growth our students have demonstrated this term. They have approached each learning experience with enthusiasm and are making excellent progress in their mathematical learning.

• “I like counting to 20 and sometimes even to 100!” ~ WIlfrid, FC
• “I like doing the maths sheets.” ~ Anna, FC
• “I like writing my numbers to 20” ~ Frankie, FA

Below you will find some photos of some of the students maths work:

The students were excited to have their first mini assembly with Paul, where they looked at how we can respect our school environment and keep our spaces clean. In the classroom, Paul discussed the importance of keeping our workbooks organised and neat so we can be proud of the work that we do. Here are also some examples of word completed with thought and care. 

Foundation teachers (Lucy, Jayde & Katie) and students