What's Happening in the Junior School

 Prep

What’s Happening in Prep in October

The Prep teachers hope you and your family had a great break! We can’t believe it is now Term 4. We are looking forward to a busy and fun-filled term ahead. Please keep an eye out for communication around specific events and details.  

Wellbeing

• How can we use body and face clues to help us identify different emotions?

• How do we keep our bodies healthy and safe?    

   

Literacy

• Identifying suffixes – es, ed, ing 
• Identifying open and closed syllables 
• Identifying compound words
• Identifying sentences and fragments of a sentence
• Writing features of a narrative

Maths

• Sorting objects and collections
• Answering questions about data 
• Collecting Data
• Answering Yes/No questions
• Representing Data
• Describing position
• Moving a given number of squares on a grid
• Using verbal directions to move an object
• Solving problems using verbal directions. 

Knowledge Unit

Focus: Geography 

Big question: How are we part of a community?

• What is an environment?
• What is a need and what is a want?
• What is a community?

In Geography, students explore their community and the places that are important to them. They learn about the different features of their community, where people live, work and play, and how people are connected to the places around them. Students investigate their school and local community, use simple maps and plans to represent familiar places, and develop an understanding of how we can care for and contribute to our community.

Specialist

Please find below a timetable of when your child/rens class will attend specialist. 

Homework

Each week, your child/ren will bring home a blue reading pouch (satchel). Inside, you will find;

• Three decodable readers
• One picture storybook labelled Classroom Library. 
• A green “Decoding Detective/ Word Wizard” workbook
• Sound pack cards. 

These resources are designed to support your child’s reading practice at home.

Please keep all reading materials stored in the reading pouch. Reading pouches should be returned to school each Friday so students can swap their books for the following week, and additional learning materials can be added.

Please note that at this early stage of the year, students are not expected to independently decode every word in their reading texts. At this point, they may focus on identifying individual sounds and recognising the “heart words” that have been explicitly taught in class (you can find these words within the Word Wizard section of the green workbook)Thank you for supporting your child’s reading journey at home!

Reminders

• Week 3, Friday 23rd October - Open afternoon
• Week 5, Monday 2nd November- Curriculum Day
• Week 5, Tuesday 3rd November- Melbourne Cup Day. 

Year 1

What’s Happening in Year 1 in October

Welcome back to Term 4! Can you believe how fast the year has flown? We hope you enjoyed your break and we can't wait to get back to a busy and productive term of learning and laughter. 

Wellbeing 

Wellbeing is at the centre of everything we do. This term, we are exploring the Respectful Relationships curriculum. In the month of October, students will continue to learn about emotional literacy and what acts of friendship look like, sound like and feel like. They will identify emotions that others may be feeling, make suggestions about how people might feel when others exclude them from play and suggest ways to help classmates play well together. They will play a game that challenges them to use their cooperation and teamwork skills and name some of the skills needed to play with others in a friendly way. Finally, students will also begin to develop their vocabulary to help them recognise and understand strengths and positive qualities in themselves and others. 

Literacy 

The Year 1 students will be working through the UFLI structured, synthetic phonics program. During this time, they will focus on developing their phonics knowledge, decoding skills, and confidence as early readers. In the month of October, students will be learning about long vowel teams which are two vowels together in a word that make one sound such as ai and ay making the long a sound.  Students will learn the following long vowel teams – ai, ay, ee, ea, ey, oa, ow, oe and ie and igh. They will begin applying these skills to their reading and writing. We will continue with our fluency reading, focusing on reading with accuracy, reading rates, and using expression when reading. Students will continue working on practising short letters in handwriting, focusing on correctly forming the letters u and v in both uppercase and lowercase. 

Language and Literature 

Year 1 students will start the term exploring the mentor text Dingo by Claire Saxby, a beautiful narrative non-fiction picture book set in the alpine forests of Victoria. The text combines a lyrical narrative that follows a mother dingo as she uses her senses to hunt for food with factual information about dingoes, including how they live, hunt, care for their pups and work together in packs. The two layers of text are presented in different fonts, helping readers distinguish between the story and the factual information.  

Language Comprehension: Students will build their background knowledge about dingoes and develop their comprehension by answering literal and inferential questions about the text. They will also explore the difference between fact and opinion and consider how information in the text supports their thinking. 

Writing: Students will explore how adjectives can be used differently in narrative and informative texts. They will then apply their learning by writing factual sentences and developing a paragraph using a topic sentence, supporting sentences and a concluding sentence. 

Grammar: Students will develop and write question sentences before focusing on using boundary punctuation correctly and editing sentences for boundary punctuation. 

Maths  

In Mathematics this month, the Year 1 students will continue to build their mathematical understanding through hands-on learning, problem-solving and everyday experiences. We will explore how data can be collected, organised and represented in different ways to help us understand and communicate information. Students will investigate position and movement, describing how objects move in 2D space using directions and turns. We will also explore time, including the duration and sequencing of events. Throughout the term, students will be encouraged to explain their thinking, use mathematical language and apply their skills to real-world problems.  

Knowledge Unit 

This term, students will be learning about Geography. They will explore our local neighbourhood and discuss what makes Beaumaris a special place to live. Students will also learn about Indigenous connections to the Beaumaris area. We will visit the Beaumaris Landmark Mural at the Concourse, using this experience as inspiration to create their own artwork back at school. Students will also develop their mapping skills by learning about bird’s-eye views and exploring maps of Beaumaris from above. 

Specialist Timetables 

1BM:  

• Tuesday: Performing Arts and Japanese 
• Wednesday: PE and Art 

1C: 

• Tuesday: Performing Arts and Japanese 
• Wednesday: PE and Art 

1M: 

• Monday: Performing Arts 
• Tuesday: PE and Art 
• Wednesday: Japanese 

1MC: 

• Monday: Performing Arts 
• Tuesday: PE and Art 

• Wednesday: Japanese 

   

Reminders: 

Fruit Snack 

Every morning at 9.55am students will have a fruit snack. You child must have their fruit/veggie snack in a separate smaller container to their lunch. 

Take Home Reading 

Please make sure you child brings their reading pouch with their three readers on Thursdays. Students should be reading every night for 15-20 minutes. It is important for students to read their take home readers multiple times to build fluency. Students will also take home a book from the classroom library. This will be a rich literature text and can be read by you to your child.  

You will also notice students bringing home a booklet of Heart words. Please also practice reading and spelling these words as part of your reading routine. 

Thank you for your support 😊 

Year 2

What’s Happening in Year 2 in October

The Year 2s finished the term by publishing their fantastic ‘Trees’ information posters full of 'tree-iffic' facts! The students then got hands-on with programming and creating algorithms in our mini Digital Technology unit. ‘Human Robot’s and Bee-Bots were utilised to put their algorithms into practice before using Scratch Junior on the Ipads to create some dancing characters! 

Over the next month, the Year 2 students will be learning to: 

Wellbeing 

• Identifying different emotions and emotional triggers 
• Practising teamwork skills in games 

• Identifying personal strengths 

   

Phonics 

• Review previously taught graphemes 
• Reading and writing words with alternative graphemes for the long u sound 
• Reading and writing words with ‘ough’ 
• Reading and writing words with suffixes: -sion, -tion, - ture, er, -or, -ist, - ish 

• Reading and writing words with signal vowels and low frequency spellings 

   

Literacy 

• Reading and answering comprehension questions on our mentor text ‘The Truck Cat’ 
• Building new vocabulary from our mentor text 
• Identifying the structure of a narrative using a story map 
• Mapping different narrative texts to a story map 

• Writing descriptive sentences using precise adjectives and nouns to describe a character and setting 

   

Maths 

• Identifying half of a collection using arrays  
• Identifying the whole from a given half of a collection  
• Identifying one quarter and one eighth of a collection   
• Dividing lengths into halves and quarters  
• Identifying halves and quarters of shapes  

• Identifying eighths of lengths and shapes  

   

Knowledge Unit  

Next term, the Year 2 students will be learning about History. We will be exploring the topic: 

The History of Ancient Egypt – Pyramids, Pharaohs, and the Past 

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

• What is history? 
• How do we learn about the past? 
• Where is Egypt and The Nile River? 

• How did the flooding of The Nile River effect farming? 

   

Homework  

Your child will continue to swap their take-home books each Thursday. They will bring home three decodable texts. 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.  

Students will also continue to bring home a classroom library textthat can be shared together. 

Reminders: 

Thursday 15th October – Find ya Feet Workshop 

Friday 23rd October – Open Afternoon 

Thursday 29th October – African Drumming Workshop