Foundation Learning Community News

It is hard to believe that our first term of school life is coming to a close. We have been counting our 'Days of School' every day with the knowledge that we have a big party when we get to our 100 days! For now, we are fully fledged school students, we know the rules and routines of our classroom and the school yard, have made close friends and are beginning to know ourselves as learners. All of our teachers are so very proud of our marvellous first term and are looking forward to the next three to come. 

Thank you to all of our families for your support to make the first term smooth and successful. 

Monique, Payton, Luke and Jacinta hope that everyone has a relaxing holiday, enjoying some family time and some down time! 

Literacy:

We have now learned 5 letter sounds. Since our last newsletter Andy Ant (/a/)and Poppy Princess (/p/) have joined our crew. With the addition of a vowel sound we have been able to begin making, reading and writing words - very exciting! We have even been able to put them all together and write the word s-t-a-m-p! There is nothing quite as wonderful as watching students begin to write words - and understand them!

We have been making connections to a big book, Smarty Pants. Making text-to-self connections is an important step in being able to comprehend texts. When we read we constantly relate what we are reading to our own lives, this helps us to understand texts better. We drew pictures to show our connections, the most popular being swimming and flying in an airplane. We then completed the sentence stem - See me ...

Our teachers are prompting us to label our pictures with the initial sounds as a way to encourage recording our thinking with writing.

Numeracy:

We are continuing with our focus on counting and number sense. The focus for this week is on teen numbers, understanding that a teen number is ten and then some. Teen numbers are tricky for many as they do not follow the 'normal' pattern of counting in English. We are using tens frames to support this learning. 

We made the most of the beautiful weather by doing some counting of collections outside. Students chose a number and then collected objects from nature to make the number. Relating amounts to numerals is a big step in recognising the importance of numbers. 

If families are wanting to practise some maths over the holidays we would suggest counting backwards, this can be very tricky for many children. 

Inquiry:

The 'Around the World Lunch' was a huge success! The Foundation students bravely tried foods from every continent of the world, many being happily surprised by how much they enjoyed new foods. Thank you to our parent helper and the Grade 6 students who assisted to make this event a success.

Assembly:

On Thursday the 21st of March we had a very first Foundation Assembly. At assemblies awards are given in recognition of effort. Our teachers were very impressed by how students celebrated the efforts of their peers despite some disappointment that they were not the recipients of the awards. We encourage everyone to continue trying their very best and know that their teachers are proud of all their hard work. Below are some photos of the award recipients.