Prep
Dear Prep families,
Our prep students are nearing their halfway point of their journey in Prep. Hard to believe, but the evidence is in their knowledge and the growth we see every day in our classrooms. It is impressive!
Reading
Our Preps continue to work in guided reading groups to build their skills to decode, achieve individual reading goals and discuss the text to develop inferential and literal thinking.
Students are enjoying literacy rotation activities to further support their reading skills. Independent reading is an important element of our daily routine where students have an opportunity to read for enjoyment and practise their reading strategies.
During the last two weeks, our Prep students have been practising the "Flip the Vowel" strategy to help them decode unfamiliar words while reading. "Flip the Vowel" is a helpful reading strategy we teach students when they come across a tricky word that doesn’t sound quite right. If a student tries sounding out a word and it doesn't make sense, they are encouraged to "flip" the vowel sound – that means trying the other common sound that vowel can make. For example, If a child reads “hop” as “hope” and it doesn’t make sense, they can flip the vowel and try the short ‘o’ sound instead.
They’ve also been revising their comprehension skills by focusing on questioning, learning how to ask and answer questions about the text to deepen their understanding. It's wonderful to see their confidence and curiosity grow as they become more independent readers!
Phonics
During the last fortnight, we focused on sounds: j, w, v, y, z. We’ve also been learning about vowels, what they are, and the different short vowel sounds they can make. Students are continuing to develop their grapheme-phoneme knowledge to support both reading and spelling.
Writing
Our preps continue to be risk takers to turn spoken language into written form as they practise writing, connecting their developing knowledge of rime and high frequency words. We’ve been practising our sight words ‘they’ and ‘this’ through various reading and writing tasks. The children have also enjoyed writing retells and recounts about our recent cultural incursion, it’s been wonderful to see them connect their experiences with their learning.
A recount text is a piece of writing that retells events or experiences, often in the order they occurred. Recount writing has encouraged students to further develop their confidence and writing applications. Our students enjoy writing about familiar experiences as well as experiences they shared as a class, and have been doing a great job using their letter and sound knowledge to recount their familiar experiences.
Maths
In Maths, we’ve been exploring numbers to 20, learning to name, represent and order them using a range of physical and digital tools. Students are becoming more confident recognising and working with these numbers – including zero!
Preps have been displaying their knowledge of numbers and the order of numbers, by counting forwards and backwards. They have been ordering groups of numbers, identifying those that come before and after, and created mental objects of numbers in different ways. During lessons, they worked with their peers to represent numbers in a variety of forms, including number, word, quantity, and creating number lines. It was great to see some students connect with their culture to include counting in another language verbally and in writing.
Our Prep students have been busy building their reading, writing and Maths skills this fortnight!
Exploring Culture Through Storytelling
This week, our students enjoyed reading How the Birds Got Their Colours, a traditional Aboriginal story that shares a cultural belief about how birds came to be so colourful. Beyond the beautiful imagery and storytelling, the tale explores important emotions such as kindness, jealousy, and joy.
Stories like this are a powerful way for children to understand how beliefs and feelings can influence how we treat others. As part of our Inquiry unit, students are exploring different beliefs and cultures, leading to developing empathy and appreciation for perspectives that may be different from their own.
This learning encouraged thoughtful discussion, respect, and curiosity, key elements in building an inclusive and connected classroom community. Enjoy the art work produced by our Prep students.
Reminders
Students are expected to bring their satchel to school EVERY DAY.
Prep students have begun using iPads. Your child’s iPad will need to be configured by our IT team to enable them to use them at school.
Snack and lunch times are 20 minutes long. Please encourage your child to eat their snack/lunch within a 20 minute period, as this will help them to follow school routine.
Please remember to pack a spare change of clothes for your child. Sometimes, little children can have toileting accidents and spills at school.
If you would like your child to practise our school song. This is the Youtube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua5RnSttwyY
Lastly, a reminder about bringing in headphones if you have not already done so. We will be using them with iPads.
Warm regards,
The Prep Team