Foundation

Literacy

Within our Reading sessions we have continued to work on reading  (Consonant, Vowel) cvc, cvcc, ccvc and challenged ourselves with reading ccvcc words. We have also been working on our heart words and encouraging students to be practising these not only at school but also at home. We are working towards developing our fluency when are reading ensuring that we are segmenting the word into sounds in our heads and then just saying the blended word. Students have also been working on their summarising skills through our explorations on big books. Students have learnt about characters, settings, problems and solutions and have been identifying these in the books that we are reading together. 

In Writing we are continuing our exploration of writing through narratives. Students have enjoyed writing endings for different stories, creating solutions to problems that arise in texts and being creative within their writing. We are encouraging students to continue to use their phoneme fist to sound out words, particularly as they contain more and more sounds. We are supporting students to use the strategies they have learnt in Heggerty to "chop" a word into syllables when they attempt to write longer words independently. We have also been working on ensuring our letters start in the correct spot, are the appropriate size and written in the correct direction.

Numeracy

In Numeracy we have continued to work on our subtraction unit. Students have been using different strategies to solve subtraction sums. These strategies have included using number lines, using manipulatives including counters to help solve the sum and to draw their sum within their books. Students have also been exploring how subtraction strategies can help us solve problem solving questions. 

Social and Emotional Learning/Inquiry

Our Inquiry topic for this term is Development of Resilience (Recognising problems or challenges). We have continued to explore ways in which we can be safe at home, at school and out in the community. We have also been exploring our body, labeling the parts, and learning different movement songs. 

Within our SEL lessons we have continued to work on emotions and how these might look and sound in different people. We spoke about how different people may all be experiencing the same event but that may feel differently about it. Students have enjoyed our daily 'how does this make you feel' activity and discussing why they feel a certain way.

Science Week

Last week it was National Science Week and Prep A enjoyed exploring science through a rainbow milk experiment. The items we used were milk, a tray, food colouring and dishwashing liquid. First we put milk in our trays, then added some food colouring and then the dishwashing liquid. The fat in the milk moves away from the dishwashing liquid causing the food colouring to mix and spread around the tray, which was fascinating for our students to watch!

• Homework goes home on Mondays and comes back to school on Fridays.
• Families are welcome to come to our cohort and school assemblies on Fridays at 2:30. Cohort assemblies are held in the large Grade 1/2 space (through the blue door), and the school assemblies will be held outside under the COLA (unless otherwise advised).
• As the weather is becoming cooler, students are encouraged to bring/wear warm coats/jackets, mittens/gloves, beanies or earmuffs outside. Please ensure all clothing items are labelled.
• Personal toys to play with at school are discouraged. This is to ensure that any items that may be special to your child are not broken or lost during play. On occasion there have been times where toys have been misplaced or damaged. We do not with for this to happen to your child's precious items.
• Please ensure your child has a piece of fruit, a snack, and lunch as well as a water bottle.
• Lunch orders - Please ensure all lunch orders are placed in the lunch order basket at the beginning of the day. Occasionally, students have forgotten to place lunch orders in the basket and have had an emergency lunch provided.
• Keep up the positive after-school routines (homework, dinner conversations, bedtime).
• Don't forget - School begins at 8:35am daily. Students that attend after 8:50am will need to sign in at the office.

Things you can work on at home:

• Letter and sound recognition (recognising upper and lowercase letters and their most common sound) for all letters of the alphabet.
• Heart word recognition (recognising explicitly taught words) - My, my, The, the, I, Me, me, like, can, to, so, go, was, we, she, he, do, of, are, too, for, her, see, say, day, into, you.
• Reading a shared book every night focusing on concepts of print (identifying the front cover, a word, a letter, 1:1 finger pointing, talking about the story and using specific vocabulary)
• Fine motor activities – using playdoh, cutting, threading – to strengthen hand muscles
• Build and write taught CV (consonant vowel) no, go, do, to, VC (vowel consonant), is, am on, up, and CVC (consonant vowel consonant) words, cat, met, top, pit, nut etc
• Having nightly dinner conversations with the family (talk about the day)
• Have your child help out in the kitchen by measuring ingredients when you are making meals, and counting items that are going in the basket at the shops. This will assist in developing counting skills
• Look at some of the information provided under the Literacy, Numeracy and SEL/Inquiry headings and review these tasks to reinforce learning.