Prep Wonga Weekly

📚Book Week: We loved seeing our Preps dressed up as their favourite book characters! Thank you for the effort you went to to get them ready! Check out the photos in the newsletter to see how fabulous the kids looked!

🧢Hats! As of Friday September 1st, all students are required to wear a hat at school. These hats will stay at school for the remainder of the year, so that your child doesn't have to bring it to and from school each day. 

👰🏼‍♀️🤵🏻 Good luck Miss Anker! We would also like to wish Miss Anker all the best as she sets off to become Mrs Dimitriou! We will see her back at school at the start of Term 4! Kate Mercer will be teaching Prep B for the last two weeks of term.

Independently entering the classroom: As we head into the Spring holidays and the final term of Prep, we are strongly encouraging all our students to enter the classroom on their own, to independently prepare themselves for the day. Parents in the classroom can be disruptive to morning routines and the connections between peers as other students enter the room. Additionally, as part of preparation for Grade 1, we are now commencing our reading group learning at 9am. Play connections are still available to students at different times of the day / week.

If you do need to speak to your classroom teacher in the morning, you are welcome to catch us at the door between 8.50 and 9am. 

⭐️ News Groups for Wednesday 30th August: My dad is special because ... Share something special about your dad!

📒 Reading 

Students will continue to retell stories using the language of 'beginning, middle, end' in their guided reading sessions. They will also revise the comprehension strategy of making text connections - text to self, text to text and text to world. 

Students will learn the fluency strategy of 'cross checking' as they read. Cross-checking is a strategy for students to actively think about what they are reading. The goal is to think about what would make sense and think about letters / sounds as they cross-check words. See below for some questions to ask as you read.

What can you do at home?

-Log into Reading Eggs and find a suitable text (remember to change the age for 5 - 7 years old).

-Assist your child to read their take home book each night and their magic words. 

-Help your child to read with expression and fluency as they read. 

-Ask your child to retell the stories that you read by using 'beginning, middle and end' vocabulary.

-Help your child to cross check their oral reading with questions like, "Did what I read look right? Did it sound right? Does it make sense?"

🔡 Phonics 

This week we will be learning the digraphs 'ow' (as in slow) and 'oa' (as in boat). We will be reading and writing words with these digraphs (remember that a digraph is two letters that make one sound).

What you can do at home?

-Ask your child what words they know that contains the digraphs 'ow' and 'oa'.

-What words can you find that have 'ow' and 'oa' in your take home books or magic words?

-Use your sound ring to continue to practise letter names and the sounds they make. Play some games using the sound ring cards (ideas are on the ring). 

📝 Writing 

Students will learn about labelling, as they label the photos they take of 'Signs of Spring' in our environment. They will also write letters to their dads for Fathers Day.

In handwriting, students will be introduced to dotted thirds, as they continue to practise correct letter formations. 

What can you do at home?

-Continue to encourage correct pencil grip (pointer on top).

-Practise writing names in school writing, with one capital letter at the beginning of their name.

-Encourage correct formation of letters.

-If your child writes at home, assist them to hear and write the sounds in words. 

🔢  Maths 

Students will learn about age appropriate statistics and graphing. They will learn about this in a variety of ways, such as through group discussions, challenging tasks, creating their own graphs, posing questions and making conclusions from the graph. 

What can you do at home? 

-Explore the Mathseeds app on the iPad. You might want to choose games / tasks that involve simple graphing.

-If you want to explore the idea of graphing further, you might want to play this game:

https://www.abcya.com/games/fuzz_bugs_graphing

After playing, ask:

-What is this graph showing us?

-What colour had the most Fuzz Bugs?

-What colour had the least Fuzz Bugs?

-What is the total number of Fuzz Bugs in the graph?

-What else did you notice?

Or this one:

https://www.turtlediary.com/game/pictograph.html

🌏 CBL - Diversity

Students will begin the first part of their challenge, which is to 'Celebrate Diversity in our Australian Community'.  They will choose their favourite Australian animal to collect information about in a data chart. 

💻 Cyber Safety

Students will learn about the S.T.O.P. strategy to think about how we feel, and take action if we feel negative emotions online. See the poster below to see what the acronym means!