Foundation

Foundation December Newsletter

Welcome to our final Foundation newsletter. Foundation is an extraordinary year, and our students are finishing with remarkable growth and a truly positive school experience. The teachers are immensely proud of the personal and academic progress they have observed. It has been an absolute privilege to be part of this incredible and fulfilling journey. We would like to wish all families a joyous and safe holiday.

Our final Foundation event concluded with the Foundation Breakfast. Students were thrilled to arrive at school in their pyjamas and enjoy breakfast together. This event provides a wonderful opportunity for students to practise and develop their independence skills.

Literacy

Foundation students have been revising and consolidating their phonics knowledge from this year. We revisited the letters of the alphabet and the characters introduced in Milo’s Birthday Surprise. Each day, we explored a specific phoneme and grapheme, brainstormed words beginning with that sound, and used those words to create sentences. 

Our Foundation students have also been exploring their creativity through storytelling! Using picture prompts as inspiration, they have been crafting their own stories while applying the elements of Story Champs to guide their writing. Students are using their phonics knowledge, including letter sounds and heart words, to construct meaningful sentences. It has been wonderful to see their enthusiasm for writing, growing confidence in expressing their ideas and imagination come to life on the page. 

Knowledge

The Foundation students have been on an exciting journey exploring celebrations from all over the world! They have learned about diverse festivities such as the Mexican Day of the Dead, Las Fallas Festival in Spain, Rio Carnival in Brazil, and Bastille Day in France.

Through their exploration, the children discovered common threads that connect these celebrations, such as the inclusion of music and dancing, vibrant costumes, special foods, parades, and fireworks. This has been a wonderful way for students to appreciate the richness of global cultures while identifying the shared joy and traditions that unite people across the world. 🎉🌎

Numeracy

Foundation students are continuing to build on their understanding of numbers, with a particular focus on strengthening their knowledge of teen numbers. They have been practising counting, creating, ordering, and representing these numbers in different ways. To improve their mathematical fluency, students are exploring efficient methods for counting larger numbers and solving number problems more quickly. Students revised concepts of more and less where they need to quickly use mental strategies to identify numbers one more and one less.

Foundation students have been actively learning doubles facts this term! Doubles facts involve adding a number to itself (e.g., 1+1, 2+2, 3+3), which is an essential building block for developing mental math strategies. Students used counters, unifix cubes, and objects to physically group items into "doubles" to visually see and count the total. The students are doing a fantastic job with their doubles facts and are on their way to mastering this important math skill! Keep practicing at home to make these facts stick. 

We have also been learning about part-part-whole relationships. Students have used concrete materials like counters and blocks to explore how a whole number can be broken into two parts. This hands-on approach has helped them build a strong foundation for understanding addition and subtraction concepts. Well done, Foundation mathematicians! 

SEL (Social and Emotional Learning)

In our Social and Emotional Learning lessons, we've been diving into what it takes to be a great friend! Students enjoyed reading the story Wombat Stew and then had a creative brainstorming session to come up with their own version of a "Friendship Stew." They realised that being a good friend means helping others when they’re hurt, sharing, and showing kindness—values that are at the heart of our school’s core principles of Kindness, Zest, Respect, and Learning Together. We are incredibly proud of the resilient, compassionate, and caring individuals the Foundation students have become this year. Equipped with their emotional “toolbox,” these students are ready to continue growing as strong, resilient, and passionate learners, excelling in all areas of the curriculum.

In our SWPBS program, students have been enthusiastically redeeming their Gilgai Getter cards for exciting rewards. Over the past term, they have demonstrated remarkable resilience and respect—not only by appreciating their own Gilgai Getter cards but also by encouraging and celebrating their peers when they earn one. All students have been dedicated to building their collection of cards, with many redeeming 10 or more for rewards like becoming the teacher's helper for a day or enjoying lunch in a different classroom. Several students are also striving to earn the ultimate reward: having lunch with the Principal!

Additionally, we’ve been focusing on achieving our class goals, which are based on our school values. This initiative has helped our students learn the importance of teamwork and working collaboratively toward shared objectives. Once a class reaches its goal, they collectively choose a reward—and the new Gilgai Village, GaGa pit, and Playgrounds have been among the most popular choices!

Auslan

Over the last few weeks in Auslan, students have been learning the signs for various jobs, occupations, seasons and storytelling. Gilgai Plains Primary School was very thankful we had our first Auslan incursion. Students were engaged in revisiting signs we had previously learnt. Naomi was very engaging when teaching and interacting with us.