Learning Space News

Foundation

Meet the Foundation Team

(From left to right) Stephen Zeitlhofer, Dania Al Taib, Phoebe Rontogiannis, Lucy Walton, Laura Macdonald, Jackie Andersson, Will Rickwood and Mei Luong.

Foundation students have settled into school well. The first day of school is always a big day, full of different emotions. Some students were excited, some were nervous, and many were feeling a mixture of both.

Literacy

Students are developing their phonological awareness skills, such as identifying the number of syllables in words and detecting rhyming words. These skills are essential for students to learn to read. They are learning some of the sounds of the alphabet, beginning with /s/, /a/, /t/, /p/, /i/ and /n/, developing an understanding of how to blend these sounds together to read simple words. Students have been participating in a range of language experiences to build their oral language skills. 

Maths

Students are exploring the numbers from 1-10, particularly recognising numbers and matching them to collections. They will be counting each day that they come to school, until they celebrate their 100th day later in the year. Students will be learning about patterns using a variety of materials, understanding how to make patterns with objects. They will also be developing their understanding of location language, such as next to, behind, in front of and between.

Inquiry

Students are learning to identify their personal likes and dislikes, needs and wants, as well as their abilities and strengths. They will be focusing on developing their skills to express their emotions, make friends, approach challenges confidently and resolve conflicts positively.    

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

Students are learning to identify and express a range of emotions. They discuss feelings, label emotions and demonstrate emotions. They are learning to recognise what emotions ‘look like’ and what they ‘feel like’. This helps students to develop strategies to identify feelings and begin to learn to process emotions in a healthy manner to support wellbeing. 

Included in SEL lessons is URStrong and the Friendology program. Through URStrong and Friendology, students will learn a set of tools and terms that they can use to develop conflict resolution skills and build emotional resilience. This helps students to help identify and respond to social difficulties. Some are these terms are:

• Mean-on-purpose: This is when someone intentionally hurts others feelings.
• Friendship Fire: This is when bad feelings arise between friends.

Students will learn these terms and be supported to use them at school to develop and maintain healthy, positive friendships. 

Foundation Budgies

This year we have three little friends in the Foundation Learning Space. These little friends have one beak, two wings and love to chirp. That’s right! We have three budgies, Squeak, Avocado and Blueberry. Our budgies love to go on adventures and visit the families of the Foundation students on the weekends.

On Friday afternoon the students who would like to get to take the birds home. The families get a bag of goodies to help look after them along with a journal. The journal helps the students to remember all the fun things they did on the weekend with the budgies and gives students a chance to draw a picture about their time with the budgies. On Monday morning, students get to bring the budgies back and tell us about all the fun they had together. 

Here are some photos and drawings from some of the Foundation students who were lucky enough to take home our learning space pets.