Foundation Unit

The Foundation students have continued to blow us away with their literacy skills! They have absolutely loved learning about Living Things this term and what they need to survive. Recently, students viewed the story, ‘There’s a Bull Ant in my Bedroom,’ during a Reading lesson when they were learning to make connections. Later that morning, during our Writing lesson, students were read factual information about hippopotamuses (which was one of the animals in the text we viewed earlier). Students then had to apply their learning and write to share their opinion on why they would or would not want a hippopotamus in their bedroom. Here is what some of the students wrote:

Darcy - Please don’t you put a hippo in my room because it will crush me like a truck.
Edie – I do not want a hippo in my bedroom because it could step on me and crush me a pancake.
Emma – I would not like a hippo in my bedroom because it could scratch me like a dinosaur scratching me.
Harry – Please don’t put a hippo in my bedroom because it might bite because it might feel afraid.

Thank you so much to all parents and carers who attended Parent Teacher Interviews this week. These interviews were a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the achievements of all students and physically show you how far your child has come with their learning so far this year, by looking at samples of their work. We are just so proud of each and every child!

The Foundation teachers would like to extend a huge heartfelt thanks to all families for supporting your child with their learning. All students have made outstanding growth to date and supporting your child with their learning at home greatly assists in their achievement at school. Term 2 has been a long term to say the least and we have been so impressed with how each and every child has continued to persevere with their learning, even though they are feeling extremely tired.

Classroom teachers will be sending home 5 levelled texts with every child so you can continue to support your child with their learning during the school holidays. If you are after some other ideas of things you could do with your child over the holidays, they could keep a diary by writing about some of the things they do. You could also play a new maths game with them at home that they have recently learnt that requires them to apply what they have learnt about numbers and early addition, so far. The game is called Up & Down and the students have been playing a modified version that is played as follows:

Materials: 2 six sided dice, paper, pencil

How to play:

All players write the numbers from 1 to 10 down the page.
Players take turns at rolling both dice in order to cross out a different number or numbers on their page. They can either cross out the numbers they roll or cross out the sum of the numbers rolled.
The winner is the first player to cross out all numbers from 1 to 10.

Students are encouraged to explain their thinking to other players before they cross any numbers out. They can also write an equation to match before crossing out a number. For example: If I roll a 6 and a 4 I might say, “I am going to cross out the number 10 because I know that 6 and 4 makes 10.” I would then write 6+4=10 before crossing out the number 10.

Here are some photos of the students playing this game in class this week.

Have a safe and happy school holidays and we look forward to seeing your all again next term!

Foundation Teachers

Libby Cannon (PLC), Courtney Lawrence (PCL)/Juliet Smith, Bree Smith (PBS)