Prep
Dear Prep Students and Families,
The Prep Teaching Team are incredibly proud of our courageous students for embracing their first term of schooling. We are excited to share with you the wonderful learning that has taken place in Week Nine and Week Ten of Term One.
Reading
In Reading, students have continued to build their understanding of the decoding strategies acquiring new knowledge with the reading strategies of: ‘Think'. Does it look right? Sound right? Does it make sense?
We have continued to revise the other strategies taught such as 'Look at the pictures, Get your mouth ready to make the first sound, Slide through the whole word and Stretch the word out loud'. We continue to introduce decoding strategies and revise them so that we our students can become better readers.
Phonics
In recent phonics sessions, students have focused on learning specific letter sounds and their corresponding letters through engaging activities. Using cued articulation, they reinforced their understanding by pairing hand signals with each sound, helping to strengthen their phonemic awareness. Through repetition, games, and interactive exercises, students practiced recognising, saying, and writing these sounds, building a strong foundation for reading and spelling skills. This fortnight we have learnt the sounds of the letters k,e,r and u and continue to practise forming these letters when handwriting.
Writing
In Writing, students have continued engaging in language experiences to support their success in learning new sight words.
The sight words taught in Term One can be found on your child’s keyring. We encourage children to regularly refer to their keyring, both at school and at home, when writing to assist with the spelling of familiar sight words.
This term, students have explicitly learnt the following sight words:
I, and, my, the, is, a, are, of, for, was.
Teachers have noticed an improvement in the writing stamina of the students when engaging with the written text type of ‘retells'. The purpose of a ‘retell’ is to write about what happened in a story during the beginning, middle and end to demonstrate understanding of the text. Some writers are beginning to apply their knowledge of matching their picture to their sentence, while other students are being courageous by using their keyring to spell the Sight Words.
Maths
In Mathematics, students have explored and continued to strengthen their capacity in counting. They have been matching numeral and number names using concrete materials such as unifix blocks, counters and teddies. Students have been counting forwards as far as they can and backwards from 10 to 0 . Students proficient with this have been extended to explore numbers beyond 10.
Inquiry
During the past fortnight, we started to explore our second Unit of Inquiry under the transdisciplinary theme of ‘Who We Are’. This unit focuses on individual interests, likes and dislikes. Students will inquire into how they are unique and different to their peers and others in the community.
Students tuned into this unit by participating in a provocation task where they had to fill out a heart shaped template, illustrating all their likes, hobbies, favourites and other notable things about themselves. We then went on a gallery walk, asking questions and posing 'wonderings' about each other, demonstrating the Learner Profile of being 'thinkers' and 'inquirers'.
The central idea for this unit, ‘Similarities and differences build relationships’, was also unpacked with the students. Students actively communicated their understanding of key terms within the central idea and developed an understanding of what they will be inquiring into next term.
Buddies - Prep/Year 6
Visit the Student Leadership page for an exciting update from Prep B and 6B.
Reminders
Term break is from 5th March to 21 April. Students return to school on Tuesday 22 April.
Artefacts for our new Unit of Inquiry are to be brought to school by the end of Week One, Term Two.
Students are expected to bring their satchel to school EVERY DAY.
Hats are to be worn when outside from August to April. Please ensure to put sunscreen on your child before arriving at school.
Prep students will begin using iPads in Term Two. Your child’s iPad will need to be configured by our IT team to enable them to use them at school.
Snack and lunch times are 20 minutes long. Please encourage your child to eat their snack/lunch within a 20 minute period, as this will help them to follow school routine.
Please remember to pack a spare change of clothes for your child. Sometimes, little children can have toileting accidents and spills at school.
If you would like your child to practise our school song. This is the Youtube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua5RnSttwyY
Lastly, a reminder about bringing in headphones if you have not already done so. We will be using them in Term Two, along aside the iPads.
Have a lovely term break.
Warm regards,
The Prep Team