Prep Team News

Hello Prep families,

The weeks keep rolling by!  It is hard to believe we are over halfway through the term.  We still have more exciting events to come this term, so please keep updated via Compass and the newsletter.

Our Willy Kid theme this fortnight is ‘Willy Kids Bounce Back’. We read ‘The Most Magnificent Thing’ by Ashley Spires. We discussed strategies that help us to bounce back such as using a growth mindset, compromising and responding positively to setbacks.

Book Week

The Preps have had a great time celebrating Book Week this week. Each day they have answered a question as part of our Book Week quiz, and by the end of this week all of the students will have participated in a drawing workshop hosted by Melbournian author/illustrator, Sarah Allen. To finish the week, we are looking forward to seeing the Prep students participate in their first Book Week parade tomorrow. It is always wonderful to see the creativity and effort that is put into costumes by the students and their families.

What’s That In The Letterbox?

As part of our inquiry unit this term, the Preps are looking at the different ways stories can be told. Over the last two weeks, we have read ‘Letters to Felix’, ‘The Jolly Postman’, and discussed how we can communicate and tell stories by writing letters. The Preps have written a letter to their families about something they’ve recently done at school. Soon we will be walking to our local letterbox to post the letters home to families. We hope you enjoy receiving these letters and reading them with your child. 

Father’s Day / Special Person’s Afternoon

In honour of the special people in our lives we will be hosting an exciting afternoon just for them! We would love for a special person in each child’s life (e.g. dad, uncle, grandpa, mum, family friend) to join us in your child’s classroom at 3:00pm on Friday 4th September. The Prep students will be busy in the coming weeks preparing something for the special people in their lives and they are very excited to share it with you all. We will also have a special sweet treat for our visitors, so if you have any dietary requirements please pass this information onto your child’s teacher by Monday 31st August.

Finally, our classrooms are quite small as it is and once we add an extra twenty adults it can get very squishy. We will have an activity for the students to do with their special visitor, and if we have too many people this can be hard to organise. For this reason we ask that only one special person attends per Prep student and, if possible, that all younger siblings stay at home. If you have any questions, please speak to your child’s teacher.

Term Three Specialists

This Term, all Preps will attend Specialist classes. These include Visual Art, Music, French  and Physical Education. Please see the weekly timetable below.

Please note, to accommodate both the Year 3/4 and Year 5/6 camps there may be some minor disruptions to students attending the Library. 

Parents, could you please support your child to return their library books on their given day. Please also ensure your child is dressed in their P.E. uniform and is wearing runners on the day that they have P.E. Students remain in their P.E. uniform for the entire day. 

Curriculum Focus: Weeks 5 - 6

Reading - Students will continue learning about appropriate reading behaviours, including pointing to the words as we read and taking a breath at full stops. They will also discuss text features such as full stops, capital letters, exclamation marks and question marks. As part of our Little Learner’s program, students are now beginning to explore digraphs. Our current focus is on the /ck/ sound. Next up, we will be looking at the /sh/ sound.

Writing - Students are continuing to develop their letter formation and sound knowledge to write sentences. In particular this term, students will be reading narrative texts as a class. Students will then summarise these stories by writing a few sentences about the characters, setting, problem and solution from each text. 

Numeracy - Students are exploring the concepts of time and measurement. For time, we have been practising the days of the week and talking about the sequence of events within a day. For measurement, students are ordering items based on their mass, length and capacity. We are also applying our knowledge and skills to problem solving activities. 

Inquiry - This term, our inquiry topic is What's My Story? What's Your Story'. The Prep students are learning about the different ways stories can be told.

Homework - Each Monday, students will be given an activity to complete at home that relates to our weekly sound or maths focus. The activity in their ‘Home Learning Book’ will be collected each Friday. Homework in Prep should take no longer than 15 minutes.  

Respectful Relationships - This term for Respectful Relationships our topic is ‘Gender Norms and Stereotypes’. We will be reflecting on the influence of gender norms and stereotypes, developing an awareness of positive and negative gender norms, challenging negative gender norms and developing appreciation and respect for differences. In Prep, these activities look like: conversations about the fact that everyone likes different things and that’s okay (e.g. everyone can like or dislike pink or soccer or fish), realising that everyone experiences the same emotions (e.g. happy, sad, angry) and can express them in similar ways. If you would like to know anything more about these lessons, please contact your child’s classroom teacher. 

We have also talked about ‘Wear it Purple Day’ with the students this week. We discussed that ‘Wear it Purple Day’ is when we wear purple clothes to show that we’re kind to everyone. Some kids have families that might look different to our own, and we wear purple to show all kids that they’re special and loved just the way they are. This day will take place on Friday 28th of August. 

Prep: Key Dates Term Three

Enjoy the weekend. 

Warm regards,

The Prep Team–Caitlin Sullivan (Prep S), Claire Davies (Prep D) & Georgia Grainger (Prep G)