Prep

Dear Prep families,

Wow, Week Six of Term Two already! Time flies when you're in Prep. We've had a very busy fortnight of learning and growth. Students enjoyed being a part of their first Saltwater School photos.

Reading

In Reading, students continue to identify features of the text such as characters, setting, problem, and solution. They have also been introduced to the concept of retelling and answering both within and beyond the text questions. Teaching students to answer questions within the text helps them develop basic reading comprehension skills. Students learn to understand the explicit information presented in the text. Answering questions beyond the text encourages students to think critically and infer meaning. These questions often require students to apply higher-order thinking skills such as inference, analysis, and evaluation. Both of these skills are important for academic success and developing lifelong learners.

Writing

In Writing, students continue to focus on correctly constructing sentences that begin with a capital letter, have a finger space between each word, and end with a punctuation mark. Students are encouraged to use their key ring words when attempting to spell familiar sight words and are also encouraged to stretch out unfamiliar words and listen to the sounds made before identifying the letters and writing them. Students have been introduced to the concept of dictation. This is where students are encouraged to listen carefully to spoken words and write down what they hear. To ensure all students experience some level of success, the dictated sentence given to students is based on the word family they have been focusing on throughout the week. Students are reminded to follow the writer's checklist to ensure their sentence makes sense and to self-correct. Students also continued completing their 'Free Writes' where they were shown an image and were asked to write something about the picture, keeping in mind what they know about constructing sentences correctly.

Mathematics

In Mathematics, students have finished exploring the concept of patterns through hands-on tasks. They have now begun exploring the concept of organising answers to yes and no questions, into simple data displays using drawings and tally marks. Students have demonstrated their growing knowledge of closed questions through their participation in ongoing LED (Launch, Explore, Discuss) lessons where they created their own yes/no questions and collected data from their peers. They then practiced displaying this data using simple pictures and tally marks. Students were given opportunities to make interdisciplinary connections with our unit of inquiry as they asked questions to their peers about their likes, dislikes, and explored representing emotions in data displays. This, in turn, has encouraged students to be communicators when interacting with their peers and working together to solve a task.

Prep Wellbeing

What a great last two weeks in Wellbeing. In Week Five, our Preps identified the effects on others when people make decisions that are not fair or kind and reflected on how they make decisions and what the effects are on other students. In addition, students developed self-calming and self-control strategies. In Week Six, students identified activities and events that make them feel stressed and described coping strategies and activities that can help then to reduce their stress levels.

REMINDERS:

Please ensure your child’s iPad is charged and brought to school every day.
If you have any spare, clean long socks (without holes) that your child no longer needs, we'd appreciate one sock per child to make crafting caterpillars.
Bring white T-shirt to school anytime from: Monday 29 May but no later than Monday 21 July.
Please remember to make payment on Xuno for our upcoming Prep Incursion (28th & 29th May) by the 24th of May.
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 the 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.
Lastly, a reminder about bringing in headphones if you have not already done so. We will be using them alongside the iPads.

Kind regards,

The Prep Team.