What's Happening in the Junior School

 Prep

What’s Happening in Prep in November

All the Prep teachers have been very impressed with how our Preps have settled back into learning after their holidays.  

Last term, we focused on non-fiction writing. This term, we have been learning how to write a fiction story using a clear beginning, middle, and end structure. We explored two books – The Gruffalo and My Two Blankets – to help guide our learning. In both stories, the characters show great bravery as they overcome challenges. We used this as inspiration for our own narrative writing!  

 Wellbeing 

• Recognise when we need help. 
• Identify trusted adults we can ask for help at school and at home. 
• Use our words to ask for help when we need it. 
• Explain how we are feeling when something is difficult or upsetting. 

• Understand that asking for help is a positive thing to do. 

• Recognise the difference between something we can try ourselves and something we need help with. 

   

Literacy 

• Reading and spelling words with the grapheme -tch making the /ch/ sound 

• Reading and spelling words with the grapheme -dge making the /j/ sound 
• Reviewing –tch /ch/ and –dge /j/ 
• Writing descriptive sentences 
• Expand simple sentences using adjectives  
• Writing narratives using the structure 'somebody, wanted, but, so, then' 

• Retell a narrative using the 'somebody, wanted, but, so, then' 

Maths 

• Identifying ordinal positions in a sequence 
• Counting the number of tens on ten-frames 
• Making tens and ones with ten-frames, with bundling and with base-10 blocks.  

• Writing and saying two-digit numbers 
• Counting forwards and backwards within 100 
• Identifying Australian coins 
• Sorting and matching Australian coins 
• Comparing and ordering two-digit numbers with materials 
• Responding to place value problems with more than one answer 

• Solving two-digit place value problems 

Knowledge Unit 

Focus: Geography  

Big question: How are we part of a community? 

• What is an environment? 
• What is a need and what is a want? 
• What is a community? 

In Geography, students explore their community and the places that are important to them. They learn about the different features of their community, where people live, work and play, and how people are connected to the places around them. Students investigate their school and local community, use simple maps and plans to represent familiar places, and develop an understanding of how we can care for and contribute to our community. 

Specialist 

Please find below a timetable of when your child/rens class will attend specialist. 

Homework 

Each week, your child/ren will bring home a blue reading pouch (satchel). Inside, you will find; 

• Three decodable readers 
• One picture storybook labelled Classroom Library.  
• A green “Decoding Detective/ Word Wizard” workbook 

• Sound pack cards.  

   

These resources are designed to support your child’s reading practice at home. Please keep all reading materials stored in the reading pouch. Reading pouches should be returned to school each Friday so students can swap their books for the following week, and additional learning materials can be added. Please note that at this early stage of the year, students are not expected to independently decode every word in their reading texts. At this point, they may focus on identifying individual sounds and r

ecognising the “heart words” that have been explicitly taught in class (you can find these words within the Word Wizard section of the green workbook) Thank you for supporting your child’s reading journey at home! 

Reminders 

• Week 5, Monday 2nd November- Curriculum Day 
• Week 5, Tuesday 3rd November- Melbourne Cup Day.  
• Week 6, Thursday 12th November – Paramedic Visit.  
• Week 7, Wednesday 18th November – Colour Run.  
• Week 7, Friday 20th November – Gimme Gimme Gimme a Prep Concert 9:30am start.  
• Week 8, Thursday 26th November – St John Ambulance visit.  
• Week 9, Wednesday 2nd December – Junior Athletics Day.  

Year 1

What’s Happening in Year 1 in November

Welcome back to Term 4! Can you believe how fast the year has flown? We hope you enjoyed your break and we can't wait to get back to a busy and productive term of learning and laughter. 

Wellbeing 

This term, we are continuing to explore the Respectful Relationships curriculum. In the month of November, students will participate in Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships lessons. The focus this month is on Topic 2: Personal and Cultural Strengths. This topic helps students learn to recognise and understand their own and others’ strengths and positive qualities, and to identify how the values and strengths they learn from their family and culture help them treat others with respect. We will also introduce the students to the Help-Seeking Hand. This will support students to identify when they have a problem, whether they can solve the problem themselves and if not, whom they can go to for help. It also addresses how to ask for, receive help and take action. Please see the visual of the Help-Seeking Hand. We encourage you to talk to your child about it.  

Literacy 

The Year 1 students will be working through the UFLI structured, synthetic phonics program. During this time, they will focus on developing their phonics knowledge, decoding skills, and confidence as early readers. In November, students will continue learning about vowel teams, which are two vowels together in a word that make one sound, such as ai and ay, making the long a sound.  Students will learn the following vowel teams – ew, ui, ue, au, aw, augh, and ea. They will also be introduced to diphthongs, which are two vowels that glide together to make a different vowel sound. They will begin applying these skills to their reading and writing. We will continue with our fluency reading, focusing on reading with accuracy, reading rates, and using expression when reading. Students will continue working on practising low letters in handwriting, focusing on correctly forming the letters p, g, q, y, j in both uppercase and lowercase. 

Language and Literature 

In Language and Literature, students will explore the beautiful picture book Where the Forest Meets the Sea by Jeannie Baker. They will practise responding to a narrative, retelling the story and making personal connections to the characters and settings. Students will also investigate how the author uses detailed illustrations to help tell the story and communicate different perspectives.  

Language Comprehension: Students will be given opportunities to answer literal and inferential questions on the text. They will also build their knowledge on the Daintree Rainforest, its animals and their habitats. 

Writing: At sentence level, students will learn about the coordinating conjunctions because, but and so, exploring how these words connect ideas to show a reason, a contrast or an effect. 

Grammar: We will continue our work on pronouns, before moving into sentence types (commands, questions and exclamations) and the corresponding boundary punctuation. 

Maths 

In Mathematics this month, the Year 1 students will continue to explore 2-dimensional shapes. They will develop a deeper understanding of 2D shapes and how they can be identified by their properties, such as; vertices and sides. We will also be exploring how 2D shapes, when tessellated, can create different shapes. With this foundational knowledge, we will look at 3-dimensional shapes and how to identify these in the environment around us. The students will also be building 3-dimensional models and discussing the reasoning behind their choices. Throughout the term, students will continue to be encouraged to apply their skills to real-world problems and how understanding shape relates to the constructed environment around us.  

Knowledge Unit 

As part of our Knowledge Unit, students will continue exploring Geography. In Week 6, students will celebrate their learning about our local community with a visit to the Beaumaris Community Library. Along the way, they will identify natural and constructed features, making connections to their classroom learning. Students will then develop their understanding of how Beaumaris fits within the wider state of Victoria and Australia. They will learn to locate Australia's states and territories on a map, explore key places across Victoria and Australia, and share places that are special to them. 

Specialist Timetables 

1BM:  

• Tuesday: Performing Arts and Japanese 
• Wednesday: PE and Art 

1C: 

• Tuesday: Performing Arts and Japanese 
• Wednesday: PE and Art 

1M: 

• Monday: Performing Arts 
• Tuesday: PE and Art 
• Wednesday: Japanese 

1MC: 

• Monday: Performing Arts 
• Tuesday: PE and Art 

• Wednesday: Japanese 

   

Reminders: 

Fruit Snack 

Every morning at 9.55am students will have a fruit snack. You child must have their fruit/veggie snack in a separate smaller container to their lunch. 

Take Home Reading 

Please make sure you child brings their reading pouch with their three readers on Thursdays. Students should be reading every night for 15-20 minutes. It is important for students to read their take home readers multiple times to build fluency. Students will also take home a book from the classroom library. This will be a rich literature text and can be read by you to your child.  

You will also notice students bringing home a booklet of Heart words. Please also practice reading and spelling these words as part of your reading routine. 

Thank you for your support 😊 

Year 2

What’s Happening in Year 2 in November

The Year 2's have kicked off the term by heading back in time to Ancient Egypt! We have loved exploring the geography and history of the Nile River and learning about the different Pharaohs that ruled. Last week, the Year 2's attended 2 different incursions; Find ya Feet and African Drumming. Both were engaging and exciting! 

Over the next month, the Year 2 students will be learning to: 

Wellbeing: 

• Identify and describe personal and cultural strengths  
• Explain how these strengths contribute to family and school life  

• Identify ways to care for others, including ways of making and keeping friends. 

   

Phonics: 

• Read and spell words ending in -er, -or, -ist, -ish, -ment, -able, -ible, -y, -ness 

   

Literacy: 

• Complete a descriptive writing paragraph 
• Practise reading different texts and answering comprehension questions 
• Read our new mentor Chapter book; Bungawitta 
• Identify and use regular and irregular plural nouns within a sentence 
• Identify and use regular and irregular past tense verbs in a sentence 

• Write our own narrative story 

   

Maths: 

• Observing, evaluating and repeating data collection 
• Displaying data in tables and picture graphs 
• Creating and interpreting column graphs 
• Creating and interpreting maps 
• Identifying and describing position on maps 
• Directions between locations on maps 
• Number patterns increase/decrease by 1, 10 and 100 

• Identifying and creating additive patterns  

   

Knowledge Unit  

This term, the Year 2 students are studying History and explore the topic of Ancient Egypt. This month we will be learning about: 

• Pharaohs 
• Gods and Goddesses 
• Tombs and Mummies 
• Hieroglyphics  
• Pyramids  

Homework  

Your child will continue to swap their take-home books each Thursday. They will bring home three decodable texts. We strongly encourage students to reread these texts multiple times across the week as this is an important way novice readers develop automaticity and reading fluency.  

Students will also continue to bring home a classroom library textthat can be shared together. 

Reminders: 

• Colour Run – Wednesday 18th November 
• Ancient Egypt VR incursion – Thursday 19th November  
• St John’s First Aid Visit - Thursday 26 November