Prep 

INFORMATION

🐨🦘 Healesvile Sanctuary excursion - this Thursday!

We are off again, this time to Healesville Sanctuary, on Thursday 13th November. To help you and your child prepare for the day, please see a few reminders below. Full excursion details can also be found on Sentral, and we have included a screenshot of the information below.

🚌 When to Arrive

Please make sure your child arrives at school by 8:40am, so that we can leave promptly at 9am.

👕 Uniform

• Full school uniform is required.
• Students will receive their school hats in the classroom before we get on the bus.

🎒 What to Bring

• A small backpack (it does not have to be a school bag) with snack, lunch and a full water bottle.
• Healesville Sanctuary has also requested that students bring a 'plastic' free lunch - the more 'nude food' the better!
• We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the weather forecast is right and we’ll enjoy some sunshine at Healesville! Please apply sunscreen to your child before they come to school, and pop some in their bag as well.

We are looking forward to an exciting day of learning and fun together at Healesville Sanctuary!

🍭🍬Graduation Lolly Buffet Donations

💻 🎮 Online Safety Workshop - Thursday 13th November 6.00pm

We are excited to offer a special workshop - Together in Tech: Apple Tools for Families.

This is a free session for our community which will be held next Thursday 13th November, from 6.00 –7.30pm in the BER. The session will be run by the Cyber Safety Project.

Please see the attached PDF for full details. To help us with planning, we ask that you complete the survey if you are able to attend.

✍🏼 Whiteboard markers

Some students are running low on their whiteboard markers, and a few have already finished their allocation. If you’d like to, you’re very welcome to send an extra marker to school, which we will put straight into your child’s bag for them to use. If not, students will still be able to take part in all activities using their clipboard and writing paper instead.

CURRICULUM

📚 Phonemic awareness: reading and phonics

We will continue our long vowel review and explore some exceptions to the ‘silent e’ rule. Students will also learn about adding ‘es’ to make plurals, such as lunch → lunches.

Our focus will include:

• Learning the phonemes (the sounds the letters make).
• Practising the graphemes (how we write the letters with correct formation).
• Reading longer words 
• Reading short texts that include the focus long vowel sounds, as well as previously learned digraphs.

We will review previously learned heart words and learn the words two and does

What can you do at home?

• Help your child read the take-home book, decodable passages and Heart Words from their book pocket. Aim for fluency by the second day of reading. 

As your child reads, encourage them to recognise familiar words instantly and only sound out unfamiliar ones.

• Enjoy bedtime stories together to build vocabulary, comprehension and a love of reading.

• Work through the optional UFLI home pages if you’d like some extra phonics practise at home.

📝 Literature: reading responses and writing 

Our Mentor Text this week is Possum Magic, a beloved Australian classic. Students will explore key story elements including the setting, characters, and plot structure. They will sequence Poss’s journey around Australia by using a map and matching the foods she enjoys along the way. Students will also retell the story using the words first, next, then and last. To finish the week, they will create a sensory poem inspired by the events and imagery in the story.

All of our Mentor Text sessions will include plenty of writing opportunities for students to apply and extend their learning. Students will also be planning their own narrative (a fictional story) about an Australian animal. Their stories will include a character, setting, and a beginning, middle and end. Once planned, students will write their narrative and practise using descriptive language to bring their ideas to life.

Students are continuing to refine their handwriting and letter formation using their Sky, Grass, Ground writing books.

What can you do at home?

• Practise 'boss letters' and then practise its cousins (see below).

• Build in authentic writing experiences like writing a shopping list, birthday cards, wish lists or notes for family members. 

• Say it, then write it – Ask your child to say their sentence out loud first, then write it down.

• Check for capitals and full stops – Remind your child to start with a capital letter and finish with a full stop.

•  Practise writing the Heart Words, taking care to notice the tricky 'heart' parts in the word.

🔢  Maths 

We will be working on some challenging tasks that encourage students to think deeply and apply all of their place value and number knowledge so far. A 'challenging task'is a maths activity that often has more than one way to solve it, inviting students to try different strategies, use the tools they know and build confidence and persistence as problem-solvers. To support this, we will revisit a range of maths tools, such as ten frames, number lines, hundreds charts, and place value tables, to explore how each one can help us solve problems effectively.

What can you do at home?

• Solve puzzles together (eg. jigsaws or simple logic puzzles) to build perseverance and flexible thinking.

•Encourage your child to explain their thinking when solving a problem - ask questions like “How did you figure that out?” or “Can you show me another way?”

•Do “What if…?” challenges. For example, “What if we had 23 apples and bought 10 more? How could we work it out?”

•Encourage your child to draw or model the problem using pictures, counters or blocks to help them visualise their thinking.

🌏 CBL - Discovery

We will be learning about different animal groups, including mammals (and monotremes), reptiles, insects, birds and amphibians. This learning will help students prepare for our upcoming excursion to Healesville Sanctuary by giving them background knowledge about the animals they will see. We will also complete some follow-up activities after the excursion to deepen students' understanding and reflect on what they observed.