Foundation Term 1 Overview

   Foundation Term 1 Overview

To all our wonderful Prep families,

Welcome to what is going to be an incredible learning journey for all of our Prep students! In Prep we have a team of 9 incredible teachers who will be supporting your students to dream big and achieve their greatest potential…

Learning to learn

During the 1st 3 weeks of term 1 the students have been focusing on a ‘Learning to learn’ program. They have been learning about the school rules (Striving for Excellence, Respectful, Safe) and expectations. They have been learning about, and practising routines and how school works. 

Reading

In Reading, we will be focusing on concepts about print (reading left to right and top to bottom), identifying what a letter, word and sentence is, identifying pictures and text in a book, discussing what is happening in the pictures, making predictions before reading and summarising what we have read. We will also practise listening for sounds in words, such as identifying that ‘monkey’ starts with the sound /m/ and recognising that some words have the same initial sound such as, ‘moon’ and ‘milk’, whereas other words such as ‘top’ have different initial sounds, /t/.  Finally, students will practise recognising their names within the classroom environment and will practise phonemes (speech sounds) and associated graphemes (letters or a group of letters that represent a single speech sound).  

Writing

In Writing, we will be focusing on writing personal recounts based on our discovery language experiences. We will be beginning to focus on verbalising what we want to record as an author, drawing a picture to match and beginning to record familiar sounds in the words to label or describe our pictures. Through our phonics program, we will be practising letter formation and we will be working on building our fine motor skills by engaging in craft experiences.   

Numeracy

In Numeracy, we will be focusing on time, learning about the days of the week through song and daily routines. We will be identifying and connecting events to different times of the day. We will be exploring location and directions, building on our vocabulary such as in front of, behind, next to etc and following directional language. Further, we will be exploring financial maths where the students will learn about money through play, developing an understanding that use money to exchange for goods and services. Within our Numeracy lessons we will also be learning about the numbers 0-10 in depth, looking at using 1:1 correspondence (touching each object when counting), identifying, naming and counting forwards and backwards using the numbers from 1-10, modelling these numbers using materials, building on an understanding of how we can break the numbers to 10 into parts e.g. 7 can be made using 2 and 5, 3 and 4, 6 and 1 etc and learning that when counting a collection, the last number said is how many there are in the collection. We will be looking at addition and subtraction where the students will be developing vocabulary and building an understanding of how we add two groups together, subtract from a group and model an addition and subtraction problem using verbal stories and materials. We will use problem solving activities where students are given an open ended question and use materials, diagrams and number sentences to support them to find different answers.  

Inquiry and Social and Emotional Learning

In Inquiry, we will be focusing on the health unit ‘We use our bodies to communicate safely’. We will also be looking at how we express emotions and use words and actions to describe how we feel. In Social and Emotional Learning, we will be focusing on practising the school rules of being Safe, Respectful and Striving for Excellence. We will be working on using the 5Ls of learning - Listening, Looking, Hands in Laps, Legs crossed, Lips quiet.

Discovery

In Discovery, we are learning about discovering safely and exploring what our interests are. We will work on building our vocabulary through language experiences. This will provide the opportunity to write using colourful semantics, building students’ verbal and written sentences with a who, the what doing, and the where. Discovery Learning also engages students in Literacy, Numeracy and Social and Emotional Learning, by allowing them to develop their skills and understandings in an open, student centred environment.

Ways to help your child at home

Home Reading (This program will start at the end of week 4) - The expectation is for your child to read their take home book at least 5 nights a week, answer some comprehension questions that an older family member asks them and record the title, date and a comment in the yellow reading journal. Take home books are for enjoyment and for your child to practise their reading strategies, and are not meant to be a challenging task. In addition to the Home Reading program, Wushka and Reading Eggs are extremely valuable resources to help your child practise their reading. Your child’s login details and passwords can be found in the inside cover of your child’s yellow book. 

Goals and achievements- New goals and achievements will be available to view on COMPASS in Weeks 5 and 10. These goals include one for Reading, Writing, Maths and either a social and emotional learning goal. Additionally, you will find strategies that you can implement at home, so that together, we can support your child’s learning.  

Kind Regards,

Prep Teachers