Hello,

Take home books

The home reading program will end in week 9 (this week). All books will need to be returned by Friday 3rd December. An audit of all of the Prep books is being completed on that day. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the parents who have volunteered to assist with this audit.

Extended Day

We are looking forward to our Extended Day on Thursday 2nd December. A reminder that the Preps must be collected from their classroom at 6pm. If your child needs to be taken to Team Kids, please ensure that both the classroom teacher and the Team Kids staff have this information in writing.

For those who are yet to consent or pay, the cut off for this event is on Tuesday evening. It would be disappointing if any of the Preps were unable to attend so we request that you action it before then. If your child will be unable to attend, please let their teacher know.

Word Study

We have finished introducing new codes to the Preps for this year. Many of the codes recently introduced to the students are for exposure only and are not expected to be mastered until grade 1. We will focus our energy, for the remainder of the year, on knowing how to read and write the codes introduced.

This week we will begin a new bootcamp. It is the ‘ck’ and ‘dge’ bootcamp. This bootcamp will teach the students when to use ‘ck’ and ‘dge’ in their writing. ‘ck’ is used following a single vowel making its first sound and usually at the end of a one syllable word or at the end of the first syllable eg. duck or chicken. The exception to the ‘ck’ rule is multi-syllable words ending in ‘ic’ such as panic or picnic. ‘dge’ is used following a single vowel making its first sound. ‘dge’ is mostly used at the end of a one syllable word, such as bridge.

The Prep students have done an amazing job learning all these new spelling and decoding rules to help with both their reading and writing. We are very proud of their efforts.

Literacy

The students will continue exploring the genre of fantasy fiction stories with a focus on settings. The Preps will further develop their comprehension skills, improving their ability to make predictions about the text before reading. They will develop their ability to examine the clues that the author and illustrator provide. They will be encouraged to think what might happen in the story and support their theories with evidence from the text. The Preps will develop their critical thinking skills by looking at new vocabulary and exploring how these words enhance the reader’s experience. In Writing, the students will be reflecting on our Prep year. They will complete a self-assessment by recording their achievements, goals for the future and favourite memories of P

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Numeracy

Our current mathematical focus is on Division. At this stage we are calling it ‘sharing’ and working very much at the conceptual stage. We are only using the term ‘sharing’ in Prep because it is very important that children develop a strong understanding of what it means to ensure that later when the formal equation and terms are introduced they can use it for a purpose and not just by rote. The symbols for subtraction, division and the equals symbol all look quite similar hence the emphasis on developing a strong conceptual understanding of what sharing is.

The Preps have been using counters to model sharing in order to solve a story problem. Last week the emphasis was on sharing into equal groups and this week they will be introduced to having left overs (remainders). They have also been organising the groups into arrays to assist with the relationship between multiplication and division in a few years.

Unit of Inquiry

The Preps have been learning about our unit of inquiry with the transdisciplinary theme 'How We Express Ourselves'. We have been exploring how creativity can be expressed and appreciated. The Preps have been discussing what creativity is and how we determine if something is creative or not. We have been exposing the students to different forms of creative expression and they have been creative in the Inquiry hall through different experiences such as painting, crafting, using musical instruments, dressing up in costumes and building.

The Prep team

0A - Kathryn Morrison

kathryn.morrison@education.vic.gov.au

0B - Isabella Maresca

isabella.maresca@education.vic.gov.au

0C - Deb Barden

deborah.barden@education.vic.gov.au

0D - Danielle Palombi

danielle.palombi@education.vic.gov.au

0E - Julie Daniel

julie.daniel@education.vic.gov.au

ToD (Teacher of the Deaf) - Krystle Horadam

krystle.horadam@education.vic.gov.au

Prep Fortnightly Snapshot

Issue 9 · 28 Nov 2021

In this issue