News from Prep
Literacy, Maths, Religion Education & Inquiry
As we looked at Procedural Text for writing this term, we focused on recipes.
Over the last few weeks of term we made waffles and chocolate crackles. The children had to add the bullet points for the ingredients and sequential numbers for the steps involved.
We discussed the elements of a recipe, such as the heading and subheadings. The subheadings are ‘Ingredients’ and ‘Method’. These can also be called the Method, ‘Instructions’ or ‘Steps’.
The children were very involved in the cooking process, measuring, adding and stirring all the ingredients.
In Writing, we also continued with sentence starters. We practised writing sentences using known sight words, making sure we started with a capital letter and finished with a full stop. Leaving a finger space between words continues to be a challenge but we are getting better all the time.
In Spelling, the Sound Waves lessons led us onto Phase 2, Discovering Graphemes. During this phase we teach two types of lessons for each unit:
• In Lesson 1, we revise the focus sound and introduce students to the focus grapheme/s and focus words.
• In Lesson 2, we teach focus concepts which include special words and sentence writing.
The focus words we have done this term are as follows:
a- am
t- at mat Tam
s- sat Sam
i- it sit
These focus words are words that students will be able to read and spell based on the phoneme-grapheme relationships that have been taught.
Students can login at www.fireflystudents.com.au and use the password chat946
The online program Firefly has some games to play, to consolidate what the students have been learning in class.
From here, we go into the letters that we have been focussing on under Phase 2, Discovering Graphemes. It has a segmenting tool that helps the students count and segment the sounds in a word, for example sit has 3 sounds and graphemes (s-i-t) but see (s-ee) and it (i-t ) have only two.
To continue with fine motor control, and following instructions we made cats with moveable eyes. The children did very well. Come and see their efforts displayed on the classroom window.
In Maths, we continued to work on place value using the multibase arithmetic blocks (MAB) to make numbers in the tens and some extending to hundreds and thousands.
We taught the children how to play ‘odds and evens snap’. They had to take turns laying out a card and when 2 even or 2 odd cards were displayed the children had to say ‘snap’.
We also begun learning subtraction. Generally, we use the term ‘take away’ but introduce all the vocabulary concerned with subtraction, for example, minus and difference between.
In Religion, we watched the story of ‘The Ascension’ and created a model to show Jesus ascending into heaven.
In Inquiry, we prompted the students to consider how our bodies grow and change as we get older.
We explained that different foods help us to sustain different parts of our bodies. We discussed the names of different foods and where the body parts are located.
We made a ‘Foods to help us grow’ book.
We also learnt that part of sustaining our environment is learning what plants need to grow such as the sun, water, soil, seeds and air.
In Literacy, for our writing genre, Procedure, we made fried rice. All the children enjoyed eating it and had multiple bowls.
We also made banana chocolate chip muffins.
We again looked at the structure of a Procedural text, placing importance on the difference between the Ingredients and the Steps.
For Reading, we continued with the next phase of Sound Waves, Foundation 2. The emphasis was on the revision of a sound as well as reading and writing words that can be easily blended and words which are high frequency (special) that often have an unusual spelling.
There is always an emphasis on listening for the sounds in a word and identifying where they hear each sound- beginning, middle or end.
Dd
Focus words: sad Dad
Special word: a
Nn
Focus words: in and fan man Dan Nat
Pp
Focus words: pat tap
Oo
Focus words: on off pot top
Special word: A
Rr
Focus words: rat ran
Special word: I
Gg
Focus words: get pig dog
Special word: is
In Handwriting, we have commenced writing on the correct lines. This has proved very challenging for most students. At the moment, we are using special writing paper that has sky, grass and dirt coloured spaces. This helps the children identify the tall letters or those with a tail. We also use a cat as an example on the side of the lines. The head is for the tall letters, the body is for the body of letters and the tail is for letters that have a tail. A lower case 'f ' is the most unusual in the Victorian Modern Cursive as it has a body, head and a tail!
In Maths, we have continued with subtraction. The children are all very good at modelling a problem now.
For example:
If Sammy had 8 lollies and gave 2 to Lucy, how many lollies would he have left?
The children would put out 8 counters and remove 2 showing 6 left. They then would write:
8 - 2 = 6
We also started a unit on Data in Maths. The students learnt how to put data into a column graph and answer questions regarding the results.
The best activity was when each child received an individual packet of M&M's and had to graph the colours in their particular packet.
In Inquiry, we did an activity with our Year 5/6 Buddies. We collected different objects from the school yard to create a wonderful sustainable art piece. We used leaves, bark, pebbles and rocks. See if you can see what else was used?
For Religion, we presented ‘The Ascension’ at Assembly. The children demonstrated how Jesus rose up to Heaven with a magnificent moveable model they had made.
For the Feast of the Pentecost, we watched the following cute video that told us the story of how God sent the Holy Spirit.
We also made crowns with tongues of fire and paper planes to represent the wind.
We have been practising writing sentences as a dictation using a picture as a prompt. These sentences reinforce the letters and words that we are focusing on as well as remembering to start a sentence with a capital letter, finish with a full stop and leaving a finger space between each word.
Meg got a peg.
Nan has a hat.
The kid is on the mat.
I can pat a cat.
Mum has a cap.
Sam ran to Dad.
In Maths, we have continued learning about data and graphs. We looked at information or data that could be collected about a group.
For example, How many boys are there? How many girls are there? How many children are wearing glasses? How many boys with glasses are wearing shorts. The children interpreted this information extremely well.
We also learnt how to use tally marks to represent a number. We then interpreted this number and used the information to make a graph. and to answer questions about the graphs. For example,
Which pet was the most popular?
Which fruit was the least popular?
What is the difference between the most popular and least popular?
We are also looked at the language of location, such as under, over, above, next to and in between.
Earlier in the term, we cut the tops or bottoms off a number of vegetables and immersed them in a shallow dish of water. We then made observations of the changes in these vegetables. This demonstrated how growing your own vegetables helps sustainability. We were amazed how quickly some of the vegetables regenerated.
We also drew our own fruit bowl after looking at which fruits were currently in season.
We continued to look at ‘Sustainable Actions’- things we can do to help the planet.
In Religion, for the Feast of the Trinity, we made and painted a triangle from icypole sticks. It is a very difficult concept to grasp. We have ONE GOD, but he is made up of three persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
Here are a couple of simple videos to help explain this.
What is the Trinity? | What's in the Bible? | DVD 5
What is the Trinity? | A Sunday School lesson for kids
We also explored the story from the Bible, Jesus feeds the 5000.
This story is also known as the ‘Miracle of the five loaves and two fish’. The Gospel of John reports that Jesus used just five loaves and two fish supplied by a boy to feed all the people who had come to listen to him talk. We made a basket for our loaves and fish.
As a fun activity which focused on collaboration. The children worked together to build a dinosaur jigsaw. Each child had some pieces and they had to work cooperatively to complete the puzzle. They were very proud of their efforts.
Kind regards
Mrs Margaret Maher
Prep Classroom Teacher