Prep Term Overview
To all our wonderful Prep families,
Welcome to term 3!
Reading
In reading, students will focus on comprehension strategies, inferring, visualising, making connections and monitoring. Students will explore visualising when reading by making a picture or movie in their minds of what is happening in a text. Students will continue to practise making text to self-connections with the text's characters, events or settings, and inferring character feelings and traits using pictures as well as what characters say and do. Students will practise using strategies to monitor their reading by asking ‘does that sentence make sense?’ and re reading the text if it does not. Students will continue to summarise texts by describing the beginning, middle and end of a fiction text or explaining what a non-fiction text is about. Students will continue to practise sharing their thoughts about texts by identifying their favourite events or characters, or facts they found interesting in non- fiction texts.
Following on from last term, students will build on and apply their knowledge of letter sound relationships when solving unknown words in texts.
Writing
The Writer’s Traits of Conventions, Word Choice, Ideas and Presentation will be explored and investigated over the term. There will be a focus on writing more detailed sentences with an emphasis on word choice by using the description bubble. For Presentation, students will explore the different ways to present their writing through images, symbols and performance. Students will continue to develop their ideas into written or drawn texts taking inspiration from their everyday lives. Students will continue to develop their 5-star writing, focusing on stretching sounds in words, using their DCC words, using finger spaces, including a capital letter at the start of each sentence, and ending the sentence with punctuation. Students will continue to practise their weekly SMART Spelling word and sentence of the week. Through the SMART spelling word of the week students will be introduced to new cued articulation gestures, these gestures will support students to focus in on the sounds (phonemes) they’re hearing in words when they write.
Numeracy
In numeracy, students will focus on giving statements and gestures to describe location. They will practise giving and receiving directions from their peers. Students will continue to explore data and statistics through asking yes or no questions and representing their answers in graphs. Students will expand their understanding of 2D shapes and 3D objects by comparing their common and distinctive features to objects in their environment. We will use objects in our environment to compare length, mass and capacity. Students will deepen their understanding of numbers 0-20 by matching objects to each number, identifying more and less and placing these in order.
Inquiry
In Inquiry, students will engage in a 2 week inquiry cycle ‘Our Land, Our Stories’ exploring Indigenous Australian culture. Prep students will be investigating storytelling and will integrate the learning through Reading, Writing, Mathematics and Social and Emotional Learning areas. We will focus on the questions: How do people use symbols to tell stories and share experiences? Students will have the opportunity to explore storytelling in different ways whilst exploring aboriginal perspectives. Additionally, students will attend an excursion to the Melbourne Museum, where they will explore the Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural centre and it’s Indigenous gardens, making connections to their learning at school. Sharing the planet:Students will study what places are like over time and what makes them special or unique. They will explore their feelings about special places, and the wider importance of places to people and how places can be cared for.
Social and Emotional Learning
In Social and Emotional Learning, students will continue to practise the school rules of being Safe, Respectful and Striving for Excellence. Students will be prompted to ‘do turtle’ when they’re feeling upset. Through the PATHS program, Turtle will support students to learn about self-control, sharing and friendship. Students will also be encouraged to problem solve and be active in asking for help when they need it from teachers.
Ways to Help Your Child At Home:
Home Reading - Please ensure that your child is reading every night at home and talking to a family member about the book. Please see your child’s homegroup teacher if you are having trouble accessing Reading Eggs or Wushka. During nightly reading, we encourage you to practise your child’s DCC words that will be sent home in their blue homework folders.
Learning Goals - Your child’s individualised learning goals are listed on Compass. There is a reading goal, a maths goal, a writing goal and an Inquiry or SEL goal for your child. Please read these and support your child by going through the suggested strategies to help at home. These goals are changed every three weeks, and you will also be informed of your child’s achievement of these goals. If you have any questions regarding your child’s goals, please organise a meeting with your child’s teacher.
Excellence Hub - Your child’s reading goal will be accompanied by an excellence hub video. This video will be a short strategy made by a teacher and selected individually for your child to support their learning at school. These videos can currently be accessed through Seesaw.