Glen Waverley Primary School Prep Newsletter

Welcome to Prep Term 4, 2020!

Preps will have much to look forward to in Term Four, such as reconnecting with their peers and teachers, re-establishing school routines and the Virtual Prep Prom celebration. It has been pleasing to see the wonderful growth and commitment to learning during Term Three continue into Term Four, with so many learners exhibiting confidence and excitement to be back on site and to build their knowledge and skills.  

 

A gentle reminder to encourage your child to be independent with packing their school bag. 

 

Pack daily checklist:

  • SunSmart hat
  • Drink bottle
  • Lunchbox (Brain food, snack and lunch)
  • Reader bag, Take home book, Diary and Magic Words

Term 4 Reminders

  • 23rd October Public holiday (no attendance)
  • 3rd November Melbourne Cup Public Holiday (no attendance)
  • 11th December Virtual Prep Prom (TBC)
  • 9th  December 2021 Day- Meet your 2021 Teachers
  • 18th December Final Day school dismissal 1.30pm

Reading

In Reading, Prep learners will continue to explore our CAFÉ Whole School Approach to Reading. We will begin with a focus on Accuracy using the strategy ‘backup reread’. By ‘Cross checking’ unfamiliar words, students will develop a deeper understanding of the text. The learners continue to ‘Expand Vocabulary’ by exploring adjectives and verbs. Students will learn to use their prior knowledge to make text-to-self connections and text-to-text connections to make meaning while reading. Each learner has their own personalised reading goal to practise and achieve over Term 4. 

 

What Parents Can Do at Home:  

  • When your child is unable to read a word, encourage them to skip the word and read to the end of the sentence, then reread and figure out the word. Support your child to use the ‘cross-checking’ strategy by asking them to check if an error looks right, sounds right and/or makes sense.
  • Ask your child inferential questions before, during and after reading a book to deepen their understanding of the story.
  • Encourage your child to create a personal dictionary with interesting and new words.

Spelling and Home Learning 

 

In Spelling this term, Preps will recommence their regular LSNCWC sessions with personal spelling words. This will be part of their weekly Home Learning. It is a cyclical process, so it is essential that your child returns their Home Learning books every Friday to assist this process.

As each child’s learning path is unique, Personal Spelling Words could be words misspelt in their writing or Spelling Test, words they are interested in learning derived from our Spelling Inquiry process or Magic Words.

 

 Inquiry 

In Term 4 Inquiry, the students will be looking at the Inquiry question, “Howcan we communicate our emotions?”  The students will develop understanding of Light and Sound through scientific investigations and experiments. They will conduct scientific inquiries into light and sound and apply this to their Virtual Prep Prom performance.  To celebrate the end of the year, Prep Students will participate in a Virtual Prep Prom.  They will explore choreography and participate in song writing as they create a performance that communicates their experience of a year in school for a Prep student during the unique year of 2020.  Students will also participate in creating their own patterns using emotion actions. Design processes will be explored as we develop our costumes and set, as well as rehearsing and preparing our performance.

 

Mathematics 

 

Throughout Mathematics this term, the Prep students will investigate a variety of Mathematical language. We began this investigation through the language of chance including “will happen”, “might happen” and “won’t happen”, as well as language of time including o’clock times and times throughout the day. We will continue this learning by exploring language of measurement including mass and capacity, by comparing two objects and measuring using informal units. This will closely link to our investigation into science experiments in Inquiry. 

 

Towards the end of the term, we will begin to look at concepts in number including sharing, a precursor to concepts of division, and revisiting addition and subtraction problems. We encourage families to continue to reinforce number concepts using the resources provided during learning from home so the students can consolidate their understanding of part-part-whole and whole-part-part.

 

Writing 

Learners will continue to investigate a range of writing genres this term, revisiting Narrative and Recount, as well as exploring Procedure and Poetry for the first time. The VOICES approach will be the lens through which all lessons and personalised learning goals are developed, so that students consistently learn to integrate Voice, Organisation, Ideas, Conventions, Excellent Word Choice and Sentence Fluency strategies into their writing pieces. 

 

To support your child with their writing, you can try these strategies:

  • Encourage your child to read their writing aloud. This will enable them to more easily pick up on and correct errors.
  • Ask your child to plan before they do their writing – they can draw a picture, talk about what they would like to write about with you or use a combination of words and pictures.
  • Support your child to use descriptive language in their writing by asking what characters or objects in their writing look like, sound like, feel like or move like.