Foundation Unit

Congratulations to all our runners on Cross Country day! It was so wonderful to see everyone having a go and joining in on something new and exciting at school. 

We have been so impressed with the progress students have been making in their reading. Thank you to all those families who are making regular home reading a priority! We are continuing to work on using the initial sounds in words, along with picture cues, to read new words. As you would know, students have been sent home with their golden words. These words are the top 12 most regularly used words in books. We encourage you to practise these words in whatever creative manner you can at home! We are also working on reading and writing these words at school and identifying them in books we read. 

This week in Reading, students have continued to develop their ability to point to each word as they read. We have also been working on using our knowledge of letters and sounds as well as the picture clues to read new words by making the first sound of the word and looking at the picture to see what would make sense. 

In Writing, students have been working on recording the initial sounds of words and we have all had lots of fun making class books linked to the texts we have been reading together. This week we read Mrs Wishy-Washy’s Tub by Joy Cowley and students were then given a jumbled sentence that they had to cut and paste in the correct order and complete by having a go at writing the name of their chosen animal before illustrating a picture to match. The Foundation teachers have been blown away with the growth we have witnessed in this area so far. Here are some examples of the wonderful work students have been producing:

Students have also been practising their letters and sounds. This fortnight students have been working on the following letters and sounds s, a, t, p, i, n, m, d, g, o, c, k. We have begun practising writing these letters and creating words with these letters too. We encourage you to help your child practice their letter sounds at home as well as this will greatly assist with their reading and writing. 

In Maths, we have continued to explore numbers and how they can be represented in lots of different ways. They have been exposed to drawings, blocks, tally marks, number lines, digits and many more. 

Once again, it is great to see so many students bringing in the reader bags daily and reading at home. Please remember to read at least 4 times a week with your child and record this in their reading log book. We have already noticed a real difference in the confidence of our regular home readers. We already have some students who have achieved their first reading milestone of 25 nights which is fantastic!

Foundation Teachers

Courtney Lawrence/Alison Meggs, Sally Quinn, Libby Cannon