Reading

The last 2 weeks, Prep students have learnt the Group 3 sounds! - g, o, u, l, f and b. Look out for the new list stuck into their book of lists!

They have been enjoying listening for the sounds in words and identifying where the sound is within the word, whether the sound is at the beginning, middle or end. They are also starting to learn how to break sounds up in a word and the early stages of blending them back together to read the word. We are continuing to practise our letter formation through unifix blocks, whiteboard writing, water painting, playdough and lots of other fun writing experiences.

Writing

In Writing this past fortnight we have continued exploring all of the fundamental writing skills essential for our little learners to develop their written expression and overall fine motor skills.

As our understanding and recognition of lowercase letters has increased, our focus in this week’s name craft lesson was attempting to copy our name with lowercase letters, capitalising only the first letter in our name. Students started this lesson by tracing over the lowercase letters in their name before then having a go at copying it into the trunk of an autumn tree. For further practise they then wrote single letters in leaves and coloured these in autumn colours.

Later in the week, to strengthen our lowercase letter formation skills and ability to recognise words in sentences, students had a go at tracing and copying sentences.

Following this lesson, we were able to identify the difference between letters, words and pictures, through a sorting activity. This required students to differentiate a letter, word and picture by cutting and pasting them into three sections in their book.

At the end of each week, we practised tracing and writing the sounds we’ve learnt in Reading, including e, h, r and m. These lessons allowed us to strengthen our pencil grip by using the steps - nip, flip and grip.

Maths

This fortnight we have had 2 numeracy focus’ in shape and location.

Students spent the week looking at different closed 2D shapes and their features. We explored the difference between squares and rectangles, alongside the features of a circle and a triangle. We explored these new concepts by building the shapes with blocks, drawing the shapes and making the shapes with playdough. Some students got super creative and drew a whole picture using 1 shape of their choice. We have loved learning about our shapes and can’t wait to point them out in real life scenarios.

Throughout this week we have been learning about positional language. Students have enjoyed exploring how to use the words: in, on, under, next to, in front of, behind when describing where objects are. They have also been having fun playing games that involve travelling through, around, over, forward, backwards and sideways certain things. Students are also beginning to use the language of left and right!

Other

It was fantastic to see so many of our Prep’s dressed in their cultural clothing or orange clothing to help us celebrate Harmony Day on Friday! Students enjoyed sharing something special about their culture and demonstrated our school values of respect and open-minded when listening to their classmates.

Colour Explosion