Foundation News

What a Term!

10 wonderful weeks that we've spent establishing and developing relationships and routines within Foundation.  It's been a pleasure to get to know your child and help them on their learning journey.  As your child continues to learn so do I! After a very informative curriculum day, staff learnt  lots about effective formative assessment strategies through the lens of questioning.  I'm looking forward to incorporating many new strategies in my practice with the intention to have your child think more deeply about tasks and, essentially, grow as a learner.

Thanks to all our families for making an effort to keep up to date with parent permissions, absences and payments online. This is hopefully working well for you and your family.  It's certainly much more easier from a school perspective minus all that paperwork.  

In preparation for Term 2, week one is a 3 day week! We begin on Tuesday 23rd and Thursday 25th is ANZAC day.   In week 2, we have our open day which we run as a TWILIGHT SESSION! School hours are 12pm to 6.30pm.  It's a normal school day just with a time shift. The students love it! Please join us for dinner and a special assembly at 5.20pm.  More details to follow.

We finished on a high with our school disco last Friday night and today with our Easter Bonnet Parade and Buddy Easter Egg Hunt.  Check out our school facebook page for all the buddy photos.

Parent Support

We are very grateful for the parents that have offered their time to come into the classroom and help with reading.  We are seeking more parent help on a Wednesday at 2.30pm to ensure our PMP is still able to run.  This is our Perceptual Motorskills Program which is run with our PE teacher, Jacob Wright, in the hall each week.  The gross motor skill development is crucial for students in their first year of school.  If you can help out with this we would love to hear from you! Thank you in advance.

As students begin school life they have many skills and behaviours of their social development to learn about.  When students experience emotions and certain situations they can tend to react physically but not maliciously.  We have a couple of students that have been pushing in line and hitting others when they want to express themselves.  We are working closely with students and their families to support them and teach them positive ways to interact with others.  We do encourage you to use consistent language with your child regarding our school values - excellence, resilience and respect.  Encouraging your child to use their voice and follow our STOP, WALK, TALK routine would be a great support.

Again, we thank you for your patience and understanding.

Core Business...

Much of our reading focus has been around students making connections to what they are reading.  It's so important for students to discuss books with others.  Students have been activating their schema (prior knowledge) and sharing experiences and situations that relate to what they have read or been read.  When having discussions with your child about a book, ask them "what in the book makes you think that?" or "how do you know that?" Here are a few snaps of us collaborating through our book discussions and engaging in role plays.

Writing has been something we've needed lots of resilience with!  Students have engaged in what good writers do.  They have practised writing their ideas with writing seeds (images).  We have been learning to write and have a go! Not prioritise the attention to detail  just yet but to get our ideas down on paper.  Students have knowledge of magic words and some phonemes - s, m, c, t, p, g, a, o.  We are working to develop our reading skills so they work in the context of writing too.  Each child has a writing goal - could be writing their name correctly with an upper case letter at the start and the rest in lower case letters.  Either way we will be uploading writing goals to SeeSaw.

If there is something your child would like to do on the holidays..... write letters to family members, write easter cards or invitations.  Many students need support with their pencil grip and developing their writing knowledge of letters and sounds.  I will send some activities home with students for the holidays. 

Maths has seen students further develop their counting skills up to 20.  Some students are finding the teen number sequence challenging so this will remain a learning goal.  This week we have explored 2D shapes.  Students have been busy classifying, sorting and naming basic shapes: circle, square, rectangle, triangle and a rhombus. 

Friendly Reminders

- There are still students that have jumpers UNNAMED.  We understand your frustration when they go walkabout but it makes it very difficult to return them without a name.  Please check your child's jumper.  As we experience cooler weather, please name jackets and coats too - thank you.

- Nail polish and jewellery are not a part of our uniform policy.  As cute as they look can you please ensure your child doesn't wear either of these to school.

- We would be grateful for donations of tissue boxes in Term 2.  We've seen the best of the summer months and the colds are upon us...... not to mention the nose pickers are season campaigners!

- Library is on a Monday so please can students bring a library bag that they can regularly borrow with.

- We have school banking every WEDNESDAY.  If you would like your child to have the opportunity to learn about money and saving we encourage you to grab a pamphlet from our classroom.

Happy Holidays & Happy Easter

Wishing everyone a relaxing few weeks with your families. 

Looking forward to more good times in week 2 - see you on TUESDAY 23rd April.