Literacy

Writing

This term, our children explored and created their own narrative pieces of writing. We introduced the 'Ideas Notebook' as a place for children to keep all their creative thoughts. Each week our children were given the opportunity to add ideas for characters, settings, problems and solutions to their notebook, to help spark creativity. They used music, movie clips, books and discussions to generate ideas for their writing.

Children also participated in fortnightly 'Warm Writes', which gave them the chance to put all their ideas into a story. Some of the prompts they wrote about were 'I couldn't  believe what I was seeing...' and 'If I was the Prime Minister for a day...' 

Reading

In Term One, we introduced the CAFE approach into our reading workshops. We introduced reading strategies such as choosing a 'good fit book' and 'making a mental image', and focused on using some of these to improve reading comprehension and accuracy.

We also explored a range of fictional texts, and enjoyed their weekly library sessions.

Phonics

Our spelling program has played a large role in the children's success in reading and spelling this term. We have introduced four spelling rules and practised segmenting and blending words to improve reading accuracy. We also introduced marking challenges, which gives our children more visual cues to assist them in decoding unknown words.