Hello,

This Wednesday will be the Preps first Wednesday at school. This will mean four consecutive days at school and then five the following week. Experience tells us that the Preps are going to become very tired towards the end of the coming weeks. It is much harder for our Preps to concentrate, learn and be resilient when they are tired. In previous years, parents have found it beneficial to reduce the number of after school activities, especially towards the end of the week, and to adhere to regular bedtimes. The Prep teachers take this fatigue into consideration when they are completing their lesson planning.

To celebrate our first Wednesday at school we have the Teddy Bear's Picnic. Thank you very much to the parents who consented promptly to ensure their child will be able to participate. A reminder that we will not be at school to collect lunches from the canteen so please send along lunch with your child.

W2R

This week we have learnt the codes 'o' and 'h'. Students recognise that the letter 'o' makes three sounds (e.g. o like orange, o like ocean and o like do). The letter 'h' makes one sound (h like happy) and it is a soft (unvoiced) sound. Next week we will be focusing on two new codes 'c' and 'g'. Students will learn that both these codes make two sounds (c like cat and c like circus) and (g like guitar and g like giraffe). Although students will be exposed to the different sounds each letter makes, we will mainly focus on the first and most common sound for each letter.

You can support your child by revising the previous sounds we have taught. You may like to ask your child if they can tell you a word with one of these sounds at the beginning or for a challenge, at the end. For example, puppy or mop.

To support students reading and writing, we are introducing students to the Reading and Spelling Tools. Reading tools helps students to decode and blend sounds to read words. Spelling Tools support students to write words through first listening to sounds and then code matching to its letter.

Phonemic Awareness

We are continuing to learn about rhyme and students have been creating their own raps using rhyming words. The Preps listened to Dr Seuss's story, 'Fox in Socks' that was in a rap. We had lots of fun singing together and spotting all the rhyming words. It can be found here.

We have also been practising how to blend compound words and isolate beginning and final sounds of words.

Literacy

We will be continuing to respond to texts in our Reader's Notebook. Through shared reading students will track their thinking and build their comprehension skills. Their responses will have a focus on characters in a story.

Handwriting

We will continue focusing on both the uppercase/capital and lowercase letter formation for the codes learnt.

Numeracy

We are focusing on simple patterns that might be based on different colours or shapes. This is important because it prepares the Preps for identifying patterns in numbers. The Preps are identifying patterns, creating patterns and extending patterns created by someone else.

You may like to get your child to find patterns within the environment such as in fences and brickwork. Building with Lego in another opportunity to make patterns with colours and different sized pieces.

The Preps have been collecting simple data by answering questions with a 'yes' or a 'no'. They are counting the two groups using 1:1 correspondence. We have been reinforcing the terminology 'more' and 'less' to describe the two groups.

We are also developing the Preps capacity to sort and classify objects into groups. They are going to use their cuddly friends after the Teddy Bear's Picnic on Wednesday. For example, they may group the cuddly toys by their colour and then provide each group with a name. This is another early data organisation skill.

Unit of Inquiry

The Preps have been thinking about what it means to be Caring. They listened to a story called 'Have You Filled a Bucket Today?' by Carol McCloud This story discusses how you fill people’s buckets when you are kind, loving and helpful and when you are the opposite you are a bucket dipper. The Preps then discussed scenarios that were bucket filling and bucket dipping. Hopefully they are being bucket fillers at home for you too!

Next week we are discussing strategies to help us when we have a problem. Some scenarios we are focusing on next week are about having worries and what to do if a friend is being bossy.

The Prep team

0A - Kathryn Morrison

kathryn.morrison@education.vic.gov.au

0B - Isabella Maresca

isabella.maresca@education.vic.gov.au

0C - Deb Barden

deborah.barden@education.vic.gov.au

0D - Danielle Palombi

danielle.palombi@education.vic.gov.au

0E - Julie Daniel

julie.daniel@education.vic.gov.au

oD (Teacher of the Deaf) - Krystle Horadam

krystle.horadam@education.vic.gov.au

Prep Fortnightly Snapshot

Issue 2 · 08 Mar 2021

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