Teaching and Learning

Teaching and Learning with Ms Barnett

Hello and welcome to Week 8, Teaching and Learning update.

It was fabulous to see our students celebrate Book Week last week by coming to school dressed as their favourite book characters. Throughout the week, students experienced read alouds of some of the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s shortlisted texts. A particular favourite, awarded CBCA for new illustrator, The Boy Who Tried to Shrink His Name, proved an excellent text for our Sound Chart! Can you crack the code?

Book Week comes but once a year, however, students and teachers continue to work tirelessly in all areas of the curriculum. Students in Year One/Two have been using the Sound Chart to support their spelling of tricky words. First, they identify the phonemes (sounds), select a grapheme (spelling choice) and record these graphemes. You may recognise Mr Smith, teacher of 1/2S and character from a great book, ‘Get off the Bus.’ Mr Smith has been very impressed with the grapheme choices by his students, particularly with that challenging word said. There are 3 phonemes, /s/, /e/ and /d/, with the short vowel sound making the word tricky to spell.

Students in 1/2S used their phoneme fist to identify the phonemes and the sound chart to select the graphemes.

Phoneme fist - Said, said, said

/s/ as in sock

/e/ as in said

/d/ as in dog

Congratulations to all our star spellers! If you would like a copy of the sound chart to support your children at home, please let teachers know via student diaries.

Happy reading, writing and spelling!