Classroom Update

Greetings from the Foundation room. It is hard to believe that we are almost halfway through Term 3 already. 

What an exciting start to the term with a visit to the Performing Arts Centre to see the Gruffalo’s Child which was thoroughly enjoyed by all the children. For many, the first trip on a bus was definitely a highlight of the day along with sitting in the ‘BIG’ comfortable seats in the theatre. 

Our Religious Education unit this term is based around getting to know Jesus. We have reflected on what we know about Jesus and spent time looking at how he was born and how he grew up in his childhood. The children loved making connections between Jesus’ life and their own. Over the next few weeks we look deeper into specific Bible stories about Jesus such as; Jonah and the Whale, Jesus Walks on Water, Jesus Calms the Storm and Noah’s Ark. These stories will help us to develop a deeper understanding of who Jesus was and what he did to help others. 

This term in Literacy we have been using mentor texts to help develop our understanding of reading. We have been learning about making connections when reading new books; text to self connections, text to text connections and text to world connections. It has been lovely to see the children share their connections while reading picture story books such as The Kissing Hand, The Lion Inside and Giraffes can’t Dance. 

Running our Sounds-Write program continues and over the next few weeks we are learning about words that have double letters that make one sound such as ll in full, zz in fuzz, ss is miss and ff in huff. The Foundation children have become very proficient at writing 3 letter CVC words such as fox, tax, yes, web and this week we are enjoying racing against the clock each day to see how many words we can write. 

During Maths we are learning all about subtraction and applying this to real life situations. This includes things such as; “I had 10 M&M’s and my sister ate 6, how many do I have left?”. We have also loved our ‘Skittle subtraction’ when we get to eat our skittles as we subtracted them during Maths time. We have also been exploring how to gather data by interviewing our friends and asking them questions and recording their answers. 

For our Inquiry unit of work this term we are looking at 'Fairness and Friendship' with a focus on making and keeping good friends. In class we recently made our ‘cakes of friendship’ putting into our recipe all the ingredients that make a good friend. This topic is increasingly important in the coming years as we settle into the school environment and work to develop and maintain positive and healthy friendships with our peers. Over the coming weeks we will be looking at both the importance of rules and ways and the way in which to accept differences of opinions amongst our friendships as we work and play. 

Finally this term, we welcome into the Foundation classroom Mrs Kristy Eames. Kristy is providing additional learning support to the children in our room and we are thrilled to have her and hope that her time at Our Lady’s is happy and fulfilling.   

Thank you for your continued support of our Foundation children on their learning journey.

Mrs. Dayman, Mrs. Kirby, Helen and Kristy.