Hello,

Welcome to the Prep snapshot. This is published each fortnight and is designed to provide you with information about what the upcoming learning goals are for our Prep students. There will also be some suggestions of things that you might like to do at home to reinforce the learning at school.

At any time, if you would like more information, please do not hesitate to get in touch with your child's teacher.

We are looking forward to working with you this year.

A reminder that hats are compulsory from the 1st September until the 30th April. When outside the Preps need to be wearing one of the two designs of Sun Smart hat available from the uniform shop. If you are yet to purchase one, the Legionnaires hats stay on the best when the children are running around and are better with ponytails.

W2R

This week we are learning two new codes, 's' and 'a'. Students will learn that the letter 's' can make two sounds (e.g. s like us and s like husband). They will also explore the letter 'a' and its three sounds (e.g. a like at, a like cake and a like last). Although students will be exposed to the different sounds each letter makes, we will mainly focus on the first and most common sound.

You may like to have your child find things around the house or in the street as you are walking that begin with an 'a' or 's' sound. For example, 'sign' and 'apple tree'.

Phonemic Awareness

This week, we are learning about rhyme repetition and students will practise repeating word pairs, such as 'hot' and 'pot'.

You may like to identify rhyming words with your child in the books that you read to them. The following books are just some that are great for rhyming words:

Dr Seuss
The Hairy Maclary stories
Nick Bland's books
Aaron Blabey's books
Julia Donaldson's books

Literacy

We will be reinforcing the letter sounds through rich picture story books. We will also be focusing on letter formation of both uppercase and lowercase letters. Students will have fun listening and singing along with some traditional nursery rhymes.

Numeracy

This week we will be focusing on counting to 10 and then beyond to allow us to determine where each child's counting skills are at. We will be practising our oral counting and on counting objects using one-to-one correspondence. That means saying one number as they point to each object.

This week the Preps will begin their Specialist lessons. They will be completing a timetable to help them get used to which specialist lessons they have on which days. They will be bringing this time timetable home.

Unit of Inquiry

For the first few weeks our focus will be on students getting to know their class mates. Students will begin to learn each other's names, play circle games and have partner chats to find things in common.

The middle hall space between the Prep classrooms is known as the 'Inquiry Hall'. This space will change as the units of inquiry change. Here our students learn about and research into our units through play. It is also a space where children develop their oral language skills and vocabulary. The Preps will have timetabled sessions here each week.

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

ToD (Teacher of the Deaf) - Krystle Horadam

krystle.horadam@education.vic.gov.au

Prep Fortnightly Snapshot

Issue 24 · 31 Jan 2021

In this issue