School of Foundations

What’s Happening in the School of Foundations

The students in K-4 have been engaging in many learning experiences over the past few weeks. Below I have included the Term 2 Overviews for you to have an understanding of what each stage is learning about.

Early Stage 1

Stage 1

Stage 2

Miss Pecnik

Head of School : Foundations K-4

Social Outreach 

St. Luke’s is excited to be partnering with the St. Vincent De Paul Society to reach out to our community members in need. We still have plenty of spots available for students to join our school-based groups. These groups strive to follow the teachings of Jesus as we serve and volunteer at a school and local community level, in various ways where needs appear. 

If this is something you think your child will be interested in, please encourage them to speak to their classroom teacher. 

Keep an eye out to see what our groups will be engaged in as we begin our journey! 

Melinda Rego 

Social Outreach Coordinator 

Early Stage One

English

We have been learning to use our writing skills to inform others. We have been writing about different animals and learning how to write facts about the animal, including using describing words. We have been remembering to: 

• Use our capital letters at the start of the sentence 
• Finger spaces in between words 
• Stretch out unfamiliar words 
• Write words that relate to our animal.

Students have also been participating in a range of literacy activities. These literacy activities help students to practise their sight words, and CVC words and respond to a book that we have been reading in class by retelling the beginning, middle and end of a story. 

Mathematics

Over the past fortnight, students in Kindergarten have been forming equal groups by sharing and counting collections of objects to model multiplication division. Children have been exploring a range of tasks using counters and have been practising using the words: group, share, and equal. Students also have been rehearsing skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s, as well as sharing by 1s. Here are a couple of our recent activities:

Religious EducationOver the past fortnight, students in Kindergarten have been inquiring about our driving question “How can we appreciate others?”. We have been learning about the Good Samaritan and the lessons we can learn from this Bible story about treating others and loving our neighbours. Students have been exposed to the story in different ways and are working on retelling the story. In Kindergarten, we have spoken about the change of the prayer cloth and shared a liturgy together about The Risen Christ. We also celebrated together as a whole school community and appreciated our mothers or mother figures in our lives. 

Physical Education

Students in Kindergarten explored different ways a round ball can move from one position to another. Their task in PE was to discover as many ways as possible with a partner. Some students uncovered rolling, bouncing, kicking and throwing (underarm or overarm). 

Play-Based Learning

Last week, students in Kindergarten began engaging in a play-based learning program that complements their learning throughout the day and across the week. Each day, students participate in a range of specifically designed play pods that encourage the children to discover more about their learning and also understand more about themselves as a learner through the alignment of play experiences with the St Luke’s Pillars of learning. These pillars are indicated below.

Here are some of the play experiences that your child may have participated in over the past week.

Excursion

Last week, Stage 1 went on an excursion to Featherdale Wildlife Park. Due to the weather, only Glinda's Castle & Lion’s Den were able to go on the Excursion. However, Wizard’s World & Tinmen’s Forest will still be going, details about this rescheduled date will follow shortly. 

On the excursion, we saw lots of animals. Stage 1 saw kangaroos, koalas, crocodiles, snakes, lizards, birds, wombats and many more. We even got the chance to do a lesson in the Learning Burrow with one of the Animals Keepers. She taught us lots about some of the animals and even let us pat them. 

Here are some photos of the amazing day we had. 

English

Stage 1 is currently learning to write to inform others. They have been working very hard to write informative sentences using facts and descriptive language. Our focus for our informative writing is animals. We are learning about the appearance, diet and habitat of different animals.  

Mathematics

Stage 1 are learning to count and represent numbers in a multitude of ways. They are currently focusing on recognising the value of two digit numbers, how they can discern numbers that are smaller or larger than other numbers, as well as ordering numbers from smallest to largest. They are also learning mathematical language they can use when reasoning to prove and explain their thinking in response to problems.

Religious Education

Stage 1 are working towards answering the inquiry question ‘How can I know Jesus and  live his teachings?’. So far students have unpacked the driving question by considering what they already know about Jesus and his teachings; as well as questions they have about these concepts. Answering these questions throughout the unit will ultimately assist in clarifying wonderings they have, and in turn provide understanding of what these concepts mean in the context of real life situations. 

Stage Two 

Excursion

Last week, Stage headed to Western Sydney Parklands to launch our Science unit about forces! The rangers met us with enthusiasm. Our day was filled with experiments and activities to help us learn about forces. There was a dry ice experiment where we froze bubbles. Other hands- on activities included billy cart races, making rockets and launching them using air pressure, tug-o-war and slime (oobleck) making! 

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English

Stage 2 has been learning to infer as they read to gain a deeper understanding of what the author is really saying. We have been looking at making inferences from pictures, short texts and whole stories. We read the book called The Stranger to identify the clues about what made the stranger stranger. We then used what we already knew to make some inferences about who the stranger was. Here is some of Rishana’s great thinking!

In writing, we are developing our understanding of how authors write to entertain through Narratives. We are creating a way to make our writing more engaging by using various language features such as onomatopeia, alliteration, similes and metaphors. We look forward to sharing some of our narratives later in the term. We are encouraging our Stage 2 students to read more so that they will have additional examples and ideas to draw from. 

Mathematics

Stage 2 has been learning to identify two-dimensional shapes and what sides and vertices look like and are. Once we had looked at the two-dimensional shapes we started to investigate how they were formed and how some had the same amount of sides and vertices and some were different. This led into a conversation about angles and what angles looked like in our world. We spent some time going around our spaces identifying and drawing what these angles looked like. 

Religious Education

Our Stage 2 classes have been learning about how our free will contributes to human flourishing in our faith community. We have been focusing on what free will is and what it looks like and how our choices and decisions affect others. With free will our choices or decisions can either be positive or negative. We have been looking at how that looks in real life through scenarios and the possible consequences of either choice.