Literacy

Reading:

This term our major focus is on reading while remote learning. We are expecting students to engage with text everyday while online and away from the screen. We will do our best to send home a range of activities with online recorded texts for ‘read to’ sessions. We are also sending home at least 4 readers and are encouraging students to use Sunshine Online as a resource for reading at a targeted level for your child.

Remember to continue to practice sight words- reading or writing the words and let us know if your child needs lists to keep learning new words.

After your child has finished reading remember to ask them questions to build on their comprehension. Eg. What happened at the start of the book? How do you think the character felt? What happened at the end of the story?

As we continue our guided reading sessions this term online we will explicitly model using different strategies to read and decode unknown words at point of need. It is important to not rely on just one strategy but to use a variety of strategies to support their reading. As the students are reading they will think about: does that word look right, sound right, and does it make sense?

Smart spelling:

This semester we will continue with our daily routine of smart spelling.

We will continue looking at the sounds the letters make when in a word for example ‘c/ar ‘car’ in particular the digraph ‘ar’ .

We will continue to look at common digraphs (2 letter spelling choices such as wish , the, say )

and trigraphs ( 3 letter spelling choices w ere , are ) that we find in our take home books and sight words.

Writing:

This semester we will be focussing on trying to take more risks in our writing, experimenting with sound and letter combinations to make words independently. More specifically, we are looking at sentences, what makes up a sentence and how we can make our sentences more interesting by adding adjectives and connectives such as and, because, so etc.

The students will continue practising leaving spaces between words and adding simple punctuation (capital letters and full stops). We are continually building the students’ self-esteem and skills to become an independent and confident writer.

We are encouraging students to write words by recording the letter to match the sounds they hear, attempting to write initial, middle and end sounds in unfamiliar words.

Speaking and Listening:

This term while online we will also be encouraging students to identify and practise the following skills:

‘What does a Good Speaker do?’

- Full Sentences: speak using full sentences

- Body Language: keep still in front of an audience

- Speed: speak at a good speed, not too fast or slow

- Volume: speak loud enough to be heard by everyone

- Sharing: share my thoughts and ideas.

‘What does a Good Listener do?’

- Body Language: keep still while the speaker is talking

- Eye Contact: make eye contact with the speaker

- Listening: listen to the speaker and don’t talk to others

- Ask Questions: ask questions to find out more information.

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