Term 3 Week 5

Hello,

Thank you again for all you are doing to support the Prep home learning program. We can see that the Preps are improving, so what you are doing is working.

100 days of Prep

We will be celebrating this milestone on Friday of this week.

Codes

Our new codes for this week are 'wor' as in 'work' and 'ear' as in 'early'. They will be introduced on different days. At this stage of Prep, the expectation would be that the children can recognise them and make the link between the written code and the sound that it makes. This connection will make it easier for them to read the code if they come across it in a text. Knowing when to use it for spelling is more challenging and is something that will be encouraged but not expected.

Thank you to the parents who are filming their child saying the codes from time to time. It is great to see their progress. Many children have automatic recall of not only the first sound but any other sounds the code might make. This is such a great support to their reading and writing.

Literacy

This week for literacy we will continue exploring the importance of Illustrations to support the comprehension of texts. Illustrations give us lots of clues that are often not written in the book and help give us a deeper understanding. We will be looking at books with no words and examine the power of illustrations.

Through practicing the strategy of using the illustrations, this supports different aspects of understanding the text such as, making connections, predicting, visualising, asking questions, summarising and identifying literal and inferential meaning.

We will continue consolidating the codes. As discussed in the codes section this week, we are introducing wor and ear

Don’t forget each week there are three writing tasks on the choice board. We encourage students to have a go at these tasks and send a photo of their writing piece to their teacher.

Numeracy

We continue working with 3D objects. This week our focus is to make some 3D objects from construction materials or with skewers, toothpicks and playdough, plasticine or marshmallows (especially the smaller marshmallows). We will then link to our UoI and look at 3D objects in homes and buildings.

Our number focus will continue to be practising the skill of counting backwards. On Friday as it’s our 100 days of school celebration we ask that students to collect 100 things. Some ideas on what they might be able to collect are 100 pieces of Lego, smarties or M&M’s, pasta, paddy pans, popcorn, toy figures, footy or Pokemon cards, toothpicks, paper clips etc

Unit of Inquiry

Now that the children have been exposed to different types of homes and how climate impacts house design this week they will be using this knowledge to look at the similarities and differences of homes. We will begin with another Little Human Planet showing a home on water and asking children to use what they have learnt to work out which climate the home is in and use the word 'because' to explain their reasoning. They will then move into looking at some Little Human Planet videos that show two contrasting homes, allowing them to make comparisons.

I hope you enjoyed, as much as we did, seeing the children put their knowledge into practice by designing houses for different climates and testing their designs in different weather conditions. Thank you for all your assistance in making our home learning tasks such a huge success.

Well being

Wet and windy days are making it harder for our Preps during lockdown as it is much more challenging for them to use up their excess energy. These can all be found on YouTube.

Cosmic Kids Yoga
Just Dance Kids
Cha Cha Slide Dance
Brain Break - The Learning Station
Exercise, Rhyme and Freeze - Jack Hartmann
Cross the Mid-line - Jack Hartmann

The Prep team

0A - Kathryn Morrison

kathryn.morrison@education.vic.gov.au

0B - Deb Barden

deborah.barden@education.vic.gov.au

0C - Danielle Palombi

danielle.palombi@education.vic.gov.au

0D - Julie Daniel

julie.daniel@education.vic.gov.au

HU - Krystle Horadam

krystle.horadam@education.vic.gov.au

Prep Fortnightly Snapshot

Issue 13 · 09 Aug 2020

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