Term 3 Week 9

Hello,

We hope that you all had a lovely family day for Father's Day.

There are a few events this week that will hopefully assist with engagement and motivation.

Monday 7th September - First Aid in Schools

Nurse Cecile has organised for St John's Ambulance to do the presentations that they would normally do in the classroom online. In the past, it has focused on what to do in an emergency and is very suitable for this age group. It goes over how to determine if someone is asleep or needs help and how to ring 000. Nurse Cecile has organised for each class to have their own session that will go for about an hour including question time.

Your child's teacher will send out the Zoom links and they are also attached to the message on Compass.

Friday 11th September - Carnival

This Friday we will be moving away from our regular daily structure and having a carnival where the Preps will be completing different kinds of activities to earn points for their house. We encourage them to wear their house polo shirts on the day or to dress up in their house colour. Your child's house is the colour next to their photo on Compass.

Danielle currently has a student teacher doing a placement with her. This week rather than seeing Danielle's name on activities you will see Cynthia's. Cynthia is preparing lessons under Danielle's guidance.

Codes

This week we are introducing two new codes. On Monday and Tuesday, we will learn wh ‘w’ – 2 letter and then on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday the new code will be 'ed' which makes three sounds 'ed, d and t'. We will explain that it is found at the end of a word and make the word something we have done in the past however this is a rule that will be later ‘boot camped’ in more detail.

This week we introduce a new rule to boot camp - 'c will say it’s second sound ‘s’ if the next letter is e, i or y’, the following week we will learn - g MAY say its second sound /j/ if the next letter is e, i or y. There will be a story (Gentle Cindy Giant Cedric) to help them tune into this rule. All rules can be used when reading and spelling however for this rule we are going to use the reading tools.

Literacy

This week in literacy we will begin by focusing on a story to help the children tune into the new bootcamp rule that ‘c’ makes its second sound ‘s’ when followed by an 'e, i or y'. The children will create their own Gentle Cindy.

We will continue our focus on characters in books with a focus on characters' thoughts and feelings. Very often when asked questions about a character children will respond with physical traits, we are wanting them to look deeper into what type of person the character is and what the character is thinking and feeling. This can require children to look at what is happening in the story and put it together with their own experience. This thinking about the text is important to develop a deeper understanding about what they have read.

The focus on high frequency words will continue. The benefit to your children’s reading and writing when knowing these words as well as their own name is significant. The activity this week will continue to focus on using these words in writing. If your child can read the first one hundred words the next step for their learning is to master the spelling of these, sometimes very tricky, words.

At the end of the week we will concentrate on the new codes learnt during the week. As the reading tools used during the week are focusing on the bootcamp rule it is important to reinforce new codes. Applying the codes is a contributor to remembering the codes.

Numeracy

Our new focus for numeracy this week is Time. We will be developing our use of the terminology around the units of measurement for Time. This includes minutes, hours, days and months. It is important that we ensure that our Preps are able to use this terminology and that it becomes embedded within their vocabulary. Each day this week the activity will focus on a different unit of measurement for time. The first activity is a movie and a quiz to get them starting to think about this language.

The curriculum expectation is that the Preps can recite the days of the week by the end of the year. As many of our Preps can already do this, we are providing them with opportunities to learn to recite the months of the year. If your child, is unable to recite the days of the week you could help them practise this. If we were at school, we would also be giving them opportunities to make links between the day of the week and what occurs on that day. For examples, “we have Italian on Thursday”. At the moment this is challenging to reinforce as the days are all quite similar. We will resume practising this next term when we return.

Something that is not a curriculum requirement but that Preps like to know, is their birthday. They love to be able to say that off-by-heart. If your child doesn’t, that is something else you might like to have them practise.

Unit of Inquiry

This week students will begin a new unit of inquiry “How the World Works”. Students will explore the concept of cycles and the idea of continuous change. Students will begin the unit by learning to identify features of living and nonliving things. They will examine various life cycles of different animals and the factors that affect their change. This is a scientific unit where students are given the opportunity and skills to create personal inquiries. Our student teacher Cynthia with support from Miss Danielle will be delivering the lessons on Seesaw.

Well being

We know that many of you are concerned about your child’s progress and whether they are where they need to be. When we say that we are really impressed with how the Preps are doing this is not empty rhetoric. You are all doing a great job and the vast majority of the Preps are where they need to be or working beyond the expectation. An example of this is subtraction. The Victorian Curriculum states that Preps need to be able to model subtraction using concrete materials (pasta, Lego blocks, counters). The year 1 curriculum states that they represent and solve simple addition and subtraction using a range of strategies. We work on addition and subtraction with our Preps because they are ready for it and we don’t want to limit them to only what the Prep curriculum states. However, it is not a requirement.

I write this because I want to reassure you that you don't need to worry that they won't be ready for year 1. They haven’t had the exposure to some things such as, group work skills, but we will work on those next term when we return to face-to-face teaching. Their knowledge of the basics is good and will provide a good foundation when they go into Y1 next year.

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 17 · 06 Sep 2020

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