Prep/One/Two News

Year Prep/One

What a busy few weeks we have had in the Prep/One room!

The Post Office in our investigations area has been a hit...we have had lots of children practising their writing skills and mailing each other letters. We have also been reading the book “Flat Stanley” about a boy who was literally flattened by a noticeboard and lives his life half an inch thick. He has great adventures getting mailed in an envelope to the other side of America, being used as a kite and catching ‘Art Thieves’. We have a “Flat Stanley” on our way to us from a school in America. When he arrives we will take photos of him all around Loch and send him back with a long letter about his adventures. Our class is planning to send one to a teacher on Christmas Island and each child is going to make their own to send to a relative or friend. Have a chat to your child about who that special person might be! Please bring to school a stamped and addressed envelope to your child’s special person and we will send our Stanley’s at the local post box. Check out “The Flat Stanley Project” by clicking this link: http://www.flatstanleyproject.com

We had a visit down to the kinder on last Wednesday. It was lovely to watch both the Preps and Ones see the Kinder teachers again, and for our children that didn't go to Loch Kinder, they thoroughly enjoyed exploring the gorgeous outdoor learning space at Kinder too before heading inside for lunch.

Wendi and I spent the two previous Wednesdays having home visits with some of the Preps. It was great to see the children in their own homes. Many bedrooms were admired, pets cuddled and gardens and vegie patches explored! It was wonderful to see the children truly shine as they shared special information about themselves. Developing close relationships between home and school has been proven to help children to feel happy, safe and connected to their teachers and thus improving learning outcomes.

In English we have been working on writing letters and cards, the alphabet and our high frequency words. Your child should have a zip lock bag in their book bag with their sight words in it to practise recognising them by sight and spelling them too. We have introduced many sounds this term. Ask your child about ‘lip poppers’, ‘tongue tappers’, ‘tongue scrapers’, ‘lip coolers’ and ‘tongue coolers’. We have been doing lots of reading and alphabet practice too.

In Maths we have been working on place value and how the number system works. We have been counting by 1’s, and 10’s to 100. We have discussed how the tens and ones column works e.g. 2 tens and 7 ones = 27, 1 ten and 5 ones = 15.

During Health sessions we have looked at Growth Mindset and how we learn. We have started the concept of goal setting in English and Maths and setting goals that are relevant to the needs and wants of each individual child. On bullying Day last Friday we made a pledge to “Stop bullying in any way we can” and discussed what constitutes bullying and watched a video of about Allen the Alien. Have a look at the Bullying No Way website: https://bullyingnoway.gov.au/ForKids/Pages/Kids-under-8.aspx

I will be taking 3 days of long service leave Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (the first time in over 20 years!) so if I don’t get to see you Monday I’ll see you all next term!

Have a great holiday!

Natalie and Wendi

Year One / Two

During spelling lessons we have started learning about why we need vowels in our language and how these sound and feel. While reading we are practising sounding out words and are focussing on re-reading words when they don't sound right. In Maths we have been learning about place value, this has included saying, writing as a word and number, writing in expanded notation and making numbers with MAB (blocks). The students have continued to enjoy our health unit about having a growth mindset, and we've continued our discussions about how mistakes are very valuable in the learning process. During our Play is The Way learning we are now working on 'Be Brave- Participate to Progress,' through some fun but challenging games. We refer to this throughout all classroom learning to reinforce the importance of giving all learning a try so that you give yourself an opportunity to improve your skills. 

Mrs Davidge