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Class Learning Updates

Please see this page for updates on the latest learning that has been happening in our Prep classrooms!

NUMEracy

Week 8-9

Over the past two weeks, our Prep students have been actively engaged in learning about 2D shapes, patterns, and counting collections.

In numeracy, students have been creating, copying, and extending patterns using different manipulatives. We have unpacked the different types of patterns that we can make (AB, AAB, AABB, ABC, ABAC etc). They have now moved on to designing their own patterns using the resources provided, developing their problem-solving and reasoning skills.

In our shape exploration, students have been identifying and locating shapes in their environment, making connections to real-world objects. They have also played fun partner games like "Heads Up," where they held a shape card on their head and guessed the shape based on clues.

Throughout these activities, students have been sharing their ideas, problem-solving, and building confidence in their mathematical thinking. It has been a fortnight filled with learning, exploring, and exciting discoveries!

Students enjoyed identifying 2D shapes in their environment and creating a shape monster

Students used shapes cut outs to create their own shape monster .

They explained by sharing what shapes they chose to create their own monster

Students made their own pattern with biscuts cut outs of different shapes

Literacy

Weeks 8-9

During weeks 8 and 9, students worked on strengthening their sentence structure by focusing on the key elements of a sentence, including the "who" and "what doing." They practiced recalling events in order, paying close attention to the actions and feelings of characters. As part of this, they made text-to-self connections, relating their own experiences to the events and emotions in the texts they read. This helped students understand how to build clear, simple sentences that accurately describe events.

Students also explored the five senses to make their writing more detailed. They learned to describe experiences by focusing on what they can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. In their writing tasks, students reflected on sensory experiences like their time at the beach or at the movies and practiced using descriptive words to capture these moments. This helped expand their vocabulary and improve their ability to communicate their thoughts clearly.

In phonics, students have continued to consolidate their knowledge with SATPIN. They have been using these sounds to build words with 3 or more letters. This week also saw students explore the purpose of plurals and how adding the letter 's' to a noun can change the meaning from one to more than one. EG: tin --> tins

Directed Discovery

Weeks 6-7

Discovery time in a student's first year at ACPS allows them to engage in a wonderfully rich discovery, play-based program built on students learning through social play, their own curiosities, and designing, making and building. Our teachers guide and question when needed, providing the foundation for oral language development and focus on developing students to be curious thinkers, collaborators, contributors, questioners, self-managers and researchers.

‘A child’s play is not simply a reproduction of what he has experienced, but a creative reworking of the impressions he has acquired’ Vygotsky

NUMEracy

Week 6-7

This fortnight in Numeracy, our Prep students have been building on their number knowledge by developing key skills in sequencing numbers. They have been learning to order numbers, identify what comes before and after, and represent numbers using a variety of hands-on materials. Students used unifix cubes and drawings to match quantities to numbers, helping to strengthen their understanding of number concepts.

Alongside our number work, we also began exploring shapes! Students enjoyed tracing different shapes to become familiar with their features. We also introduced tangrams, which provided a fun and interactive way to explore how shapes can fit together to create new pictures.

It has been wonderful to see the students engaged in their learning, using hands-on resources to build their confidence in numeracy. We look forward to continuing our mathematical discoveries in the coming weeks!

Students sequenced numbers from 0 to 20 on a sentence strip to strengthen their counting skills

Students explored basic 2D shapes and learnt about their properties

students used the 2D shapes to fill the tangram. It helped students recognize and identify different 2D shapes e.g triangles, rectangles and understand their properties

Students used the tangram shapes to create a shape from the tangram mat

Literacy

Weeks 6-7

During weeks 6 and 7 students continued their literacy unit on recounts, further exploring how to recount events clearly and in sequence. The students focused on making connections to the texts they read, particularly identifying the who and what doing in the story. They worked on understanding how these details help them retell an event accurately.

In their reading focus, students learned to make connections between their own experiences and the stories they read. They practiced identifying key elements in texts, like the main characters and the actions they were doing, to help with comprehension. In writing, the students began generating ideas to recall and recount events. They shared their ideas through images and connected these visuals to the shared texts they read in class. Students worked on expanding their vocabulary to retell events in a detailed and engaging way, using words that best described what was happening.

In phonics, students have explored the sounds SATPIN and have begun building CV and CVC words like it, sat, pat etc. They have also been working hard at forming the letters correctly and write words containing these sounds.

Literacy

Week 5

This week saw students begin their first literacy unit - Recounts. To engage the students in this genre, they participated in various hands on activities. They were able to explore and unpack the different action verbs they used during the experience, and have a go at talking about and drawing about these events. Some of these experiences included:

making and flying paper planes
exploring the different school playgrounds
making playdough

Participating in the experiences allowed students the opportunity to share what they did with their peers both orally and through images.

This week also saw students establishing their phonics routines. During this time they will be explicitly taught the sounds letters make, their formation, and how to use these sounds to make and read words. The focus letters have been /s/ and /a/. The letter /a/ has been very tricky for students, so feel free to practise this at home.

learning to Learn

Weeks 2-4

What a fun start to the year! During the first few weeks of school, the foundation students engaged in the Learning to Learn program. This program kickstarts their learning and sets them up for success in the school environment.

In the first two days we had lots of fun getting to know the areas of the school and finding our way around. We also played lots of games to help us learn more about each other and start building strong relationships with our peers and teachers.

Once we were comfortable in our learning environment and started making friends, we were able to jump straight in to learning about our school values: Respect, Responsibility, Teamwork and Achievement. This led to exploring our classroom expectations and becoming familiar with daily routines and our SWPBS (School wide positive behaviour strategies).

Next we focussed on our Emotional and Social capabilities by learning about our emotions and how to manage them. This included the Zones of regulation, feelings scale, calming strategies and ways to ask for help. We investigated different types of problems (Ant/small problems and Elephant/big problems) and listed the people we can seek for help when faced with a challenge.

Every Monday, we have a community meeting that gives us the opportunity to celebrate our class and focus on our Gotchya goals.

Students have been doing amazing at showing our school value of 'responsibility' when lining up.

Students built an emotional scale to help describe how they were feeling.

Creative drawings are a must in Prep. Here students are drawing their dream house.

Students learnt about the importance of having a growth mindset when faced with challenges.

Here is an example of all the learning to learn shown by our prep classes. Anchor charts are great because we constantly refer back to them throughout the year.

Numeracy

This week, we kicked off our maths learning in the Prep Cohort! 🎉 We focused on practising our counting skills using a variety of hands-on materials. Students enjoyed counting counters, Unifix cubes, and teddies, helping them build confidence in their number recognition and counting abilities. It was wonderful to see their excitement as they explored numbers through fun, engaging activities!

We also learned about the days of the week. The students had a great time sequencing the days in order and talking about what we do on each day. It was a fantastic week of learning! 😊✨

Students sequenced days of the week by creating a days of the week flower

Students were enaged and excited to share their learning with their peers

Students used counters to practise their counting skills

Students' particpation in counting counters was astounding

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