Last week of Term 3 flew by! We started the week in the classrooms consolidating their learning topics for the term. Thursday came around quickly and we were off to Chesterfield Farm for an excursion! What an incredible day exploring farm life and animals. Students had the opportunity to feed and pat animals, attend a Sheepdog and Cow milking show, and learn all about baby animals. This excursion linked wonderfully to students non-fiction work in literacy, where they have been investigating facts about farm animals. It was a fantastic day had by all, with many stories to share over the holiday break. Please find photos from the excursion on the Gallery tab.

For our last day of term, students were rewarded for filling their Mitchcoin token bucket for 'school movie'. Prep students enjoyed watching The Bee Movie, before going off to their Mitcham Mates classes where they continued to build friendships and supportive connections to students from Prep to Grade 6. Their growing confidence in this setting has been inspiring 💚

Over the holidays, families are encouraged to keep up the reading routine by reading and practising their tricky words each day. You might even like to visit your local library or use other rich texts at home for students to explore. 

Practise each day is vital! However, we know that tricky words can be a bit repetitive reading off a sheet and practising. Please use any of the activities listed in the picture to the left to practise tricky words too.

📚 Literacy

This week in InitiaLit, we have been exploring the /oo/ sound, like in 'moon', 'soon' and 'zoo'. This is a more complex spelling pattern as the /oo/ sound can be pronounced a little differently in words such as 'book' and 'look'. As we review student learning from this term, their recall of our tricky words and sounds has become more much fluent and transferrable. This demonstrates their growing ability and confidence as we step into the final term of Prep!

We now know 35 phonemes and graphemes:

/m/, /s/, /t/, /a/, /p/, /i/, /f/, /r/, /o/, /c/, /d/, /h/, /e/, /n/, /g/, /l/, /k/, /u/, /b/, /j/, /w/, /ck/, /ll/, /ff/, /ss/, /sh/, /kw/, /ee/, /ch/, /v/, /ks/, /y/, /wh/, /th/ and /oo/

📖 Reading

In Reading this week, we finalised their exploration into non-fiction texts, including identifying captions, content pages, page numbers, types of images and relevant information. It provided a chance for students to share the facts they have learnt across the last few weeks and determine fact or fiction! We celebrated the unit by creating class non-fiction books on farm animals and creating paper plate animals 🐄🐓🐷

✏️ Writing

This week in Writing, we looked toward our excursion at Chesterfield Farm. Students began the week by working with the teacher to develop a descriptive sentence around what they are excited to see on their excursion. As the week continued, students were encouraged to demonstrate their 'Ready Writer' skills and celebrate their knowledge of rich sentences to develop their own sentences about what they might experience at the farm. 

✨ Ask at home:

• What is the cued articulation action for /oo/?

• What words contain that diagraph /oo/?

• Are there ever times when a word doesn't contain the vowel 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o' or 'u'? What about 'y'?

• What are the things you would see on a page of a non-fiction book?

• Can you tell me what you were looking forward to doing at the farm? What surprised you?

• How do 'Ready Writers' work? Can you show me?

✨ Practise at home:

• Find and draw a 'book', 'hook', 'spoon', 'food', 'roof' and 'foot' from inside your house!

• Play "Fact or Fiction?" Give your child a statement and ask them to decide whether it is a fact or something that has been made up.

• Get your child to draw and write a page of non-fiction work. Encourage them to show you all of the features that make it non-fiction.

• Practise reading and writing the 35 sounds and graphemes we have learned so far, as well as their Tricky Words.

• When reading together, encourage your child to look for familiar sounds, diagraphs and Tricky Words within the books they encounter.

Students are able to borrow one book from the Library each week. However, they can only do so if they bring their library bag. Please ensure you child remembers to bring their library bag to school on their allocated library day (shown below) to avoid disappointment. 

If your child has a specialist class in the afternoon, that teacher will take the students out to the basketball court for dismissal.  

Please note- Timetables change regularly for interruptions such as swimming, NAPLAN, camps, events etc. Teachers will update the website of any changes.