FOUNDATION

Dear Parents,

This term saw a big improvement in our overall handwriting abilities. Our counting and number recognition grew and the Foundation students should be proud of the effort they put into their work. Remember that over the school break, your child still has access to their Mathletics and Reading Eggs accounts and can keep practising their sight words.

What we have learnt this term:

English:

We learnt the following letters and sounds this term f, m, n, r, x, h and k. Your child should now be familiar with these letters, its sound and be able to name some words that begin with, or contain the sound, as well as to be able to write the letter in lower case. We have worked in our reading groups and I have seen some big improvements especially with those who have been reading and practising their sight words at home. Some of our class will have reached 100 nights reading by the end of this term. We have also practised golden and red sight words in class by playing games, reading them, spelling them out in playdough, using stamps or wooden letters and putting them into sentences. We have written plenty of short sentences whilst some students are still copying provided sentences. Some are sounding out unknown words and spelling known words, like sight words, so they can write independently and I am proud of their attempts with their writing.

Maths:

In Maths, we have looked at the numbers 11-20 and have done a lot of activities and games, matching and ordering numbers and counting to 20. We’ve worked on ordinal numbers e.g: 1st, 2nd and 3rd and used them to describe someone’s or an item’s place. We’ve compared items, focusing on longer and shorter, thicker and thinner and used blocks, to measure items around us. We’ve learnt the days of the week but are still working on getting them in the right order. We’ve learnt how to tell which hour it is on an analogue clock. Our class has also looked at some simple picture data graphs to understand how they work and how we can use them to organise data groups.

Integrated Studies:

This terms focus was on houses and special places. We made lots of different model houses, looked at traditional indigenous housing and found our houses on google maps. We discussed how to look after our homes, parks and school. We also made and used simple maps. In Health, we discussed some hygiene issues and talked about issues we might have between friends, we discussed the importance of sharing and including others and what to do if we saw bullying. We also made problem solving puppets and discussed how we might solve some problems on our own. For ICT, they ‘ve used Microsoft Word and learnt how to type their names, change the font and size and use the shapes tool. In Art, we continued to use lots of colour. We made Mother’s Day cards and paper flowers, made 3D models and did lots of painting and drawing.