End of Term 3

Well, this term has certainly flown by! The students have been very busy learning and participating in a variety of activities.

 

Stem Learning Journey

It was fantastic to see so many parents attend our Stem Learning Journey. The students were very proud to share the design process, the finished product and the evaluation of their cars this term. It was great to see the reflection process and the students assessing what worked well and what they would change for next time.

 

Please assist your child to fill in the News sheet about their car and return by Thursday of this week so that the students can talk about their news. We will be assessing the student's presentation as part of our speaking and listening program.

 

Wattle Day

The students participated in activities to celebrate Wattle Day on the 1st of September. Wattle is our national flower as well as part of our school's emblem. The students created some amazing chalk artwork.

 

Flowerpot Competition

This week we are being judged on our flowerpot displays. We have a budget of $20 to spend and Dawson's Garden Centre have sponsored the competition, awarding prizes to the best flowerpot display.

 

Maths and Science Day

Last Thursday, Wattle Grove Primary School celebrated Maths and Science with a whole day devoted to Maths and Science. We had many fun activities and the students enjoyed the change in routine. The students created Place Value Monsters and explored Chromatography. The students were amazed to watch the different colours and how they could be transferred to paper to make art.

 

Term 4

It is looking to be another busy Term with dancing lessons, swimming, Kindy/Pre-primary Sports Day, Reports and many more events!

 

This will be our last blog post for 2021. As of next term, the blog will be moving onto Connect. Each parent should have received their login details. Please see your class teacher if you are unable to access Connect.

 

We would like to wish all our families a happy and safe holiday. Please continue to read books, spend time as a family and talk, talk and talk some more. We will see you back at school on Monday 11th October 2021.

Term 3 Week 5

Book Week

The Book Week dress-up parade was on Friday 20th August.  The students looked fantastic and a big thank you to all the parents and carers for putting together their costumes.

 

Sports Carnival

The Kindy/Pre-primary sports carnival has been postponed until Term 4 due to the wet weather and condition of the oval.

 

 

No Trash Tuesday

In accordance with our school’s Sustainability plan, our goal is to significantly reduce our school’s waste.  

No Trash Tuesday is an initiative which encourages students and families to take a  mindful approach to reducing the waste we produce.  Packing a lunchbox with no waste is both environmentally friendly and responsible. 

 

Tip:  Try to use re-usable containers rather than bringing pre-packaged items.     

 

 

Literacy

Phonics

We have been working on blending 4 letter words together, such as flat and sent.

 

Writing

This term we have been learning about narratives. A narrative is a made up story. It should be entertaining. A narrative has a beginning, a middle and an end. The characters should have a problem that they solve. Here are 2 story maker websites were children can make their own stories by choosing the parts to include in their story.

https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/games/story-maker-1

https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/games/story-maker-2

 

We have been working hard to improve the presentation of the students written work. In particular, we have focused on form the letters correctly using the Victorian modern cursive formations. Please see us if you need a new letter formation sheet.

 

Sight Words – We have now finished the orange set of words and will be moving onto the indigo sight words.

 

Little Learners Love Literacy have free phonic reading books available on the Apple App Store until the 13th of September.

 

News

Students are only able to bring their item/object to present for news on their allocated day. Please do not allow your children to bring any toys, stickers or other item to school.

 

Maths

Our focus has been small number addition and subtraction. Knowing which numbers combinations make each of the numbers to 10. A good game to play to support this is Save the Whale on www.ictgames.com

This website also has a number of games to support their literacy and numeracy development.

Term 2 Week 8

 

I hope everyone had a wonderful long weekend.  In Room 5, we have been terribly busy starting new projects and extending our learning on previously learnt concepts.

Mrs Taylor, who has been with us from Week 1 as a Pre-Service Teacher, finishes this week. We will really miss her and wish her the best of luck in her future teaching roles.

NUMERACY

In Mathematics we are developing our knowledge on doubles. This involves understanding what doubling a number means and working out sums that incorporate doubles, for example 3+3 =6.  

We have also been revising breaking apart numbers from 4 through to 10.  This entails starting with a whole number like 5 and breaking it apart into 0 and 5, 1 and 4, 2 and 3, 3 and 2, 4 and 1, 5 and 0.

LITERACY - PHONICS

Within phonics we are moving into sounding out initial blends/beginning sounds of words. These are gr, dr, br, cr, fr and tr, as in grape, drink, brim, crab, and trap.  

Throughout the weeks we also constantly revise all our sight words from the golden, red and blue words list, while being introduced to the new green sight words of just, from, our, this week.

HASS

In Geography we have been consolidating our understanding of our local community. We have been identifying what features contribute to a community and which community members are important to the care of the people who live in the local community.

SCIENCE

Science has been extremely exciting this week as we have been investigating the needs of living things, such as animals. The students have been researching the needs of their selected animal, focusing on the areas of food, water, shelter/space and air.  This has guided us into creating an animal from clay, to which the students designed and built a suitable habitat/home for the animal to live in.

We will place some photos of our pets and their homes on the blog, once they are all complete.

Room 5 also welcomed 4 new pet chickens! They are very cute. We named them Roxie, Violet, Elsa and Chicky. The students in Room 5 have been learning how to care for the chickens by providing a clean cage, food, water, and warmth.

HEALTH

Throughout the term in Health, we have been learning about pedestrian safety.  How to cross the road safely, where to walk to be safe from vehicles, what road signs we see and what they mean, as well as which side of the car is the safest to exit for children.  

The students loved taking part in role play around vehicle safety.

Term 2 Update

We are working hard by building on our learning from Term 1.

 We hope you all had a lovely Mother’s Day and were able to spend time with family members.

Thank you to our wonderful P & C for holding the Mother’s Day stall. Hopefully all the Mothers enjoyed their special gifts.

Literacy

Our news topics are

Week 5 17th May – 21st May	Favourite sport	Students can bring in an item relating to their favourite sport. How is the sport played? Where do you play the sport? What is the best thing about the sport?
Week 6 24th May – 28th May	Favourite book	Bring in your favourite book? What is the main idea in the book/what is the story about? Who are the characters in the book? Why do you like the book?
Week 7 31st May – 4th June	WA places	Bring in a picture of a place in WA you have visited. Where is the place? Can you point it out on a map? What did you see there?

In Week 6 we will be assessing their news telling to see how much the students have improved in their oral language skills.

Phonics

We are focusing on double consonants, ll, ff, ss, zz. Children learnt that when we read a double consonant i.e. 'ss' we just make the one sound. I.e. hiss h-i-ss. Then we will be moving onto reading initial blends, such as sl – slip, slop.   We continue to revise all golden and red words. Our focus sight words are blue words.

Numeracy

Our focus in numeracy is addition and subtraction number stories up to the value of 10. An example of this is, if I had 1 blue pencil and 3 red pencils, how many pencils do I have altogether? Children can then represent this number story by drawing and writing the numbers.

HASS

We are continuing to look at geography and our local community, the features of a map and why we belong to different communities, for example school, sport groups etc.

Science

We are finishing looking at the weather and seasons. We are beginning to look at Biological Science, which is all about living things. We are going to be creating pets and designing habitats for a pet we have researched.

 

Welcome Back to Term 2

 

From Miss Baines

Welcome back for another fantastic term. We hope you had a lovely Easter break. It is so lovely to see everyone back in the classroom. 

I will continue to post information on this blog, so check in here for the latest updates.

Literacy

Week 1 

The phonics focus for this week in literacy has been double consonants, ll, ff, ss, zz. Children learnt that when we read a double consonant i.e. 'ss' we just make the one sound i.e. hiss h-i-ss. Our sight words for Week 1 - they, and, were.

Week 2  

We are focusing on  Consonant-Vowel-Consonant words i.e. cat, leg, big. We are also learning about nouns - nouns are naming words for a person, place or thing.  Week 2 sight words - on, was, her.

Numeracy

This week we have started to learn about  the different ways of making numbers. We are focusing on number 4 and number 5 ie 4 is 2 and 2 more, 4 is 3 and 1 more, 4 is 4 and 0 more.

No Trash Tuesday

Just a reminder that on Tuesdays, we are encouraging the students to come to school with a waste free lunch box. This means no rubbish that ends up in landfill. (Fruit scrapes are fine, as we can feed them to the worms in our school worm farm). No Trash Tuesday is a whole school approach as part of our Sustainability program.

School Uniform

With colder mornings now in place, we understand that the students are wearing warmer clothes. Just a reminder that if your child wishes to wear items like coats, jumpers, tights, beanies, scarves or gloves, these need to be green, in line with the school uniform. Shoes still need to be black or white. The uniform shop remains open via the School App. If you go online, you can order uniform items, which will be delivered to your child's classroom and sent home in their school bag. Thank you for your support with ensuring your child wears the correct school uniform.

Week 6

In Literacy

We are continuing to revise the single sounds and the golden sight word list. The students are saying the sounds in three letter words and blending the sounds together to say the word. They are also reading these words in short sentences.

 

News

Last week the students completed an oral presentation All About Me. The students all did a great job standing up in front of their peers to share the information.

 

This week the students have been given a day to present their news. We would like to have a structured approach to “news”. This will allow the children to further develop their speaking and listening skills. Below is the topic for each week. 

 

Please help your child to research the topic if necessary and plan what they will say. The skills they should focus on are speaking clearly, using an appropriate volume and looking at the audience.

 

 

Week 6 15th – 19th March	Favourite photo	Bring in a photo and tell us about it. Who is in your photo and what was happening?
Week 7 22nd – 26th March	Bedroom item	Bring in an item from your bedroom. Tell us something about it. Where did you get it? When did you get it? Why do you like it?
Week 8 29th March – 31st March	Easter	If I were the Easter Bunny... Get your child to finish the sentence.

 

 

It is important that all of the children participate in the program. If your child is away, there is a public holiday or they are unable to participate on their set day, they may do so on the following day. 

  

Sight Word Folders have been sent home last week. Please keep the folder at home for the week and return on your child’s allocated day for us to review. Please practise these words daily in short sessions. You could write the words onto card and place them around the house or play games like memory and fish.

 

Guided reading books will be coming home on Thursdays. We have read these books during the week in the class. Please listen to your child read their book, and assist them with words as required. You can ask questions to assist with the comprehension of the story. Who were the characters? What was the…? Why do you think…? What do you think might happen next?

Please return these reading books on Monday. It is important they are returned on time as a new group will be reading the book next.

  

Library Day is Monday, please place library books in their library bag in the green box on Mondays.

 

In Numeracy

We are revising the numbers to 20, how to write them and counting collections. As well as learning to sort data and create graphs.

 

In Science

We are observing the weather and discussing the symbols used on weather charts. We are also discussing the different seasons, what they are like and how they affect people in their daily lives. We are investigating how clouds work and what the wind can blow.

 

https://thestemlaboratory.com/rain-cloud-jar/

 

On Entry Assessments will be starting soon. A note went home last week regarding the assessment.

Welcome to 2021!

Welcome

Hello and welcome to Room 5's blog for 2021. This blog will be a place where parents/carers can log on to see what is happening in Room 5. We will post photos of the students involved in different activities, keep you updated about upcoming events and let you know what we will be focusing on in the classroom.

We would like to welcome all the students and parents to Pre-Primary, and a special welcome to all our new students and families. We look forward to working with the parents and getting to know your children better throughout the year.

It has been an unusual start to the year, with school starting a week later than expected. Despite this, the students in Room 5 are to be congratulated on how quickly they have settled in to the routine of full-time school, especially considering some of the extremely hot days we have been experiencing. To ensure your child gets the most out of each school day, please make sure they are getting plenty of sleep each night. Children this age still need between 10-12 hours of sleep to be able to function.

We look forward to working with you and your children this year. Please do not hesitate to arrange a meeting if there is anything you need to discuss regarding your child.

Parent Information Session

On Tuesday 23rd February at 4.45pm, we will be conducting the Parent Information Session. We encourage all parents to attend the session, as it provides valuable information regarding your child’s year in Pre-primary. It is also an opportunity for you to ask any questions. We would like to remind you that due to COVID, only one parent per family is able to attend the session.  This is a child-free event.

School App

If you haven't already done so, download the Wattle Grove Primary School App. It allows you to notify the school if your child is absent, order from the canteen, keep up to date about coming events and receive the school newsletter.
The App is available for Apple as well as Android phones.

Canteen

The canteen operates on a Wednesday and Thursday. Orders can be placed online, via QuickCliq, or by writing it on a lunch order bag, available from the classroom. Students can order for recess and lunch (if you are ordering using the lunch bags, you need to write recess and lunch orders on separate bags). Pre-Primary students are allowed to order icy poles and ice creams.

Library

Our Library session is every Monday afternoon. Students are allowed to borrow one book at a time. Students must have a library bag to be able to borrow books and books must be returned before they can take another book. Library bags and books need to be put in the Library box on Monday morning.