Learning in action across the Early Years

With the half way point of the term upon us, it is timely to share some of the action occurring across the classrooms. It is great to see so many parent helpers engaged in supporting our learners, both in classrooms and in other areas of the College, including tuckshop and the library. Thanks for helping keep our students well fed, and for covering the all important readers so we can get them into classrooms as quickly as possible.

In Prep, students have been learning very important pre-literacy skills, tuning their ears up to what they can hear at the beginning and end of words, and then matching what they hear with what that looks like on a page. This systematic introduction of sounds, combined with putting the sounds together orally by stretching and blending, are important foundational skills for future literacy success.

Observations of the night sky have been a focus for the Year 1 students over the last week. By keeping note of changes that occur to the sky, students have been developing the skills necessary to respond to questions and make predictions. Interestingly, being able to question and predict are ongoing throughout the science curriculum, into a highschool setting.

Year 2 are investigating life cycles and have been excited to welcome meal worms, butterflies and guppies into the classroom to help with this. There should be no excuses for any of these students to be running late this week, as they are also becoming VERY proficient at telling time with both an analogue and digital clock, focussing on o’clock and half past.

Homework has been a hot topic of conversation amongst the Year 3 students, with many of them expressing excitement (Yes! That’s true! Excitement!) at the new and interesting take on weekly homework, with students choosing activities from across a grid to complete over a two week timeframe. They have also enjoyed learning new mental addition strategies, and in doing so, being detectives to crack a code, slowly eliminating suspects on their suspect board. Who will the final culprit be?

Our budding authors in Year 4 are preparing to help Roald Dahl out by adding another chapter to one of his books! They have been identifying different language features that Mr Dahl uses so effectively to make his stories interesting, such as noun groups and verb groups. Next, they will be using their sentence knowledge from Write that Essay to put together their own chapter. In addition, they are extremely focused on exploring the germination process of beans they have planted as they explore living things in Science.

Every Early Years class has also been participating in functional movement skills involving throwing and catching in PE as well as dance and drama as part of the Arts. We are super excited to have an opportunity to showcase our dancing skills at our inaugural Early Years Bushdance and Family Celebration at the end of this term. Look out for the date claimer in this newsletter and stay tuned for more details!

Our focus learning disposition across the Early Years this fortnight is independence. As parents, it can sometimes be difficult, scary and frustrating to facilitate this with your child. Independence within the learning setting sometimes starts with something as simple as being able to walk yourself into school and greet your teacher yourself. Within the classroom, it is about knowing what you can do yourself, and how to go about asking for help when needed. We are looking forward to sharing our learning with you more formally in Week 9, when we undertake Student Led Conferences. Keep your eye out in our next newsletter and emails for more information on these, as we have responded to parent feedback by making some changes to this process for 2023!

Katrina Walton

Assistant Principal Early Years