Our school year has started off with lots of fun and new adventures. Everyone has settled in extremely well to the school routine and we have enjoyed getting to know our new and fabulous class friends. The Grade 6 buddies have been absolute super stars, supporting their little ones making their way into the classroom at the beginning of the day, meeting them at recess and lunch and ensuring they get to their parents safely at the end of the day. It has been lovely to see the friendships form, ensuring our students friends feel happy and safe in their new learning environment. The Grade Ones have been wonderful role models to the younger students!

As part of our ‘Launching Learners’ unit, classroom rules and expectations have been established, using our school values to decide how we want our classroom to look, sound and feel. We have already celebrated some learning success and I can’t wait to be part of the students learning journeys this year.

At the beginning of Week Two we embarked on the ‘Sounds Write’ phonemic program, using sound-to-letter strategies that develop reading, writing, and spelling skills. This program will complement our current integrated approach to the teaching of literacy. It has been lovely sharing some of our ‘word building’ successes on XUNO with families. Last week there was lots of excitement in the classroom as the preps finally got to take own their own reader to practise their blending and segmenting skills. The Grade Ones have enjoyed the challenge of exploring readers with extended code sounds and spellings.

Hands on number games and lots of counting have been a key feature of our numeracy lessons. We are focusing on matching groups of items to their written numeral. This is a skill that takes lots of practise, providing the foundational knowledge required for deeper understanding of place value strategies. We have looked at subitising numbers, quickly using our eyes to see the total in a collection. The Grade Ones have extended this by looking at tens and ones, quickly identifying two-digit numbers.

Throughout our Respectful Relationships we are currently exploring our different emotions and how these can make us feel. Our regular, daily feelings ‘check-ins’ have been a valuable tool to see how students are feeling at different times of the day.

We have had a busy but exciting start to the year. We are looking forward to a terrific year filled with lots of great learning adventures.

- Miss Erskine