What a busy start to Term 3 we have had. The Prep/Ones have settled back in nicely after the holidays, enjoying the structure and routine that school provides. The students have continuously amazed me with their learning growth, and it has been delightful to see the smiles on their faces as they celebrate learning successes and those ‘aha’ moments.

In literacy, we have continued to build our segmenting and blending skills and are the preps are loving the challenge of working with words that have four sounds. In Sounds-Write, students have been sound whizzes, both reading and writing these words independently. It has been wonderful to see the students embrace this challenge and learning growth as they begin to record their ideas by themselves. Our first text-based unit this term is ‘The Boy Who Tried to Shrink His Name’ and have had lots of fun learning how to say Zimdalamashkermishkada.  We have been focusing on adding details to our sentences using ‘when’ and ‘where’ phrases and have explored the different elements of narratives.

During our numeracy sessions, we have developed our understanding of addition and subtraction, learning to add and subtract numbers and record these as number sentences. We have been developing our ability to quickly and accurately solve these problems, using strategies such as counting on, fact families and doubles. It has been wonderful to see students challenge themselves to add and subtract larger numbers and be able to share how they worked out their answers.

This term in Inquiry we started by celebrating NAIDOC Week, learning about the rich culture of our country. The students enjoyed learning about Indigenous art symbols and had a go at telling a story through the use of symbols. We have now begun our new Inquiry topic for the term which is ‘My Place on the Map’. We will be looking at how people are connected to different places and introduce early mapping skills and geographic understanding. The unit will also include important perspectives from First Nations Australians and their connection to Country.

Our Respectful Relationships sessions have been focusing on help seeking, identifying people both at school, at home and in the community that can help us. Our range of picture story books and learning activities support students as establish a network of helpers. 

We have had a wonderful start to Term 3, full of teaching and learning. We are looking forward to enjoying the rest of a busy Term 3.

- Mrs Gray