Prep
Prep is an exciting year, a year of becoming independent learners, finding themselves in their new school environment. Making new and positive relationships with their teachers and friends to support their learning. It is engaging, hands on and fun!!
Literacy
Reading, reading, reading!! Lots of reading of books together. To promote and instill the enjoyment of reading in children. Focusing on predicting what might happen and what has happened in books (comprehension), understanding how print works (left to right, top to bottom etc.) and assisting them to see themselves as readers.
At the beginning of the School year there is a strong emphasis on learning the sounds of the alphabet. The Jolly phonics program is implemented, being a fun, engaging tool; focusing on learning the sounds through songs, actions and explicit teaching of these – the sound it makes, how to write it and words that may contain it. Focus will be on ensuring children say these clearly and correctly. Later, once students have learnt sounds, letter names are taught. We begin to blend the sounds to make simple words together. This will also support their early writing, which focuses on children listening to words and recording the sounds they hear. Correct formation of the letters is encouraged, initially through practicing the letters in their name.
Writing tasks are mostly focused around personal experiences. These may be experiences at school as well as the children’s personal lives from home. Teacher’s structure these experiences to be fun and enjoyable to foster student engagement and provide opportunities for students to develop their oral language by talking about each experience before recording their ideas through words and pictures.
Numeracy
Throughout Semester 1 in Numeracy there is a strong focus on identifying, making and recording the numbers to 10. As the basis of our numeric system, children need to establish a strong understanding of the many elements of these. We will: explore each number; make it using effective one–to-one correspondence (pointing to each item as they count); break into parts (e.g. 3 and 1 is 4, 2 and 2 is 4); discover what numbers are more than or less than others; and explore these numbers in our world.
Later in the year, throughout Semester 2 in Numeracy we further explore the numbers from 11 to 20. Similar to Semester 1, exploring these numbers; making, counting (one-to-one correspondence), breaking into parts and discovering what these numbers mean to us in our world. Students begin to make connections between their understanding of how numbers to 10 work to help them further understand larger numbers, initially to 20 and then beyond.
Inquiry
Throughout the year students will investigate the following topics:
Term 1: What can I do to succeed at school?
Term 2: What is a family and how have I changed?
Term 3: Can we build it?
Term 4: What is the cycle of life?
Students will participate in incursions and excursions to further enhance and support their learning through these inquiries.
