Unit of Inquiry

Our central idea for this unit is, 'Exploring personal identity helps us to understand and build relationships with others.' We will continue to work on this unit throughout the term and explore relationships, belonging, identity, rights and responsibilities, and emotions. Our lines of inquiry for this unit are;

• Understanding the identity of ourselves and others
• Building and maintaining relationships
• How to develop our learning community.

This is a perfect unit to begin our year with as it helps the children to understand the social and emotional concepts that build self-esteem, friendship, and a sense of belonging in our classroom community. The children loved beginning to share their 'All About Me' posters and have had many opportunities to reflect on the skills required to build relationships with others. We have read many stories about friendship and even written and illustrated our own Friendship Book as a class. The children also decided they would like to make a class, 'Caring Tree', where we can celebrate acts of kindness that we see in Foundation.

English

We have begun learning our Speed Sounds in 'Read Write Inc' time. The children have enjoyed exploring the sounds and learning to write them using the handwriting prompts for each letter. If you would like to see the order in which we teach the sounds or discuss the handwriting prompts with your child, check the small green book in your child's reading folder. It's great to encourage your child to find the letters they have learned on signs or in text; if they are keen, they can practice writing them at home too.

Our focus during reading time this term has been on listening and responding to shared texts by answering and posing relevant questions and making predictions about what we are reading. We have been reading picture storybooks that relate to our central idea and concepts for our unit of inquiry. If your child has any books they would like to bring to share with us that focus on identity, relationships, or emotions, that would be wonderful.

Maths

Our focus so far this term has been on numbers and counting. We have worked on our ability to count and use number words and numerals to represent quantities. The children have enjoyed learning and playing dice games and watching video clips about numbers and problem-solving. We have also spent time learning the correct handwriting formation of the numerals so that we can efficiently and effectively record our mathematical thinking. Toward the end of the term, we will look at the measurement of time as we learn the days of the week and explore the months of the year.

Our first Discovery Day last Wednesday was lots of fun!

Reminders

• Please let me know if you are not connected to your child's Seesaw account or have difficulty signing up. I post regular updates of what we are up to in class so your child can share what they have done at school with you.
• Throughout Term 1, please send your child's swimming bag in at the start of each week, and Mr Roden will choose the best day for the children to swim based on the weather.
• If you still need to do so, please send in a bright-coloured t-shirt for your child's Gummy Bear costume for our fair performance.
• Please ensure everything your child brings to school is named so we can help return lost items to them.
• 'Read with Me' folders should be returned to school each Friday so that we can help your child choose new 'Read to me books' to bring home each Monday.

We can't wait to see you all at the fair on Friday!

Kind regards,

Jacqui, Jasmine & Bron