Kindergarten

Explicit and systematic approach to teaching phonics is a key to early reading and spelling success. Our Kinder students have been working hard to grow their knowledge of letters and the sounds they make. We have been learning phonics concepts through an engaging multisensory approach which incorporates songs, actions, rhymes, tactile activities, handwriting practice and explicit sounds lessons. This week, after having learned most single letter sounds, our Kinder students have welcomed the challenge of exploring and learning their very first spelling rule!

The children have been using their sounding out skills and their knowledge of vowel sounds to decide when to use /c/ and when to use /k/ at the beginning of a word and they have been excited to realise that instead of guessing, they can use the knowledge they already have to get it right. We have practised this new skill by sounding out and writing single words and simple sentences and we hand-made our very first spelling rule posters. If you ask any of our Kinder students how they know whether to use c or k, they will tell you: "K takes i and e, C takes the other three!"

Year 4 Literacy Block

Year 4 would like to share a snapshot of their learning. They have chosen to show you what they get up to during their literacy block. Below are some student statements and photographs to share with you. 

Literacy Groups

• Lucas S - I really enjoy learning new words and their meanings in literacy groups.
• Koby - In literacy groups we have been doing typing.com and we have been doing other activities such as acting out plays (books that have the characters names and you do that role). We have also been learning about the First Fleet in our activities. Another group has been learning about Convict Girl and Birrung the Secret Friend.

Sentence A Day

• Hannah - You need to find all the problems in a sentence. It is fun to find all the problems!
• Hayley - I like how we edit and fix sentences including capital letters, full stops, spelling mistakes, commas and apostrophes. 

Spelling

• Jack S - In spelling we have been working on silent letters and prefixes. We have also been doing  a prefix brainstorm where we had a BIG competition!
• Chase - We do activities like finding plurals and sometimes we test each other.

Quality Literature

• Marielle - In quality literature we look up  different books each week, some are informative, some are fiction and other ones are about the past, some are even historical fiction! We have a lot of fun reading all of these books, and this term we are looking at books about the First Fleet and what happened when the British came to Australia. 
• Eden - I’ve learnt so many things from the books I’ve been reading in class. I know a lot about when the British people took over the land in Australia.

Writing

• Zoe - In writing we are working on the First Fleet and the colonisation of Australia. We are also learning how to take information from a website that you can trust and put it into dot points and write it in your own words. We are learning how to write an informative text about a place, person, animal or thing. 

• Amica - In writing, we are learning to write about the First Fleet and the colonisation of Australia. We are also learning about looking at informative texts and making dot points on the text.
• Dustin - It’s very fun making your own stories and making up characters. You can write whatever you want!

We have so much fun in Year 4 and really enjoy sharing our learning with you.

Sarah McKinnon, Robyn McDougall, Deb Rennes
Year 4 Teachers