Parent-Teacher Conferences
On Wednesday many of you had a chance to meet with your child’s class teacher and discuss how he/she has settled into K2 in these first few weeks. Thank you for taking the time to meet with us. We really value the time spent together, as it helped us get to know your child better. These discussions only enhance the important relationship between home and school that is so vital to your child’s welfare and learning.
Please contact us via the message book or email if you wish to meet at any time during the year.
May we please ask you to avoid the mornings (7:30am – 8:00am) as this is time we spend welcoming the children into class, talking to them and encouraging them to do their morning jobs. We thank you for your understanding.
Four K2 Classes ... similar but different, too!
There are four classes of K2 children, with 22 children in each class. Those who have had children in K2 before are already aware of some of the curriculum changes over the years and the differences within the classrooms. The K2 teachers do not strive to be carbon copies of each other. Each teacher is unique, has her own teaching style, and will have things she wants to do with her class that may differ from another K2 class. This is okay! The K2 Learning Programme outlined on the school website is the same for all the classrooms. How a teacher chooses to deliver the learning intentions to her class is very much her own.
Helping Booklet
IMPORTANT!
Please remember to send the little booklet called ‘I help at home’ back to school on Monday. Your child will need it in school as we will be doing follow up activities and partner work. We look forward to seeing how busy and helpful the children have been! Helping others at school, both in the classroom and the playground, is something we are all working on to develop positive, happy relationships.
Unit of Study
We have started our first Unit of Study, which is called ‘What's Rubbish?’ It will run for the whole of Term 1.
Unit Summary:
In this unit children will classify the materials they encounter on a daily basis and identify materials suited for specific tasks. They will investigate materials: what they look and feel like, how they change when heated, cooled and mixed and observe what happens to materials when they are discarded. Developing an understanding that action can be taken to reduce our environmental footprint will be a focus throughout the unit.We will be focusing on enabling the children:
- to explain how materials can change.
- to sort materials that degrade naturally and those that don’t.
- to demonstrate ways in which they can help our earth by reducing, reusing, refusing and recycling.
Recycle your junk
Celebrating Achievements Board
The K1/K2 board, which celebrates the achievements of our children out of school, is positioned on the ramp going up to the K1 pod. At the moment we have a few shining stars up there!
If you wish to have something on the board, please include a photograph and caption about your child’s recent achievement. It does not have to be of a sporting nature or organised activity; it could be tying shoelaces for the first time, learning to ride a two wheeled bike, helping others at home with jobs such as washing up, cleaning the car, making his/her bed, helping in the wider community, making something and so on.
Do send in medals and trophies too, if applicable. Although these will not obviously be displayed, your child will have the opportunity to show them to the class. Even better, include them in the photograph!
Next Week:
Maths
Our main focus will be to answer the question: Why do we have numbers?
We will be:
- Finding numbers in the environment
- Counting
- Comparing numbers
Your child will be engaged in a range of practical and/or written activities, which will challenge him/her appropriately.
Literacy
Our main focus will be:
• Reading Workshop
• Writing Workshop - book-making
• Phonics
• Handwriting - formations of some of the long ladder letters – l, i, u, t, j, y
Reading Workshop
The children have made a great start to Reading Workshop and have loved looking at the selection of books in their new classrooms and taking books home to share with you. Our first unit will guide students in learning the routines and procedures that will enable them to become successful in Reading Workshops. Selecting their 'just right' books will be a highlight each week. A big part of this unit will be building up an understanding of the purpose of reading and rereading; readers constantly think about and make meaning from what they are reading. Establishing reading partnerships will give the children the opportunity to discuss their reading on a regular basis, sharing their thoughts about the various books they read. The class will work to build their reading time and stamina, with the aim extending independent reading time.
Beginning next week, we will be introducing Book Shopping. This is the time when each child chooses their 'just right' books from our levelled readers and he/she keeps them in his/her book baggie or book box for a week. These will be read throughout the week in our Reading Workshops and at home.
During Reading Workshops next week, the children will be reading these books independently but we are not sending levelled readers home until sometime in the week beginning Monday 15 September. This will give us time to check that the books are 'just right' and are an easy, comfortable read for your child. They should in in no way be a struggle. Please note that the first day of books coming home may vary from class to class.
As teachers, we will use ‘instructional’ level books, which tend to be more challenging ones, and work with small groups of children to address specific reading needs.
Whatever skill we are learning, we all get better at it by practising over and over and over again. The same applies to reading. We want all the children to continue to develop their love of books and to feel good about reading. This will happen through time spent independently reading and understanding books.
Handwriting
It has been noticeable in these first few weeks just how many children enjoy writing and love getting their ideas down on paper. Many of them, as expected, are using a mixture of capital and lower case letters. In lessons where handwriting is taught explicitly, we will be focusing on the correct formation of letters, in particular lower case letters. We teach the 'sassoon' font, as this paves the way for the cursive handwriting programme which begins in Grade 1.
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