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Junior school

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Prep Year

Our Prep program is based on the Australian Curriculum and features:

  • a balance of direct instruction, guided instruction, independent learning, practice and play-based activities

  • large group, small group, and individual instruction, discussion, and collaboration  

  • the integration of phonics and word study in reading, writing, and oral language instruction

  • an uninterrupted literacy and numeracy  block each day

  • parental and community involvement

  • high-quality literature and levelled texts

  • a variety of genres, narratives, informational texts, and electronic media

  • interventions for children who are at risk

  • a supportive classroom culture and environment that promotes higher-order thinking skills

  • guidance, coaching, and feedback for children

  • effective classroom organisation and management  

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Visit our Out and About sight word app.

 

Early Start 

What is Early Start? 

The early years of schooling (Prep – Year 2) are a significant time for your child as they develop the foundational literacy and numeracy skills for success in future learning and in later life. Due to the rate of learning and development that occurs within these years, schools continually monitor your child’s literacy and numeracy progress to meet their individual needs.

From 2014, your school can opt to use Early Start to track progress and measure growth in literacy and numeracy for your child. Teachers will have the option of using Early Start with students at four points in time – On-entry to Prep, End of Prep, End of Year 1 and End of Year 2. 

How will Early Start benefit my child?  

Your child’s teacher will administer the Early Start activities one-to-one with students. The teacher will enter your child’s responses into OneSchool, the school data management system, which will provide them with information to assist with their curriculum planning for your child’s learning needs. 

Each literacy and numeracy activity takes about 20 minutes to administer, providing a wonderful opportunity for your child and their teacher to get to know each other. Teachers have the opportunity to complete these activities four times with your child from when they start Prep until they finish Year 2.  

By administering Early Start, your child’s teacher will get a clear picture of what your child knows and understands. They will use this information to make decisions about teaching and learning, and to monitor progress over time so that your child’s needs are met.

Schools will not generate individual student reports from the Early Start data and will not award your child a ‘grade’ based on their results.  

How is Early Start being rolled out?  

All schools will be able to administer the On-entry to Prep materials with their students from 2014. End of Prep, End of Year 1 and End of Year 2 materials are continuing to be trialled before release later in 2014 and 2015.  

 

Year 1

Year 1 will be an exciting, busy and rewarding year.  We will be focusing on settling children into their new routines, classes and the more formal learning environment. This year students will be focusing on the following concepts:

English

The English curriculum is built around the three interrelated strands of Language, Literature and Literacy. Units of work include exploring emotion in picture books, explaining how a story works, looking at characters and engaging with poetry. The language of communication is explored, as well as retelling cultural stories and creating digital procedural texts.

Spelling

Students will be engaged in activities that involve sound letter matches including common vowel and consonant digraphs and blends. The initial units focus on the s, l and r blends, middle vowel sounds, as well as common consonant vowel consonant words. Students will reinforce their knowledge of commonly used words either through further sight word recognition, or extending to spelling these words.  They will practise using the Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check method, as well as using various multiple intelligence activities through the week in class.

Reading

Our students participate in daily reading groups in which they work on books at their own individual level of reading. During reading groups, students will read the text, discuss vocabulary, sentence structure, and meaning. Question Answer Relationship (QAR) is an important focus during this time to help children to identify types of comprehension questions, where to find the correct answers and to confidently understand the texts they are reading. They will also take a levelled home reader home every night during the week to read.

Maths

Number and Place Value

Students will be working on recalling number sequences, describing growing patterns, skip counting in twos, counting and partitioning collections to 100. They will also continue working on addition and subtraction, and exploring partitioning of teen numbers.

Measurement

Students will be using a calendar, describing durations of time and length. They will be comparing the length of objects using direct and indirect comparison, as well as measuring using uniform informal units.

Chance

Students will choose simple questions and gather responses, then represent data with objects and drawings where one object or drawing represents one data value.

 

Science

Children will explore the living world, everyday materials, earth and space sciences, light and sound. They will develop science inquiry skills of questioning and predicting, planning, conducting experiments, processing and analysing data, evaluating and communicating their ideas and observations.

History

The focus is on present and past family life.

 

Geography

The focus is on distinctive features of places. The key concepts are place, space, environment and scale.

 

Year 2

The Year Two teachers  will be working collaboratively this year to plan, program and implement a curriculum that supports individuals’ learning styles through all subject and Key Learning Areas. The Australian Curriculum will be implemented in the learning areas of English, Mathematics, Science, History and Geography.  Mathematics will be planned with reference to the Australian curriculum. This includes Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry as well as Statistics and Probability. Children will experience learning in real-life, life-like and purely mathematical situations.

Each class will have ability-based reading groups, home reading program, and modelled and guided reading in class. Our school’s QAR (Question Answer Relationship) reading comprehension framework is embedded within the new curriculum. This gives students the opportunity to reflect upon what they have read, answering questions from the text and using inferential thinking.

 
In handwriting, children will be revising letter formation and familiarity with red and blue lines. 

 
As we are implementing the National Curriculum, the C2C spelling program is incorporated into our English program. The spelling program will be delivered to the whole class so students are exposed to the words, strategies and vocabulary being explicitly taught. Students’ spelling lists will then be differentiated according to their needs.

 

English

Children will read, write and perform poetry, read stories of families and friends, 
identify stereotypes and respond persuasively to narratives. They will explore procedural and informative texts and discuss plot and characterisation in stories. Children will also read, view and listen to a range of stories from other cultures. 
 

Maths

Children will develop understandings of number and place, units of measurement, data representation, chance, shape, patterns, fractions and decimals. They will also learn about location and money.
 

Science 

Children will investigate combinations of different materials, toys and movement, how living things grow and use their science knowledge to propose and explain actions that can be taken to conserve the Earth's resources.
 

History 

Year Two will examine the impact of changing technology on people's lives, as well as exploring their local community.
 

Geography

Children will look at the concept of space and how people and places connect. They will use maps and globes, develop questions about places, and collect and record geographical data and information. 

 




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Last reviewed 18 January 2021
Last updated 18 January 2021