As the term draws to a close, the preps have been focused on bringing together all their skills and understandings. We’re all very excited to bring our ideas about collaboration, creativity and dinosaurs to the next level. Although the term is ending, we haven’t slowed down! Last week, many students had the opportunity to dip…
Authentic Writing in the Neighbourhood
The children continue to be exposed to regular practice in fine motor skills and in letter formation to ensure the development of good handwriting habits. Developing their fine motor skills is key to children becoming fluent, legible and competent practitioners of Victorian Modern Cursive handwriting style. There are a number of factors that we discuss…
Term 1, Week 4 Learning Focus
This week in the prep neighbourhood we are…. Reading – Book Talk We are using images to help predict and make inferences about the text prior to reading. Students will be able to justify their thinking by explaining what they believe a story will be about. Writing – Crocodile grips How to hold a pencil…
Learning in Prep at PHPS
The children have settled in remarkably well for their first two weeks of school. Our focus has been to orient the children to the different spaces – the Studio, the Learning Commons and the Performance Space. To give us a picture of their observations, we asked the children: “How do you think we learn in…
What Can We Leave Behind?
The children have begun to notice traces of past inquiries left by previous preps and have begun to ask the question ‘what can we leave behind?’ We’ve reflected on our learning over the course of the year and the children were able to identify and discuss that our inquiry has been on the concept of…
Strong & Capable
The children have settled back into school beautifully. Every day they demonstrate what strong and capable children they are, following our daily routines with ease and confidence. It is a joy to have them back! We continue our inquiry into what it means to “collaborate”. To grow the children’s understanding of “collaboration” and make connections…
What happens when we collaborate?
As a team, we unpacked our observations of the children’s responses to the provocations we provided inviting them to share their wonderings. A common theme began to emerge: the theme of collaboration. We were noticing in our documenting and discussions with children that they were beginning to gravitate to others to work side-by-side on shared…
Term 1, Week 6 Learning Focus
This week in the Prep Neighborhood we are continuing to learn all the new routines there are at school. We are also focussing on collaboration, sustained effort and giving new things a go. In reading we are focussing on sharing stories as a group and drawing a response to the story. We are even having…
What is it to wonder?
What matters to us and what we are wondering about connects us to each other. As a way for us to get to know the children more deeply and gain an understanding of their interests and prior knowledge about the world, we asked them “what do you wonder about?’. We chose to use this question…
Week Three Learning Focus
This week in the prep neighbourhood we are…. Reading – Book Talk Making connections to the text and developing and sharing comprehension strategies. Writing – Crocodile grips How to hold a pencil correctly and form letters using the correct direction. Maths – Base 10: ‘Friends of Ten’ Counting, sorting, and ordering materials working towards a…