Term 1 - Week 3 & 4 😀

 Good afternoon parents,

Wow! What an absolutely busy yet fun first full week we have had in the Year Two team since swimming lessons have finished and we are into full days of learning.  Can you believe it is already week 3?

I am so proud of how much focus and persistence with a positive attitude our Year Two team are showing when learning new things. In just a few weeks we are already growing our confidence to problem solve and continuing to build our independence to complete our work, try out new things and even suggest and share our own ideas and other ways we can show what we know and have learnt.   

Thank you to all who have made the time to read through the parent information slides posted last week and read through the other information in the previous posts. I hope it was a great way to find out the 'nitty gritty' of  Year Two learning and life in our class. Please feel free to refer back to the previous blog post for a link to the slides presented and feel free to email me with any follow up questions you may have.

Homework
Yay! The time that you have all been waiting for! Tomorrow, we will send home their R.E.D. reading folder. Inside their RED reading folder will be a home reader book. I ask that you be aware that we are currently in the slow but informative process of listening to every child read to evaluate their current reading abilities and needs so the reading levels being sent home at the moment are based on their previous levels that were handed on from their year one teacher at the end of last year. Please also be aware that it is completely normal for children's reading levels and reading abilities to slide backwards over the summer break or to dramatically jump up higher as their knowledge grows.  

We have also noticed that there seems to be a big gap between the difficulty of some given levels of books and this degree of difficulty can seem to range depending on the series or publisher of the book.  Feel free to make a note of any books level of difficulty (too easy/hard etc) in the comments section so we can try to adjust accordingly as they are changed over.  

In brief, our new OLC Homework policy has a strong focus fostering a positive attitude towards reading and literacy in the early years.

Year Two homework is as follows:

1. Home readers read by students

2. Fluency word reading grid

3. Optional: spelling words

1. Read every night (with the supplied reading book): Your child reading every day is important and makes a huge difference in reading skills.  It will increase their knowledge of words and sentence structure, build upon common word recognition (sight words/tricky words), develop their vocabulary, give them daily opportunities to decode and read unknown words and apply multiple reading strategies learnt in class as well as develop their comprehension skills.  It is important that your child reads aloud to you every night/morning for 10 minutes. Home readers will be exchanged by your child every day during gathering time. If your child, didn't complete the book in one night or needs to develop their fluency and re read the text, please feel free to keep it for as long as your child needs. Alternatively, if your child is reading a chapter book, they are not expected to read the entire book in one sitting. There are great benefits to reading a text multiple times - the children have a chance to become familiar with the text, increase their comprehension and fluency and in turn, improve their confidence in reading.  

2. Read the words on your fluency grid:  Please give them a small tick next to each word they read aloud correctly without guessing.  Place a small dot next to those words not recognised to try again and focus on the next night after sounding them out with your child and repeating the word.  You can time your child to try and read more each night or aim to read all of them each night with growing accuracy and speed.  Please also discuss what each word means if any words are new. Each child will receive a copy of a fluency grid which will be issued fortnightly starting Monday 13th Feb (week 3). You are encouraged to keep this sheet on the fridge or similar and get your child to read the words on the sheet daily (don't throw these away as they are great for revision throughout the year).

If you could use your timer to record your child’s ‘best time’ at reading the words that would be fantastic. These do not need to be sent back to school and a fluency grid will be sent home each fortnight that aligns with our daily InitiaLit reading and spelling program which includes a new set of focus phonic sounds and tricky words we will be learning in class each day.

4. Spelling List This is an optional activity to share with you at home the spelling focus phoneme/grapheme spelling sounds and three or four 'tricky' words we are learning in class.  You can find two of the lists on the back of the fluency grid.  These are the spelling lists we will be using for the fortnight in our class as a part of our daily InitiaLit reading and spelling program for your child to practise sounding out loud and spelling independently.  We suggest that you read the word aloud and then say it in a sentence context and then ask them to say the word orally first, using their sound fist to break apart each sound and then have a go at writing the corresponding letters that represent each sound.  We have provided three examples of different levels to cater for the different spelling abilities of each child.  Please note that the 'middle list' words align with standard curriculum spelling expectations for Year 2 and the InitiaLit Year 2 spelling assessments.

Homework System

Please ensure that your child brings in their red reading folder everyday.  It is a good habit to put the homework folder, reading book and RED reading folder inside the school bag straight after your child is finished each afternoon or evening to help prevent it being forgotten. Bringing in each day also helps develop a consistent routine for the rest of the year.  We will collect Homework Folders every Friday morning and keep them at school over the weekend. We understand the many commitments our children have after school and our own work commitments so please feel free to do more on a certain 'free' night and skip those nights/afternoons that are extra busy in your household.   

 

Library books 

We are exchanging our Library books on a Wednesday. Please send your child in with their library bag. They will not be allowed to borrow if they do not have this with them.

 

Hats/Uniforms 

Please ensure that the students have their hats at school each day. In Year Two we keep our hats in our bags in line with the routine for Years 1-6. A reminder to wear the teal sports uniform for their PE lesson on Thursday and on Fridays students wear coloured faction shirts.

Parent Information Night

We hope you have had the chance to read the blog titled Parent Information Night that was posted last week. The slides will give you information regarding Year 2 for 2023. We know families live busy lives, so in acknowledgement of this, the slides are the same as those we will be presenting in the classroom on the Parent Information Night. There will be no additional information, so you will not miss out of any information if you read the slides at home and do not come into the classroom.

If you have any questions regarding the information presented in the slides, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Class Reps

We are looking for 1-2 class reps per class. Please contact us directly if this is something you would be interested in.

Kaya,
Maree Noonan