Hello Preppie Parents,

Just to fill you in on our learning so far ………………  Last week we looked at the ‘s’ sound. Although children at this stage can identify most letters of the alphabet, the next step is to learn the sound for each “sound picture” or letter. We have been trying to identify where sounds occur in words, i.e., beginning, middle, end. We have also started to write these letters in lower case, as well as upper case. Over the next few weeks, we will be looking at the sounds – “a, t, p, i n”, concentrating on one sound per week.  Students are also learning to write their names in lower case. Next week students will bring home a laminated template which they can use to practise tracing their names at home. We have also been playing listening games to follow one, two, three-step directions.  Parents might like to help their child with phonemic awareness by getting them to identify where the SOUND of the week (not the letter) occurs in a word (beginning, middle or end), making rhyming words containing the sound, eg.,  pat, sat, rat, and giving them a set of directions to follow to find a hidden object. Much emphasis is placed on listening at this stage, so lots of oral language practice is important and developing awareness that language is made up of a collection of different sounds.

Years 1-6 Parents

Older students are also looking at “s,a,t,p,i,n” sounds, but at more complex levels., eg., the sound ‘s’ can be represented by many different sound pics  – “s, ss, sc, ps, se, c, ce, ts, se, st, z’. Students in Yrs 1-6 will spend two weeks on each sound, exploring words containing these sounds in more depth and developing and expanding vocabulary.

Happy learning!

Marilyn