Prep

Prep

Prep (Foundation) is the first year of schooling and is largely informed by Literacy and Numeracy programs as the skills and content within the English and Mathematics curriculum areas form the foundation for learning in all other curriculum areas.

The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) state that through the English Foundation level, students communicate with peers, teachers, known adults, and students from other classes. Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment. They listen to, read and view spoken, written and multimodal texts in which the primary purpose is to entertain, as well as some texts designed to inform. These include traditional oral texts, picture books, various types of stories, rhyming verse, poetry, non-fiction, film, multimodal texts and dramatic performances. They participate in shared reading, viewing and storytelling using a range of literary texts, and recognise the entertaining nature of literature.

Literary texts that support and extend Foundation students as beginner readers include predictable texts that range from caption books to books with one or more sentences per page. These texts involve straightforward sequences of events and everyday happenings with recognisable, realistic or imaginary characters. Informative texts present a small amount of new content about familiar topics of interest; a small range of language features, including simple and compound sentences; mostly familiar vocabulary, known high- frequency words and single-syllable words that can be decoded phonically, and illustrations that strongly support the printed text.

Students create a range of imaginative, informative and persuasive texts including pictorial representations, short statements, performances, recounts and poetry.

In Mathematics, students play with objects and draw pictures to develop links between their immediate environment, everyday language and mathematical activity. Students classify and sort objects into sets and form simple correspondences between them. They decide when two sets are of equal size, or one is smaller or bigger than another. They develop an understanding of the concepts of number and numeral, count, order, add and share using small sets of objects. They create and continue simple patterns. Students compare common objects with respect to length, mass and capacity, and order events and compare their duration. They make rough estimates and simple measurements with respect to informal units. Students name, sort and describe familiar everyday shapes and objects, and describe position and movement in their immediate environment. Students investigate situations requiring data collection and presentation in simple displays, and recognise unpredictability and uncertainty in some events

Literacy

Reading and Viewing

Students will:
Learn about the letters of the alphabet and the sounds they make
Learn to move from left to right when reading and writing
Recognise some sight words and patterns in words to help them read
Identify features of texts
Discuss and retell stories
Develop strategies to read and comprehend simple texts

Writing

Students will: 
Learn to record sounds and letters
Develop fine motor skills, pencil grip and letter formation
Learn simple punctuation-capital letters, full stops
Compose simple texts

Speaking and Listening

Students will:
Learn the importance of active listening
Learn how to ask questions for information
Develop confidence in sharing stories and contributing ideas in the big and small group
Self-correct by rephrasing when a statement or question is unclear

Mathematics

Students will:
Engage in flexible groupings of children based on identified learning needs
Use concrete materials, games and real world experiences
Be encouraged to think and problem solve
Be involved in play based learning
Place items in order of size
Use numbers 0-20
Learn how to join, take away, make groups, share
Recognise shapes such as triangles, circles and squares
Sequence days of the week and associate them with school events