![]() Tomorrow GWA will be celebrating Sewa Day. Sewa means to sacrifice your time and resources for the benefit of others without wanting anything in return. GWA will be asking all children to dress in purple and/or orange tomorrow instead of school uniform for a donation of AED10. This money will then go towards buying food donations for the workers living in labour camps in Dubai. Thank you in advance for your support. The KG2 Team
![]() With the children settled and assessments finished, we are ready to start our guided reading program. Below you will find out about the different forms this can take in the classroom and how you can help through home reading. Language and literacy are a big part of the KG2 curriculum. The children are immersed into a language rich environment and participate in language and literacy activities all day in every subject area. They also have a specific daily language time dedicated to direct instruction in reading and writing. A variety of strategies are used to encourage students to read for pleasure and information and to understand that text has meaning. Students will be exposed to a balance of independent reading, small group reading and whole class situations. Guided reading is a time when students are grouped together with other children who are at a similar reading level. This is a small group instruction time when the teacher can target specific learning goals for the group and the students can build on their prior knowledge to explore the meaning of the book. The children will often have extension activities relating to the text. Other language activities during this scheduled time may include, word building activities, book walks, picture sequencing, retelling stories, sight word bingo, journal writing, listening center, alphabet sorts, word family discovery and word matching games. Home Reading![]() Home reading is an opportunity for students to celebrate their reading with you. The home readers will generally be one to two levels below the instructional level to encourage confidence, work towards fluency and promote the notion that reading is for understanding and should be fun. For some students this will be a wordless reading book to begin with (please see the attachment below for information regarding wordless reading books). Students will usually be assigned 2/3 books to bring home and share with you for that week. Repetition is important, so feel free to read the books more than once. It is important to realise that reading is developmental. It is the coming together of a range of skills and each student progresses at their own rate. You can support your child during home reading by listening carefully, asking questions about what they have read and what they see in the pictures. You can also ask them what they liked or disliked about the book. If a text is too difficult for your child or they are tired then just read it with them or to them. Research shows that children who witness people reading and are read to by adults, become better readers. Bedtime stories, garden reading or family read-alouds are a perfect opportunity to enjoy quality time together. On days that your child does not bring home a reading book you can check out great books from the main school library to read to them. Please return your child's reading folder weekly so we can update the books. ![]()
Sight Words![]() What are sight words? There are a number of commonly used words that have to be learnt by sight, for example, "the", "was" and "I". You may have heard these words referred to as high frequency words, sight words or tricky words. In order to facilitate the learning of these words, your child will be bringing home, in their home reading folder this week, a selection of words to consolidate and further learn at home. Although the list will contain a number of words please don’t try to teach all these words at once, choose a few words to introduce and consolidate at a time. Here are a few activities you can do with your child at home: · Play coin toss - cards on floor - children take turns to toss a coin onto a card and say that word. · Play ‘tic tac toe, here I go, where I stop I do not know’ - children say the word that you stop on... · Play musical words - children pass cards around in a circle until music stops - that child says the word. · Play magic words - Use a white crayon to write the word and a marker to colour over – what word appears. · Play ‘Word Hunt’- Can you find one of your tricky word in a book. When you are practicing the words with your child at home please remember it is much easier to read a word when in isolation as you can focus all your concentration on it but for practical purposes the student must also be able to read the word in context. Once your child has shown they can automatically, independently and consistently use the word in their reading at home and school, the word will be highlighted and dated by the teacher. Please keep the tricky word sheet in your child’s home reader folder so that it can be regularly updated at school. Letter FormationWe have begun our year through our Unit of Inquiry 'Who We Are'. We have been busy building relationships with new friends and teachers. This Unit of Inquiry is year long and we will continue to dip in and out of it throughout the year. Many of the Social Stars lessons will also cover content related to this unit. On Sunday we begin our next Unit of Inquiry 'How the World Works' and the focus of this unit is on Light and Sound. Here you will find ideas on how to develop and extend the your child's understanding from home and be part of your child’s learning. How the world works: Light and Sound An inquiry into the natural world and its laws; the interaction between the natural world (physical and biological) and human societies; how humans use their understanding of scientific principles; the impact of scientific and technological advances on society and on the environment. The Unit of Inquiry will focus on the Central Idea; ‘Light and sound affect the way we experience the world.’ We will be emphasizing several key concepts through this unit of inquiry, these being change (How does it change?) and function (How does it work?) and function (What is it like?) . Some of the questions that will be used to direct our studies will be:
During our unit we will be doing hands on experiments to discover answers to these questions and further develop our understanding of why light and sound plays such an important role in our everyday lives. We will be manipulating light to travel around corners and we will find out that light can travel through some materials but not others Click here to download the curriculum map for this unit: ![]()
We are looking forward to an exciting and rewarding year. The first few weeks will be spent getting to know each other and establishing class routines and essential agreements. It will be a time where we build good relationships and find out a lot of exciting things about each other.
We encourage open communication between school and home. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us. We are looking forward to having the opportunity to meet and chat with you over the coming weeks as we work together towards your son / daughter’s success. Starting School Starting school is a big, exciting step for children and parents. It is like a journey, that takes time, preparation and planning. It takes time to adjust to new surroundings, different adults, new routines and expectations, more children and fewer adults for support and for some children there will be a new language to learn. Helping to prepare your child for school can certainly ease this transition. Some suggestion to make this transition easier:
We look forward to a fantastic year ahead with you and your child. The KG2 Team |