Welcome to Flanagan
Dear Families of Flanagan,
My name is Mrs Louise Hurst, and along with Ms Karyn Best, we would like to welcome you to North Kalgoorlie Primary School for 2021.
I am looking forward to a very special year with your children, where we learn and grow together. I am very excited to now have you and your family as part of our NKPS pre-primary community.
I am married with two teenage boys, have lived in Kalgoorlie for more than ten years and although we are blow-ins from over East, I cannot imagine living anywhere else. Kalgoorlie is a wonderful community of diverse and interesting people.
As a graduate, I began my teaching career last year as a relief teacher around Kalgoorlie after being an education assistant for 9 years (mostly at NKPS). It is a privilege to be in my new role as classroom teacher in Flanagan at the school that I know best. With guidance from the admin and pre-primary teams (and other ECE colleagues in the Goldfields), I will provide your child with daily opportunities to play, learn and grow according to their needs in a happy, supportive and fun environment.
Term 1 Timetable
Our daily lesson routine
Literacy Block:
1. Introduction (e.g. Letter/sound song, activity or game)
2. Explicit teaching (e.g. focusing on letter/sound recognition, reading strategies, writing etc.)
3. Literacy rotations (e.g. 5 small groups, 1 works with the teacher on an English focus area, 1 group works with EA on focused area-predominately a craft activity.
4. Conclusion/revising activity.
Maths Block:
1. Introduction (e.g. Number song, mental maths activity or game)
2. Explicit teaching on focus area/topic
3. Learning activities (predominately rotations-e.g. 1 group working with teacher, one group working with EA and three independent groups participating in various math activities that have been previously modelled.
4.Conclusion/revising activity.
Videos we have been using in Flanagan
Here is a catchy and quick song that can help your child develop their knowledge of letters and sounds. We have been doing it in Flanagan, and we love it.
A great way to practice counting to 20 whilst having the opportunity to participate in some physical growth development. There are also videos available that count to 100.
FLANAGAN PHOTO GALLERY
Images taken by some of our future photographers using our classroom iPads.
Home reading will begin to commence as of term two when your child is believed to be ready both academically and emotionally. This is critical as we do not want to discourage students from being confident to read by overwhelming/scaring them. Home readers will be changed on Monday and Thursday, so please bring in their home reader book on Monday morning.
To support your child's learning at school, they will begin to bring home reading books to practice with you. Home reading is a fantastic opportunity for your child to practise and reinforce reading skills learned at school. It is also a time for your child to build their confidence and fluency; for this reason, your child’s home reading book will be at a manageable reading level and will increase in difficulty as your child’s ability progresses. They may also bring home the same book on a number of occasions. When reading with your child, you may like to follow these steps in supporting them:
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Look through the book and create a story together which matches the pictures.
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Read the story to your child.
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Ask your child to read the story to you. Discuss the story with your child. What was their favourite part? What happened 1st 2nd etc. What do you think might happen next?
Things to remember:
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Please do not hesitate to read your child a range of texts as this not only can effectively expose them to various text types but can also successfully model reading to them.
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Some words can’t be read by sounding them out, so do not focus on this too much with your child.
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Talk with your child about which are words, pictures and letters. Children need to be taught the difference between these.
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Do not focus on the mistakes and celebrate the successes!
Following is a simple graphic that explains
how to support your child with their 'homework'
