Yarra Junction Primary School celebrated the end of Term Two on Friday 4 July with a special day for the Prep students.
Preps were treated to a day of fun with their teachers and buddies similar to a ‘100 Days of Prep’ YJPS and other schools have celebrated, despite the dates not quite lined up, to mark the students meeting a significant milestone in their school journey.
Foundation Curriculum Leader and Prepand Grade One Teacher at Yarra Junction Primary School Tania Scott said one part of the day consisted of students bringing 100 of their chosen item to give them a concept of how much 100 is.
“A lot of what we’ve done this week is based on reflections, so really consolidating and talking about when they came in, what they could do and then going back and looking at the work from the beginning and to now and that really instills a sense of pride,” she said.
“(The first 100 days) is definitely really important and consistency of language, we have a visual schedule, the kids, and we go through the visual schedule before they leave in the morning, so the day before they come in, they know what’s going on, they know if there’s a change,”
“Consistency of reading every day, of counting every day, doing their homework is really important as well, consistency of listening to their body language, if they’re not feeling happy, making sure that you’re on top of that, if the red (symbolising anger) zone’s there, let’s work out what we’re gonna do so that we are a safe person that can help them move from whatever they’re feeling to that green zone.”
Activities throughout the day included pictures with their parents and buddies, making a necklace out of 100 fruit loops counting up by 10s, eating ice cream they earned through their ‘values tokens’, playing ‘Race to 100’, making glasses and patterns with 100, finding the numbers up to a 100 and tricky words around the school with their buddies and other games.
In her second year of teaching, Prep Teacher Jade Fairweather she loves that Preps are excited about school because it’s all new to them.
“Prep’s really the foundation of school, so it’s exciting to see them learn so much in even just a hundred days, learning, reading, writing and just making friends, they’re all excited to be at school still which is nice,” she said.
“I think (the first 100 days) is really important, especially socially, making friends as a lot of them come from different kinders and day cares, so I think making friends and just making them love school and feel like they can learn no matter who they are, I think that’s really important.”
The Yarra Junction Primary School Prep students have certainly come a long way from their first week back in January where they explored their own classrooms, located important buildings like classrooms and bathrooms and learnt about the different school routines.
Ms Fairweather said she thinks a lot of the challenges were leaving their mums and dads and parents in the mornings.
“The first few weeks there was lots of tears, lots of little sad people, but I think they’re all excited to come to school now and they love if they walk across the road in the morning by themselves, they’re excited to come and say ‘I walked to school by myself’ so I think that’s a challenge they’ve overcome.
“I think just even reading simple words and simple books, I think they’ve really overcome that because at the start of the year they could hardly read, but now they’re reading small books so that’s exciting, I think they love that they can do that now and they’re excited to show their parents, friends and other people.”
