By Callum Ludwig
Yarra Junction Primary School’s prep students arrived at the school filled with excitement for their 100th day of prep on Monday 5 August.
Students were set to celebrate the milestone with a day full of fun activities,
Prep Teacher Tania Scott said the day is definitely something that they look forward to and mark every day on the calendar in the leadup.
“They get excited for the celebration and we also talk about what they’ve learned and what they’ve achieved since they’ve been here,” she said.
“It’s a good thing for parents and encouraging attendance as well and at assembly they’ll be given an award so it’s a good opportunity to bring the community in.”
Students each brought in 100 of an item of their choice to show the class which will not only help with their number sense but also reiterate to them their achievement of marking 100 days into their school journey so far. Some items included pom poms, leaves and ducks.
Ms Scott said they’ve had focuses in English, Maths, specialist subjects and social skills that students have worked on and improved at in the first 100 days of school.
“In phonics, out of the 42 sounds, we’re onto our alternative sounds, so they’re doing really well with that and now they’re decoding, so they’re blending up to ‘CVC’ words and learning the tricky words as well,” she said.
“Number sense for maths, so having a really good understanding of the numbers to 20, and what that could look like and we do sign language, so they’ve learnt about 70 signs so far,”
“They’re also immersed in their specialist subjects, so community studies, art, PE and performing arts which they really enjoy and a lot of it is social skills, trying to develop emotional intelligence and just learning how to be kind and work through problems rather than becoming really upset and anxious.”
Students spent time with their school buddies, took part in a search for the numbers up to 100 littered around the school, made a 100-themed crown and fairy bread, counted their 100 things and received their award as part of the day’s festivities.
Ms Scott said they run a very tight ship with lots of routine to help the preps settle in after starting school.
“When they first come in we do a ‘soft start’, they slowly come into an activity that they want to do, we set up a few different things but they’ve also got student voice to go and find something that they might like to do, it might be a puzzle, it could be coloured in, it could be listening to a story on the iPad and then we start the day and go through the schedule so they know exactly what’s going on,” she said.
“We do a lot of movement in between breaks, so before I go from spelling to writing we might get up and do a bit of a dance or a movement, we incorporate a lot of movement when we’re learning words and things like that so it’s a bit more engaging,”
“We do a lot of learning outside as well, we might do a writing piece or maths out in the sensory garden, or we might even go out into the asphalt area and we’ve got a yarning space so rather than doing a circle time in the classroom we’ll take them outside and form a yarning circle.”
