Junior News

By Felicia Ward | Posted: Thursday March 7, 2019

Thank you to all the parents who took the time to come to parent interviews last week. We hope you went away with valuable information on how your child is progressing and ideas on how you can support them further at home. We are always happy to help so please email or make a time to see your child's teacher if you ever have any questions or concerns. 

Swimming: 

Swimming begins on Tuesday the 19th of March and continues until Friday the 29th of March. A notice was sent home last week. Please make sure this is returned to your child's teacher as soon as possible. A big thank you to parents who have offered to have help on these days. Swimming is not possible without your support. 

Kid's Conference:

A reminder that next Friday is the Kid's Conference. We are looking forward to seeing you there and teaching you our new skills. 

Punctuation: 

In the Junior Syndicate this term our big focus in on accelerating writing. At the beginning of this year an independent writing sample was taken from each student. From this we have identified punctuation as a target area across all classes.

At the end of 2 years at school it is expected that students will use capital letters correctly to begin sentences and for proper nouns. They should also be competent in using full stops, question marks and exclamation marks to end a sentence. After 2 years we would also expect children to be experimenting with other punctuation such as speech marks and commas.

So how can you help?

• Look at different types of punctuation with your child in their reading book. Discuss why the author has chosen to use it.
• Ask your child to use a highlighter pen to highlight different forms of punctuation in old newspapers/magazines.
• Ask your child to give you a sentence using a particular type of punctuation.
• Notice different punctuation on signs when you are out driving in the car.
• Talk to your child about the different punctuation and use these when saying sentences aloud or when creating silly sentences.

See the punctuation checklist below.

Most importantly give your child lots of opportunities to write! Make it fun and engaging. Try ideas such as making a card, writing a weekend wish list, making a shopping list, sending an email or keeping a diary.

Alternatively here is some online punctuation games:

http://www.funenglishgames.com/grammargames/punctuation.html

https://www.roythezebra.com/reading-games.html

Thanks for your continued support. 

Junior Teachers