General News
29 June, 2023
Foundation phonics milestone
THE Foundation children of St Patrick’s School shared a significant event in their schooling last Wednesday when they celebrated Milo Monkey’s Birthday Party.
THE Foundation children of St Patrick’s School shared a significant event in their schooling last Wednesday when they celebrated Milo Monkey’s Birthday Party.
Milo Monkey has been a central character in the children’s learning, using the Little Learners Love Literacy program, which offers a synthetic systematic approach to phonics.
Religious education leader Michael Saunders said the program supports children in their learning journey enabling all children to read, write and spell with confidence.
“The children are introduced to each phoneme, or sound, via an animal character e.g. /s/ for Sammy snake, /t/ for Tim turtle, /n/ Nelly numbat,” he said.
“Milo Monkey’s Birthday Party marked the completion of learning the 26 phonemes before embarking upon digraphs next term.
“On Wednesday the children dressed as various characters and visited each of the 13 classrooms at St Patrick’s to share their amazing costumes.
“This was followed by an alliterative Treasure Hunt and party games.”
Mr Saunders said the Foundation students then walked to the Baranbali Camperdown kindergarten to display their costumes and very proudly displayed their reading skills, by reading to the kinder kids, before a nostalgic play in the kinder playground.
“Upon leaving, the Foundation children presented each kinder child with their own specially made Milo Monkey Mask,” he said.
“Back at school a special Milo Monkey Birthday cake was shared followed by a hot chip lunch.”