Year 3 Spotlight

Inquiry

For our Geography Inquiry unit, we are learning about climates, human development, flora, fauna and landmarks. Then we put all that information together and we write about it. We were using the information to create a diorama. Then we chose which flora and fauna would be right for our habitat. Once we had gathered all the information, we got in pairs and started to create dioramas using materials, clay, etc. Right now, we are still trying to complete our dioramas, and they are coming along nicely!

~ By Livi & Isaac

Maths  

We have been doing a special problem-solving type of ‘non-routine’ lesson recently. We’ve been having a warm up thing to get ready for a problem-solving question. We then have to answer that question, but for the first 5 minutes we have something called ‘Sticky Brain’ time. In that time, we’re not allowed to ask for help and we experience the ‘learning pit’. After the 5 minutes is up we can ask for help from either our teacher or a friend.

We have also been trying out some different strategies such as ‘jump and hop’ and ‘split’. We try these out to see which strategy is right for us. We have only done a few, but some people have already found their ideal addition and subtraction strategy.

Recently, we have been doing data collecting by asking a question to the people in our class and showing our findings on a graph or tally mark. While doing this you have to make sure you don’t make a mistake such as asking a different question to different people or asking the same person twice. To make sure this doesn’t happen we have strips of paper with the people in your class’ name on it. When you ask someone you cross their name off so you don’t ask them again.

~ By Oshi & Bethany