Classroom News

Grade 3 & 4

Wow! What an absolute action packed term we’ve had. The Year 4s had a blast at camp, making memories and enjoying new challenges. We also celebrated a fun-filled Science Day and Book Fun Day, where students came dressed as their favourite scientists and book characters. In Wellbeing, we focused on the importance of checking in with others during R U OK? Day, and our whole school participated in the World’s Biggest Gratitude Lesson. It’s been a busy and wonderful term, and now we are all ready for a well-deserved holiday!

In Reader’s Workshop, we focussed on reading and understanding non-fiction texts about indigenous culture and various historical explorers. We investigated the common themes in texts and used evidence from the text to support our thinking. We unpacked interesting and unfamiliar vocabulary and looked at strategies on how to read and understand these words. Our other focus this term was open- minded portraits, where students put themselves in a character’s shoes and think about what they might have felt at certain times in the text.

In Writers Workshop, we explored two different writing genres and their key features. At the commencement of the term, we focused on the genre of Poetry where we looked at different types of poetry, with a focus on figurative language, including similes and metaphors. The other key focus in our writing this term was looking at the structure of Biographies. We researched relevant information and expanded our ideas into paragraphs. 

In Mathematics this term, the grade 3s and 4s explored a wide variety of multiplication and division strategies, such as repeated addition and subtraction, groups of strategies, arrays, vertical multiplication and short division. Being able to use a range of strategies helps students as they are able to choose the strategy that is most effective for a given problem. We also explored angles, looking at what an angle is and the various types of angles, such as right,  acute and obtuse angles. We focused on Time, where we examined the use of analogue clocks, conversion between units of time such as seconds to minutes and minutes to hours, and focused on solving real-world problems that involve time. Lastly, we finished with focusing on place value, with an emphasis on decimals. We introduced the students to tenths and hundredths. We have done amazing work this term and are excited to finish our mathematics learning for term 3!

Over Term 3 in Inquiry, we focused on answering the question: What are our stories of Country? Students explored what life was like for Indigenous peoples both before and after European contact, learning about the different perspectives and experiences of both groups. This culminated into creating an art work that they designed to show their understanding about what they had learnt about a particular chosen historical event. Students were given choice in how they expressed their ideas through art, and their creativity and thoughtfulness shone through. They thoroughly enjoyed working on their artworks, which were proudly showcased at our 3/4 Art Expo.

We hope you all have a safe and wonderful holiday and look forward to seeing you all back for an action packed Term 4!

Reminders:

Students will have to wear their school hat in Term 4